Acta Palaeobotanica 42(2): 185–193, 2002

Weed ecology as a method for the archaeobotanical recognition of crop husbandry practices

Summary: This paper reviews the methods used to reconstruct past crop husbandry practices from the ecology of the weed species associated with archaeobotanical crop remains. The contributions of phytosociology and Ellenberg numbers, in particular, are reviewed and critiqued, and an alternative approach using the functional ecology of weed species is proposed. This approach uses functional attributes, which measure the ecological characteristics of weed species, and is not dependent on the co occurrence of particular species or the reliability of field observations to indicate species preferences. Functional attributes permit the `translation' of present day ecological data to archaeobotanically attested species and, through an understanding of ecological processes, provide the means to disentangle the separate effects of different husbandry practices, so allowing the identification of novel combinations of practices in the past. An understanding of the, often complex, functional relationships between husbandry practices and weed floras also enables a more sophisticated approach to the interpretation of archaeological weeds through a consideration of attribute suites, or species functional types, as a reflection of the combined effects of different ecological factors.

Keywords: archaeobotany, crop husbandary, weed ecology, phytosociology, functional ecology