The Archaeology Behind Cultivaria: Part 2
Plants, Landscapes and Climates
Archaeobotany
Archaeobotany is the special branch of archaeology that involves the study of ancient plant remains and how they were impacted by humans. Mainly, it studies two kinds of plant remains: macrobotanical and microbotanical. Macrobotanical remains are large/visible plant remains such as seeds, wood, leaves, fibres or any other type of plant matter. Microbotanical remains are any microscopic pieces of plants that can be found in soil or attached to artefacts.
At the simplest level, archaeobotany can tell us what types of plants people were eating or using at a site in the past. The identification of plant remains to a specific plant or type of plant is an important part of understanding the lives of ancient people. Identifying plants can also tell us about how selective people were in using plants for food or other jobs, whether they were only eating one very particular type of seed or collecting a wide variety of plants. Plant remains from archaeological sites can also tell us a lot about the environment and landscape that people were living in at different times (there will be more detail on this in the next section).
The most common method used in archaeobotany is looking at plant remains using a powerful microscope. This analysis can be done on microscopic plant remains or on samples from larger pieces of plants. These larger pieces are often sliced very thin so that the internal structure of the plant can be seen. This structure and many other features of plant remains are often unique to a particular group or species of plant.
Depending on the type of plant or its state of preservation, a microscope might not be enough to properly identify the original plant. In these cases we can use more complex analyses to try to identify the plant. These analyses can vary widely, but usually involve chemical analysis of certain plant parts. Often this can be done with samples that are much smaller or degraded than microscopic analysis. Another option for more detailed analysis is to move from optical/light microscopy (looking directly through a lens which magnifies a sample) to electron microscopy (using a beam of electrons to create an image of a sample which is viewed on a computer). Electron microscopy is much more complex and difficult than light microscopy but it allows for much greater magnification and therefore the identification of much smaller features in a sample.
In identifying plants in the archaeological record we can also often gain a better understanding of trade and movement between ancient communities. There are many cases of plant remains being found in areas where they have never grown naturally. This means that people either grew the plants there, or they transported the harvested plant from somewhere that it originally grew.
Studying the remains of plants from different archaeological sites is also essential in our understanding of how ancient people controlled and changed their environments. Often we can see changes in species over time that show how communities were gradually changing plants by selecting and growing those with certain traits. This behaviour would ultimately lead to domestication of species and more intense agriculture in some places. In Cultivaria we are only depicting the early parts of this process, when people might have managed plants to encourage their growth and make them easier to collect. Archaeobotany is the main way that archaeologists have been able to study this type of behaviour in the past.
An example of a recent finding from zooarchaeological, in this case, genetic analysis is the discovery that palm trees in central Australia originally came from the north of the country around twenty or thirty thousand years ago. This, combined with evidence from Indigenous communities and archaeology in the area shows that humans moved palm trees from northern Australia to the central desert where they have continued to grow ever since.
Palaeoenvironment
Palaeoenvironmental studies focus on reconstructing the past environment and climate of a site or region. This is not technically a type of archaeology as it doesn’t usually deal with the impacts or actions of past humans. However, knowing what the climate was like in the past is hugely useful to archaeologists and is something we have drawn on a great deal in making Cultivaria.
Studying past environments is a huge topic, as broad as archaeology, and in some cases using the same methods as archaeology. However, there are a few key aspects which relate to Cultivaria. First is the study of past climates and how these have changed over time (climates and climate change have major impacts on all players in Cultivaria), then there is the study of different landscapes in which people lived and the knowledge of which plants and animals live in them (something that relates to both Zooarchaeology and Archaeobotany).
Most palaeoenvironment data is collected by extracting cores, long sections of soil or ice which capture information about the environments over long periods of time. These cores might contain things like pollen from plants, remains of small animals or evidence of the chemistry of air and water. Even the type of soil extracted in a core can be important, fine sand will build up in a very different environment from highly organic mud for instance.
The study of ancient pollen grains and other microscopic remains in soil (called palynology) is one of the most important types of study in understanding past environments. This analysis allows researchers to figure out what plants were living in an area at different points in time. By understanding the types of environments in which different plants live, we can work out what the environment must have been like in the past. For example, if we go to an open grassland and find evidence of large trees in the distant past it means that the area was once forested.
Changes in chemistry can also be strong signals of past climates. Chemical analysis is most often used in relation to ice cores but can also be applied to other palaeoenvironmental material. Often the chemical changes related to changes in climate are seen in the ratios of different isotopes of certain elements. The most common example of this is oxygen isotopes which indicate changes in global temperatures. In fact, Marine Isotope Stages (based on oxygen isotopes) are one of the most common ways we break down deep time in archaeology. Obviously changes in global temperatures have a major impact on the environment in which ancient people lived.
In recent years, paleoenvironmental research in Australia has been important in understanding changing landscapes as a result of controlled burning by early human communities. Researchers have found increased charcoal (burned plant material) from around the time humans are believed to have spread across the continent as well as evidence of major changes in the plants and landscapes following the start of this burning. This evidence not only shows the types of changes that humans have experienced but how they have in fact influenced some of these changes.
Understanding the plants, landscapes and climates which have existed and changed over time is crucial in developing our understanding of how ancient people lived. The information learned by archaeobotanists and palaeoenvironmental researchers has been key throughout the design of Cultivaria. The plants depicted in the game are based on real research, with each having direct evidence of use by ancient people at some stage. Meanwhile, the mechanics around climates, and landscapes are realistic and based on the changes which we know ancient people lived through.