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Archaeobotanical and isotopic analyses of waterlogged remains from the Neolithic pile-dwelling site of Zug-Riedmatt (Switzerland): Resilience strategies of a plant economy in a changing local environment

The excellent preservation of the waterlogged botanical remains of the multiphase Neolithic pile-dwelling site of Zug-Riedmatt (Central Switzerland) yielded an ideal dataset to delve into the issue of plant economy of a community spanning several decades. The study identified a major change in crops...

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Autores principales: Steiner, Bigna L., Martínez-Grau, Héctor, Bernasconi, Stefano M., Gross, Eda, Hajdas, Irka, Jacomet, Stefanie, Jaggi, Madalina, Schaeren, Gishan F., Antolín, Ferran
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9518907/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36170265
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274361
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author Steiner, Bigna L.
Martínez-Grau, Héctor
Bernasconi, Stefano M.
Gross, Eda
Hajdas, Irka
Jacomet, Stefanie
Jaggi, Madalina
Schaeren, Gishan F.
Antolín, Ferran
author_facet Steiner, Bigna L.
Martínez-Grau, Héctor
Bernasconi, Stefano M.
Gross, Eda
Hajdas, Irka
Jacomet, Stefanie
Jaggi, Madalina
Schaeren, Gishan F.
Antolín, Ferran
author_sort Steiner, Bigna L.
collection PubMed
description The excellent preservation of the waterlogged botanical remains of the multiphase Neolithic pile-dwelling site of Zug-Riedmatt (Central Switzerland) yielded an ideal dataset to delve into the issue of plant economy of a community spanning several decades. The study identified a major change in crops where oil plants played a key role in the site’s initial phase before being supplanted over the course of a few decades by naked wheat, barley and pea. Wild plants continued to be gathered albeit in different proportions. In the latest settlement phase, the changes in the local vegetation and in the values of the analyses of carbon stable isotopes suggest a less humid environment. The hypothesis is that the changes perceived in the plant economy represent a resilience strategy adopted by the inhabitants in reaction to short term local climatic alterations. The two types of soil sampling techniques (monolith and bulk) allowed comparing these results. While the density of plant remains appears to be underestimated among the samples collected by the monolith technique, the proportions of economic taxa remain unaffected. The findings thus reveal that when the bulk samplings are distributed carefully throughout multiphase sites and avoid mixing stratigraphical units, and if the samplings are representative of all archaeological features from a whole area, then each of the two techniques offer analogous results.
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spelling pubmed-95189072022-09-29 Archaeobotanical and isotopic analyses of waterlogged remains from the Neolithic pile-dwelling site of Zug-Riedmatt (Switzerland): Resilience strategies of a plant economy in a changing local environment Steiner, Bigna L. Martínez-Grau, Héctor Bernasconi, Stefano M. Gross, Eda Hajdas, Irka Jacomet, Stefanie Jaggi, Madalina Schaeren, Gishan F. Antolín, Ferran PLoS One Research Article The excellent preservation of the waterlogged botanical remains of the multiphase Neolithic pile-dwelling site of Zug-Riedmatt (Central Switzerland) yielded an ideal dataset to delve into the issue of plant economy of a community spanning several decades. The study identified a major change in crops where oil plants played a key role in the site’s initial phase before being supplanted over the course of a few decades by naked wheat, barley and pea. Wild plants continued to be gathered albeit in different proportions. In the latest settlement phase, the changes in the local vegetation and in the values of the analyses of carbon stable isotopes suggest a less humid environment. The hypothesis is that the changes perceived in the plant economy represent a resilience strategy adopted by the inhabitants in reaction to short term local climatic alterations. The two types of soil sampling techniques (monolith and bulk) allowed comparing these results. While the density of plant remains appears to be underestimated among the samples collected by the monolith technique, the proportions of economic taxa remain unaffected. The findings thus reveal that when the bulk samplings are distributed carefully throughout multiphase sites and avoid mixing stratigraphical units, and if the samplings are representative of all archaeological features from a whole area, then each of the two techniques offer analogous results. Public Library of Science 2022-09-28 /pmc/articles/PMC9518907/ /pubmed/36170265 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274361 Text en © 2022 Steiner et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Steiner, Bigna L.
Martínez-Grau, Héctor
Bernasconi, Stefano M.
Gross, Eda
Hajdas, Irka
Jacomet, Stefanie
Jaggi, Madalina
Schaeren, Gishan F.
Antolín, Ferran
Archaeobotanical and isotopic analyses of waterlogged remains from the Neolithic pile-dwelling site of Zug-Riedmatt (Switzerland): Resilience strategies of a plant economy in a changing local environment
title Archaeobotanical and isotopic analyses of waterlogged remains from the Neolithic pile-dwelling site of Zug-Riedmatt (Switzerland): Resilience strategies of a plant economy in a changing local environment
title_full Archaeobotanical and isotopic analyses of waterlogged remains from the Neolithic pile-dwelling site of Zug-Riedmatt (Switzerland): Resilience strategies of a plant economy in a changing local environment
title_fullStr Archaeobotanical and isotopic analyses of waterlogged remains from the Neolithic pile-dwelling site of Zug-Riedmatt (Switzerland): Resilience strategies of a plant economy in a changing local environment
title_full_unstemmed Archaeobotanical and isotopic analyses of waterlogged remains from the Neolithic pile-dwelling site of Zug-Riedmatt (Switzerland): Resilience strategies of a plant economy in a changing local environment
title_short Archaeobotanical and isotopic analyses of waterlogged remains from the Neolithic pile-dwelling site of Zug-Riedmatt (Switzerland): Resilience strategies of a plant economy in a changing local environment
title_sort archaeobotanical and isotopic analyses of waterlogged remains from the neolithic pile-dwelling site of zug-riedmatt (switzerland): resilience strategies of a plant economy in a changing local environment
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9518907/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36170265
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274361
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