INNOVATION OR PRESERVATION? ABBASID AUBERGINES, ARCHAEOBOTANY AND THE ISLAMIC GREENREVOLUTION
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 09/11/2020

The topic of agricultural innovation in the early Islamic empires has become increasingly relevant for historians, archaeologists and agricultural scientists. The validity of Andrew Watson’s original “Islamic Green Revolution” hypothesis will ultimately be confirmed or confuted by archaeobotanical research, as Watson himself has hinted. However, rigorous criteria for exploiting the available archaeobotanical data and testing this hypothesis are needed. We propose methodological criteria to test for new introductions, applying them to four “first-finds” for Levantine archaeobotany. The finds derive from one cess pit and two refuse pits in an Abbasid Jerusalem bazaar which contained an unprecedented concentration of mineralized plant remains for the Levant. This led us to wonder whether the “first-finds” were more a reflection of preservation conditions than crop diffusion. After applying our proposed test for new introductions and considering the archaeobotanical, historical and genetic evidence, we concluded that one species from the assemblage, the eggplant (Solanum melongena), represents a new introduction. The earliest evidence of eggplant in the Levant, this find exemplifies the phenomenon of Early Islamic westward crop diffusion. However, it does not necessarily reflect “revolutionary” agricultural innovation. We address the relationship between new introductions and agricultural innovation, advocating a regional, crop-by-crop strategy for further interdisciplinary research on the Islamic Green Revolution.


Author(s): Fuks, Daniel - Weiss, Ehud (Archaeobotany Lab, Bar-Ilan University)