Identifying ancient land use through the functional ecology of crop weeds
3-year NERC Standard research grant with:
* Professor Glynis Jones, University of Sheffield.
* Dr Mike Charles, University of Sheffield.
* John Hodgson.
* Carol Palmer.
The project will create a functional ecological database of commonly occurring in archaeobotanical species so 
that a methodology for interpreting ancient weed developed by earlier projects can be applied to archaeobotanical assemblages. This work is the culmination of a project instigated in 1985, and now comprising a research team (comprising academic staff, research assistants and PhD students). This programme has received a previous 3-year NERC-funded project (with the Unit of Comparative Plant Ecology) from 1996 to 1998; fieldwork has been supported by several British Academy grants; and the project has attracted a number of PhD awards from NERC and other sources.
The research targets 400 archaeologically attested crop weed species of Europe and 
the Near East in order to provide a complete, and widely applicable, database of functional attributes for the most commonly occurring archaeological species. By using the method to test hypotheses at two extensively sampled, weed-rich sites, it will also provide `worked examples´ indicating how the method can be applied to other archaeological datasets.
Specific objectives of the current project
* To provide a tested method and a database of the functional ecology of crop weeds, for the identification of ancient agricultural practices through an analysis.
* To investigate the geographic stability of the measured functional attributes and develop an ecological classificatory system which transcends geographical boundaries giving it wide archaeological applicability.
* To use this method and database to test two specific hypotheses concerning ancient land use:
* Hypothesis 1: Cereal crops were irrigated in the catchment of the Bronze Age site of Tell Brak in Syria.
* Hypothesis 2: Cereal and pulse cultivation at the Bronze Age site of Assiros in northern Greece used intensive ‘horticultural’ methods.
Methodology and Approach
The method employed utilises easy-to-measure functional attributes which are direct or indirect measures of ecological characteristics of plants validated against experimental or distributional data (Grime et al., 1997; Hodgson et al., 1999; Weiher et al., 1999). The measurements are made on robust modern plant specimens found growing in the study areas or grown from seed under greenhouse conditions. The method allows the establishment of the large database required for archaeobotanical application. The attributes measured will be those that proved useful in distinguishing the present-day weed floras of contrasting agricultural regimes in previous studies.
