The Southern Neolithic is assumed to have partaken in agriculture. Archaeobotany, which is the study of archaeological plant remains, is being undertaken with the view of trying to understand prehistoric agriculture and cultural evolution of South Asian agriculture, especially in India. The first observation of plant remains in this region was made by Foote, who observed the impressions of preserved straw discovered in the Budikamana ashmound near Kudatini in Bellary district (Settar, S., & Korisettar, R., 2002, 194). Foote identified this as the great millet Sorghum bicolor, although it’s still not clear how he came up with this conclusion since grasses are quite same. Systematic studies in the Neolithic ashmounds have failed to produce evidence of sorghum, although proof of stone querns and worn out teeth of skeletons suggest that some cereals were being ground for food in prehistoric times (194).
Older published evidence indicated one or more species of millet, pulse, fruits and nuts. It’s speculated that the Neolithic sites must have yielded some charred seeds, though in minimal quantities. There’s little evidence to support this speculation because floatation of archaeological sediment is unlikely to recover these seeds. Archaeobotanical records of South Asia show that large cereals like wheat, barley, and rice are recovered every once in a while in random hand collections though these are unlikely to have been predominant crop in the region (195). This is because the predominance of weak soils and dry conditions could not have supported this type of agriculture. However, millets are likely to have been ideally suited to grow in such environments, adding some credit to the suggestion that the Southern Neolithic was not entirely pastoral.
The best available evidence revolves around the importance of pulses of tropical origin usually grown in the monsoon. Some of these pulses originated in South Asia, especially the horse gram/kulthi (195). This pulse has been traced to the lowest level at Sanganakallu and recovered from all sampled regions of the Neolithic. The green gram/mung has also been recovered throughout the middle and later periods of the Southern Neolithic. The black gram/urid is scarcely represented in the sampled regions, although it’s been found in the Kurnool District during the Iron Age. Some two other pulses have also been recovered from samples in the Southern Neolithic, one of which may have its roots in Africa. They include the pigeon pea/tuvar and the hyacinth bean/sem. The tuvar was derived from the Cajanus cajanifolia which existed in the southern Orissa region and Bastar. The sem botanical evidence traces its origin to East Africa and is said to have been made available to South Asia via sea trade in the 2000 BC (195).
The staple cereal in South Asia was a fox-tail millet of grasses native to grassland communities in Peninsular India. There have been cases of millets of African origin in the recent past, for example, ragi, jowar, and bajra. They had been introduced in the region in the year 2000 BC but had little significance in the area at that time compared to their beneficence in the south Indian agriculture now. Other millets that were grown in the region include the yellow foxtail, bristly foxtail, the little millet and the sawa millet. The Kodo millet came later during the Iron Age. The use of these millets as staple food remains ambiguous and it’s still not clear whether they were domesticated or gathered widely in the wild.
Charred parenchyma pieces have also been uncovered in some of the samples suggesting the use of tubers/ rhizome in the region. Root crops are thought to have been grown in the Southern Neolithic site of Sanganakallu given the large quantities of parenchyma discovered in samples taken from the area. There are many wild yams native to India, including gingers, turmeric, and other edible tubers. Other foods found in Southern Neolithic sites include fruits, nuts, and vegetables. There is little evidence of these foods though and minimal opportunities for them to be preserved archaeologically. Some of the fruits discovered from various samples include the jujube fruit, sebesten plums, emblic myrobalan.
In conclusion, the Southern Asia region has a rich archaeobotanical prehistory, accumulated as far as the second millennium BC. It’s coupled with a rich culture of the people that lived in the region and illustrates activities that they engaged in, for example, sea trade. This is fascinating in establishing the roots of various foods found in the region and the rest of Asia.
Reference
Settar, S., & Korisettar, R. (2002). Prehistory: Archaeology of South Asia. New Delhi: Indian Council of Historical Research.
