Plant use and crop husbandry in an early Neolithic village

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Large-scale excavation and sampling of the well preserved early Neolithic site of Vaihingen an der Enz provided a unique opportunity to investigate a complete settlement of the later the 6th millennium cal BC using archaeobotanical methods. While previous work has established the typical range of crops and wild plants used by early Neolithic people, this monograph seeks to recast these elements as active social phenomena: foods, materials and routines bound up with the identities of households, neighbourhoods, the local community and wider regional networks. Spatial distributions of charred macrobotanical remains across the settlement and through time reveal patterns of plant use that variously united the community through common practice and distinguished particular neighbourhoods. The archaeobotanical analysis also reveals how matters of ‘ownership’, inheritance and territoriality extended from settlement space into the wider cultivated landscape and beyond.