The Plant Husbandry of aceramic çayônü, SE Turkey

The present paper deals with the results of the examination of plant remains recovered from aceramic Neolithic levels at Çayönü in southeastern Anatolia. The cultivated plants included einkorn and emmer wheat, field pea, lentil and bitter vetch. It is not clear whether grass pea and chickpea were crop plants of the aceramic farmers. Barley was neither cultivated nor gathered intentionally. Pulses predominate over cereals in the archaeobotanical record. A characteristic feature of Çayönü is the wild type emmer wheat grains in the lower occupation levels. Wild pistachio (Pistacia atlantica/khinjuk) fruits were collected intensively. The large numbers of wild vetch (Vicia sp.) seeds suggest that these were gathered purposely.