From intermediate economies to agriculture: trends in wild food use, domestication and cultivation among early villages in southwest Asia

This paper addresses the range of subsistence strategies in the protracted transition to agriculture in Southwest Asia. Discussed and defined here are the intermediate economies that can be characterized by a mixed-subsistence economy of wild plant exploitation, fruit cultivation and crop agriculture. Archaeobotanical data from sites located across the Fertile Crescent and dated 12000 to 5000 cal. BC are compared alongside a backdrop of data for domestication (i.e., non-shattering rachises and seed size increase) and crop diversity with regionally distinct profiles of crop agriculture and wild food exploitation. This research highlights sub-regional variations across Southwest Asia in the timing of subsistence change in the transition from hunting and gathering to diversified agricultural systems.