Discerning Palates of the Past: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Crop Cultivation and Plant Usage in India

This work analyzes the agricultural and pastoral infrastructure of the Mature and Late Harappan cultures (c. 2500-1700 BC) of northwest India. The economic role of drought-resistant millet crops is reconstructed using ethnographic studies of crop processing, palaeoethnobotany, and carbon isotope analysis. Reddy's results reveal that simply recovering crop seeds from archaeological contexts does not prove local crop cultivation, and she suggests how agricultural production of millet crops for human food and for animal fodder may have been economically interwoven in the Harappan civilization. models to distinguish local cultivation from the consumption of grain grown elsewhere, and new directions are provided for discerning archaeologically how pastoralism and agriculture may be integrated in complex economic systems.