Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-023-00978-2
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Inventions, innovations and the origins of spelt wheat
Jutta Lechterbeck1
· Tim Kerig2
Received: 26 April 2023 / Accepted: 17 August 2023
© The Author(s) 2023
Abstract
What turns an invention into an innovation? How, if at all, might we observe this process archaeologically? Loosely put,
new varieties of plants or animals might be considered as inventions (whether from deliberate breeding or by chance), but
ones that are only taken up by humans more systematically as innovations when certain social, demographic, economic and
environmental factors encourage such take-up. The archaebotanically-observed history of spelt wheat (Triticum spelta) is an
interesting case in this respect. Prior to 3000 BCE, spelt is occasionally found in very small amounts at sites in eastern Europe
and south-west Asia, but is usually considered to be a crop weed in such contexts, rather than a cultivar. However, rather
suddenly across Central Europe ~ 3000−2500 BCE spelt appears more consistently at multiple Chalcolithic and especially Bell
Beaker sites, in quantities which suggest a shift to its use as a deliberate crop. By the full-scale Bronze Age in this region,
spelt becomes one of the major crops. This paper discusses this Central European process in greater detail via macro-botanical
evidence. It argues that demographic factors during the Neolithic may have inhibited the spread of Asian spelt into central
Europe, and that while small amounts of local European spelt were probably present earlier on, it was only at the very end
of the Neolithic, in tandem with human population increases and major technological changes such as the introduction of
the plough that spelt was taken up as a cultivar. In particular, a shift by some communities in the region ~ 3000−2500 BCEo
more extensive (and sometimes plough-enabled) agricultural strategies may have favoured deliberate cultivation of spelt on
less productive soils, given this variety’s relative robustness to harsher conditions. In other words, a combination of conditions was necessary for this innovation to really take hold.
Keywords Triticum spelta · Innovation process · Neolithic · Demography · Evolutionary archaeology
Introduction
In the following, we make use of innovation theory to conceptualize the significance of spelt within the economic and
social realm. The origin of spelt is an evolutionary biological process; its integration into agricultural practices and
systems turns genetics into economics.
The emergence of new varieties of plants and animals,
under breeding conditions or by chance, can be considered
from an economic point of view as an invention in the sense
Communicated by F. Antolín.
* Jutta Lechterbeck
jutta.lechterbeck@uis.no
1
Museum of Archaeology, Universitet Stavanger, Peder
Klows gate 30A, 4002 Stavanger, Norway
2
Institute for Prehistory and Early History,
Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel, ChristianAlbrechts-Platz 4, 24118 Kiel, Germany
that those varieties are new, and their purpose or usefulness
is unknown. The success of such an invention is called innovation, which depends on many factors, societal as well as
environmental. In this paper we would like to show which
archaeologically comprehensible factors turn such an invention into an innovation; we use the origin, early spreading
and final establishment of spelt as an example. Gabriel Tarde
(1843–1904) and Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883–1950)
have each put forward the basics of a theory of innovation
although neither of them uses the word itself. There is one
feature that connects both the social and economic science
concepts of innovation and that is the separation of invention from innovation. While the sociologist Tarde (1890)
is interested in any novelty or improvement in any kind of
social phenomenon, Schumpeter (1952) defines innovation
neither psychologically nor sociologically but strictly economic. Schumpeter speaks of “Durchsetzung neuer Kombinationen“ (enforcement of new combinations) of the means
of production.
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Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
According to the widely accepted definition by Everett
Rogers (1931–2004), innovation diffusion is “…the process
by which (1) an innovation (2) is communicated through
certain channels (3) over time (4) among the members of a
social system” (Rogers 2003).
Schumpeter (1934) defines innovations in the economic
sphere as fresh combinations of new or existing knowledge,
resources, equipment or other factors and he makes a distinction between, on the one hand, an invention, which might
happen everywhere without any intent and, on the other
hand, innovation as a process with an economic purpose.
In fact, innovation is the process that carries inventions into
society. Though invention and innovation are closely connected, both can stand alone: “Innovation is possible without
anything we should identify as invention, and invention does
not necessarily induce innovation” (Schumpeter 1939). If
we see the invention as the origin of something new and the
innovation as the disseminating process this concept can be
successfully applied in archaeological contexts.
The word “innovation” is often used in archaeological
research (e.g. Müller 2013; O’Brien et al. 2014, for innovation theory in archaeology: Kerig 2016) but rarely clearly
defined, with archaeologists tending to see it simply as the
arrival of something new (e.g. Frieman 2021) and often used
in connection with the notion of technological progress. In
contrast, Shennan (2001) incorporated demography and cultural innovation where cultural innovations operate similar
to genetic mutations, though unlike mutations, cultural traits
can be transmitted by non-parents and horizontally by peers.
In our understanding of innovation, the mutation would be
analogous to the invention in the sense that some inventions might be attractive to imitate, others less so and some
would not make any difference at all. The innovation process would then be the passing and spreading of the invention in the transmission process. Shennan’s model (2001)
shows that larger populations where cultural traits are passed
on by a combination of vertical and oblique (horizontal)
transmission have a very major advantage to smaller ones.
Important for the understanding are the two principal ways
of increasing the population for transmission, one is demographic growth and the other the contact with another, formerly equally isolated population. Shennan uses the model
to explain the emergence of novel traits in human culture.
Though his model is able to show that transmission can only
take place in phases of population growth it does not explain
the unconnected occurrence of novel traits at certain times
and places. The analogue of mutation and invention however
is likewise not wholly convincing – that is because in small
populations genetic mechanisms often prevent the phenotypic emergence of deleterious mutations (e.g. Robinson
et al. 2018). It goes without saying that deleterious inventions have succeeded and continue to do so.
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Inventions can come out of thin air or “from god”, which
means they occur arbitrary and might or might not be of
future use. Also, to continue the mutation analogue, they
might be “pre-adaptations” and prove to be useful ex post. It
seems likely that with the number of people also the number
of ideas and the intellectual exchange increase and thus more
inventions occur in larger populations.
Population density and cultural transmission are two factors that seem closely connected. “Cultural transmission is
the process through which cultural elements, in the form
of attitudes, values, beliefs, and behavioural scripts, are
passed onto and taught to individuals and groups” (Taylor
and Thoth 2011). From an archaeological perspective, one
might add that also the knowledge about the sources of raw
materials and foreign goods, the mastering of technologies
by crafts are passed through cultural transmission - cultural
transmission is the inheritance of practices and knowledge.
Necessary conditions for cultural transmission are contact
and communication: Nothing can be passed on without people actually meeting each other. Population density becomes
the crucial factor as innovations are easier passed on under
a high encounter rate. Grove (2016) however proposes that
individual encounter rates depend not only on population
density but on the product of density and mobility: highly
mobile but low-density populations might have the same
encounter rates as low mobility, high density populations.
Walker et al. (2021) carried this assumption to inter-community encounters but found only weak supporting evidence.
Both these models are dealing with hunter-gatherers, which
are thought to be per se more mobile than Neolithic farmers
are. Thus, in farming communities, population density might
play a more important role in cultural transmission processes
than mobility.
The invention of spelt ‑ where and when
In Central Europe Triticum spelta L. (spelt) occurs as a
new cultivar rather suddenly in disparate locations at the
very end of the Neolithic, in Bell Beaker and contemporary
contexts. In Switzerland (Akeret 2005; Jacomet 2008) and
South–West Germany (Lechterbeck et al. 2014a), it is found
in Bell-Beaker contexts, in Lauda-Königshofen (E. Fischer
pers. comm.) in a corded ware context, but contemporary
to the sites in South-West Germany and Switzerland and it
was also found at Vojens, Brødrene Gram (Robinson 2003)
in Denmark in Bell-Beaker contemporary contexts. The origins of T. spelta are somewhat mysterious. Two hypotheses
as to its origin are discussed: in Southwest Asia, but then it
is not known by which route it came to Central Europe, or
spontaneously on site from local wheat species, which would
explain its sparse occurrence at disparate locations. Newer
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
analyses prove that T. spelta is polyphyletic (Dvorak et al.
2012), therefore both hypotheses might be true.
In the beginning perhaps being a crop weed, T. spelta
becomes later one of the main crops in the Early and Middle Bronze Age (EBA, MBA) in western Central Europe,
the Alps and their foreland. From there it apparently spread
to Scandinavia, to Southern France, to the Pannonian basin,
and Greece (Stika and Heiss 2013). Though, according to
Stika and Heiss (2013) it was not introduced to the Iberian
Peninsula or to Italy south of the Po valley. But T. spelta has
been cultivated later at least on the Northern Iberian peninsula in the Iron Age (Tereso et al. 2013; Seabra et al. 2018;
Peña-Chocarro et al. 2019).
T. spelta is a hexaploid hulled wheat. It is widely accepted
that Asian spelt originated via hybridization of hulled emmer
and goat grass (Aegilops tauschii Coss.). Newer genetic analyses prove however, that European T. spelta originated by
hybridisation of a free threshing hexaploid wheat and hulled
emmer (Dvorak et al. 2012) thus Asian and European spelt
have different origins.
However, it is not possible to prove genetically whether
Asian spelt migrated to Europe during the Neolithic or
whether European spelt originated on site. Up to now, aDNA
analyses on prehistoric T. spelta are missing due to the lack
of suitable material, therefore it is worthwhile to have a
closer look at its early distribution and history.
Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccon (Schrank ex. Schübl)
Thell., cultivated emmer, one of the parents of T. spelta, is
one of the founder crops brought to Northwestern Europe
with the first farmers (Bakels 2014). Triticum turgidum ssp.
dicoccoides (Asch. & Graebn.) Thell., wild emmer, is distributed all over the fertile crescent (Fig. 1) but with a focus
in the western part and it is thus not surprising that cultivated
emmer occurs there very early, already around 10,500 BP
(Zohary et al. 2012). Aegilops tauschii, the other parental
species of Asian spelt, is almost exclusively distributed east
of the 40° longitude (Fig. 1) and has its centre of distribution
along the southern shores of the Caspian Sea and in Azerbaijan (Kole 2011). The area where both species occur is
restricted to north-eastern Syria, South–Eastern Turkey and
northern Iraq which is the area where T. spelta could have
possibly originated. Asian spelt cannot occur spontaneously
on location because A. tauschii is not present everywhere.
It can only arise under cultivation of emmer wheat in the
designated area of origin and then spread as a crop weed.
The parent species for European spelt are a free threshing
hexaploid wheat and cultivated emmer. Cultivated emmer
occurs all over Central Europe since the beginning of the
Neolithic. Confirming free threshing, hexaploid wheat in
the archaeobotanical record however is problematic: the
grains look similar to grains of tetraploid naked wheat;
therefore, these are reasonably summarised as T. aestivum/
durum/turgidum in archaeobotanical reports. A safe differentiation is only possible if chaff is present (Jacomet 2006).
Grains of free threshing wheat are reported all over Europe
(Colledge 2016) during the Neolithic but sites with chaff
from hexaploid free threshing wheat are quite rare (Fig. 2).
Colledge’s dataset covers only Central- and NorthwestEurope, but evidence from other areas, especially the Near
East, is likewise sparse: while tetraploid free threshing
wheat derives directly from cultivated emmer, has hexaploid
free threshing wheat the same ancestry as Asian spelt. It
might have originated in the same area, but all of the classic sites only report tetraploid wheat (Maier 1996) in the
Neolithic. More recently, hexaploid wheat, both naked and
hulled, could be proven genetically in Çatalhöyük in Turkey
Fig. 1 Distribution areas of
Triticum turgidum ssp.
diccocoides (wild emmer) and
Aegilops tauschii (goat grass)
redrawn from Zohary et al.
2012 and Kole 2011. Cultivated
emmer occurs first in areas
where wild emmer is present
and hybridization of goat grass
and cultivated emmer can occur
in these areas
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Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
Fig. 2 Triticum turgidum ssp.
diccocon (cultivated emmer,
grains and chaff) and finds
of free threshing hexaploid
wheat rachis fragments (taxon
code TRIFTHR) in the Middle
and Late Neolithic of Central
Europe (data from Colledge
2016; for details of the sites see
ESM)
around 8,400 BP (Bilgic et al. 2016). Unlike T. spelta, chaff
of naked hexaploid wheat is found in Neolithic contexts of
different ages in Central Europe. Important in this context is
Erkelenz-Kückhoven (Knörzer 1995, 1998), where botanical
remains from an old Neolithic well contained rachis fragments of hexaploid naked wheat (Maier 1996). This find
shows that naked hexaploid wheat was present in European
cereal spectra from the beginning of the Neolithic if only
very sparse. Not morphologically but genetically detected
was naked hexaploid wheat at the lake site Zürich/Mozartstrasse for around 3900 BC (Schlumbaum et al. 1998). Both
Maier (1996) and Schlumbaum et al. (1998) refer to other
sites in Southern Germany and in the Netherlands where
Neolithic hexaploid naked wheat was found. It is however
not present in Neolithic Eastern European contexts, though
both T. spelta and T. aestivum grains are reported from
Poland (Lityńska-Zając 2016) but due to the problem with
the identification of grains that might be misidentifications.
European spelt, unlike Asian spelt, can occur spontaneously
through hybridisation on spot, as both parent species have
been present throughout the Neolithic in Central Europe.
T. spelta macroremains are difficult to identify in the
archaeological record, the grains look very much like emmer
grains, especially when charred in the spikelets (Jacomet
2006) and chaff can be confused with certain barrel-shaped
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Aegilops species esp. A. cylindrica Host (Nesbitt and Samuel
1996). Reliable identification of T. spelta is only possible
when spikelet forks and/or glume bases are present. For this
paper, only sites with reliable T. spelta finds were taken into
consideration. Sites where only grains are reported, are not
discussed here.
Early finds of T. spelta (Fig. 3), i.e. finds before the Bell
Beaker period, are reported from the identified possible area
of origin for the 7th-8th millennium BP (Zohary et al. 2012
and references therein). It has been questioned whether T.
spelta spread from there to Central Europe and if so, by
which route. The most obvious route would have been over
Turkey and the Balkans, but there are no reliable finds of
T. spelta from Turkey except from Erbaba (van Zeist and
Buitenhuis 1983). Nesbitt (2001) doubts the presence of T.
spelta in near eastern archaeobotanical assemblages at all
and ascribes isolated occurrences to misidentifications. In
the light of early T. spelta finds from Transcaucasia it was
suggested that it originated in Transcaucasia or Iran and
then spread to Europe to arrive several millennia after the
introduction of agriculture (Andrews 1964; van Zeist 1976).
However, T. spelta is also sparse, if not absent as Nesbitt
(2001) states, in Transcaucasian Neolithic assemblages.
Those occurrences which are reported in Zohary et al.
(2012) and in Kohler-Schneider and Caneppele (2009)
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
Fig. 3 Triticum spelta (spelt)
finds before the End Neolithic
(data from Zohary et al. 2012
and Kohler-Schneider and
Caneppele 2009)
suggest that T. spelta finds before 3000 BCE are recorded no
more westerly than eastern Austria (Fig. 3). It is very difficult to draw conclusions as to its origin and spread from
sparse and probably doubtful occurrences. The dates do not
show a clear tendency for the spreading of T. spelta from the
area of origin via either the Balkan or the Transcaucasian
route. It has apparently never been a crop in the Neolithic
therefore its occurrence is purely accidental. Radiocarbon
dates for botanical macro remains from Hundsteig, Eastern
Austria (Kohler-Schneider and Caneppele 2009) where T.
spelta occurs in quite high quantities, date approximately
between 3330 and 2900 BCE. The wide range of the date is
due to a plateau in the calibration curve. The site of Hundsteig (Pieler 2001) belongs to the Jevišovice culture. In
contrast to the roughly contemporaneous Baden culture,
the Jevišovice culture features strikingly small settlements
situated mainly on hilltops and above steep river valleys
(Kohler-Schneider and Caneppele 2009). They were possibly part of a copper trading network. More westward finds
of T. spelta are not known before the End-Neolithic, namely
Bell-Beaker and contemporary contexts. In contrast to more
easterly finds are those from Hundsteig quite substantial
indicating that here T. spelta might have been a crop.
The T. spelta finds from Bell Beaker and contemporary
contexts (Fig. 4) come from disparate locations, though one
might define two main regions, (i) lowland Switzerland and
southwestern Germany and (ii) Denmark. The Bell Beaker
T. spelta finds occur in regions where both parent species
of European spelt are present in the Late Neolithic (Fig. 2)
therefore it is highly probable that T. spelta originated onsite.
In Eastern Austria however, no secure hexaploid free threshing wheat (i.e. rachis fragments) is recorded for the Neolithic – one of the parent species of European spelt seems
to be missing from the area. It is therefore probable that the
find from eastern Austria represents the westernmost find of
Asian spelt in Europe so far and that the finds from the EndNeolithic are the first records of European spelt.
Innovation processes behind spelt
The appearance of T. spelta involves genetic mutation that
can be seen as an invention occurring relatively suddenly.
In contrast, its spread and establishment within the wider
crop mix can be seen as an innovation process. The choice
of which plant to cultivate is a cultural one, and the establishment of a crop as widely available, reified as a separate
category in people’s taxonomies and routinely used depends
on many factors, cultural as well as environmental. In nonliterate communities only such innovations can survive that
are actually in use and/or passed on (Kerig 2016).
In the last couple of decades, demographic reconstruction has returned to being a key agenda in archaeological
research (e.g. Hassan 1981; Chamberlain 2006; Renfrew
2009; Zimmermann et al. 2009; Shennan 2013) and major
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Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
Fig. 4 Secure T. spelta finds
from Bell Beaker and contemporary contexts (data from
Akeret 2005; Lechterbeck et al.
2014a; Colledge 2016)
efforts to assess population densities and demographic
developments in the European Neolithic have been made.
In the course of the EUROEVOL project, T. Kerig and A.
Bevan took digitised versions of the Buchvaldek et al. (2007)
culture area atlas as a rough proxy for settlement density
(Fig. 5). These reflect which areas in Europe archaeologists
assign to cultures. Figure 5a shows the situation for the time
window 3400−3200 BCE. For this time window, 54.5% of the
area have been assigned to a culture. Central Europe seems
to have been quite densely populated, but there is almost a
“culture free corridor” which separates Western and Eastern
Europe. This might be due to research- or actual settlement
gaps. Many of the empty spaces are at least mountainous
regions or otherwise unfavourable areas like marshland,
which were most probably not settled throughout the whole
of the Neolithic (Fig. 6). Eastern Austria, where Neolithic T.
spelta was found, is well connected to the east but there are
unassigned regions to the west and north. That leads to the
assumption that cultural contacts would have been preferably
to the east. It does not mean, however, that there has not been
any cultural exchange whatsoever to the west. Elements of
the Baden culture for example are found in Horgen contexts
at Lake Constance (Köninger et al. 2001; de Capitani 2002)
thus evidencing cultural contact but they remain exceptions.
T. spelta however was not one of those elements. There are
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several well-analysed Horgen pile dwelling sites with excellent preservation conditions for botanical macro remains but
T. spelta was never found in them.
Figure 5b shows the situation in the time window
2700 −2450 BCE. Even fewer areas are attributed to archaeological cultures and many of them are isolated, indicating
fewer cultural contacts between settled areas. Shortly after
that period, T. spelta finds occur in disparate locations, and
we would argue that the “invention” part of the T. spelta
story took place at this time of assumed low population
density.
Two regional studies comparing the vegetational record
of pollen analysis and demographic data derived from radiocarbon dates from the Neolithic to the BA were carried out
in the areas where T. spelta occurs first in Bell Beaker and
contemporary contexts (Lechterbeck et al. 2014b; Feeser
et al. 2019). Lechterbeck et al. 2014b investigated the correlation of land use and demographic development in the
Western Lake Constance area. Since 2014, the methodology for the reconstruction of population fluctuations was
improved (Timpson et al. 2014; Crema 2022), therefore,
the analysis was updated for the current paper. No additional radiocarbon dates were added. The radiocarbon density curve (SPD: sum probability distribution of 14C dates)
for the region (Fig. 7) shows a rapid decline from the late
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
Fig. 5 Maps of Central Europe,
digitized from Buchvaldek et al.
2007. They depict the areas
assigned to a culture in two different Neolithic time windows.
The colours correspond to different Neolithic cultures in the
area. Here only the assignment
of a culture to a region is of
interest not the culture as such
Fig. 6 Overlay of all areas persistently attributed to Neolithic
cultures. The colours display
the number of times a region
falls within a culture area, out of
eight Neolithic phases
Neolithic towards a minimum in the first part of the EBA
and then a steep rise in the second part. This correlates with
phases of abandonment and increased land use, respectively.
Here indeed the “invention” of T. spelta happened in a phase
of major demographic decline whereas its “innovation”, i.e.
the spreading and establishment happened in a phase of
demographic growth.
Feeser et al. 2019 made a comparison of pollen data and
radiocarbon derived demographic data for Northern Germany and Southern Jutland. Though the picture is not as
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Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
beaker do not occur in the same regions nor at the same time.
Here, corded ware land use is forest based with a higher
amount of wild food resources, evidence for open land is
missing, it resembles the farming technique of the younger
Neolithic. But there is a continuity between Bell Beaker and
EBA lifestyles: the Bell Beaker phase resembles BA land use
with indicators for open fields, grasslands and the cultivation of T. spelta. Lechterbeck et al. 2014a concluded that the
Bell Beaker economy is the first stage of production typical
for the EBA in the regions north of the Alps. It seems that
T. spelta is only part of a whole package of inventions that
became intrinsic in the BA.
Conclusions
Fig. 7 Radiocarbon density curves from the Western Lake Constance
area. The black bar represents the radiocarbon dates for the Bell
Beaker site Welschingen-Guuhaslen where T. spelta was found
clear as in the Lake Constance area, also they record a demographic decline between 2400 and 2300 BCE. This coincides
with the dating of house V on the site of Brødrene Gram,
Vojens, Danmark to 2460 −2200 BCE where secure finds of
T. spelta where made (Robinson 2003). Apparently, also in
this area the first occurrence of T. spelta coincides with a
demographic bust. The EBA is connected to a demographic
boom in both regions. So far, the establishment of T. spelta
fits Shennan’s model of transmission. Whether the “invention” of T. spelta also took place in a period of demographic
bust in Cortaillod sur Les Rochettes cannot be decided as no
analyses of SPD and pollen data for the region exist, but it is
definitely an isolated occurrence.
We cannot answer the question why T. spelta did not succeed earlier in the Neolithic, but some assumptions can be
made. In a case study, Lechterbeck et al. (2014a) stated a
discontinuity between corded ware and Bell Beaker lifestyles
– in the Western Lake Constance area corded ware and bell
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The evidence so far allows to assume that T. spelta originated in the Near-East sometime in the early Neolithic but
did not migrate further west into Central Europe than Eastern Austria in the course of the Neolithic and it had never
been a main crop. Only at the very end of the Neolithic at
the transition to the BA it becomes a major crop in some
disparate locations. In the EBA, secure T. spelta finds occur
in sites close to those sites where it was first cultivated in
the Neolithic (Fig. 8).
T. spelta is a polyphyletic cereal and genetic analyses
revealed that it originated twice in the course of prehistory, once in the Middle East as Asian spelt from cultivated emmer and Aegilops tauschii and a second time as
European spelt from hexaploid free threshing wheat and
emmer. Asian spelt cannot occur spontaneously, as one
of the parent species is not present in European Neolithic
contexts. Its sparse occurrence in Transcaucasia and the
Balkan seems to indicate that it was a crop weed under
emmer wheat cultivation and was not recognised as a cultivar. Early finds of T. spelta remain doubtful but it could
be made probable that Asian spelt reached eastern Austria
by the young Neolithic. The exceptional Jevišovice site
of Hundsteig has substantial amounts of T. spelta finds,
so here it might already have been recognised as a crop.
The pattern of settled areas at that time suggests cultural
contacts and exchange rather to the east. Between the early
finds and the occurrences of T. spelta in Central Europe
there is a time lag and, probably even more important, a
large geographical distance. Also, the occurrences in Central Europe are substantial and suggest that T. spelta has
been a crop rather than a weed. European spelt can occur
spontaneously by hybridisation and it could be shown that
both parent species were present in the Late Neolithic in
the areas where it is later found in the Bell Beaker period.
It is highly probable that T. spelta occurred during the
whole of the Neolithic as a crop weed in Western and
Central Europe but was not favoured as a cultivar. Under
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
Fig. 8 Secure T. spelta occurrences in the Early Bronze Age
(data from Colledge 2016; for
details of the sites see ESM)
the small scaled, intensive agricultural practices of the
Neolithic T. spelta was not attractive. Only the agricultural
changes at the end of the Neolithic and the beginning of
the BA leading to more extensive arable farming made T.
spelta an attractive cultivar as it gives good yields on less
fertile soils and under a broad range of climatic conditions. This might also have levelled out the disadvantages
of dehusking.
It could be shown that the first cultivation of T. spelta
in Central Europe occurred in a period of demographic
bust. The occurrence of T. spelta can be seen as an “invention” (sensu Schumpeter) and the demographic boom at
the beginning of the BA launched an innovation process
that in the end established T. spelta as a crop.
The establishment of T. spelta in Central Europe during
the course of the BA coincides with a change in subsistence strategies: for the first time, large fields were worked
with ploughs, the first meadows occur, the shift from two
aisled to three aisled houses in the North European plain
and parts of Scandinavia (Harding 2000; Armstrong Oma
2016) hints to the stabling of animals which made dung for
manuring available, to name only a few examples. T. spelta
is a relatively undemanding plant with respect to soil quality and gives good yields even under harsher conditions.
This might have been an advantage under a more extensive
land use strategy on less productive soils.
Finally, it is worth briefly mentioning the later history of
T. spelta, which continues to be innovative and impactful.
A range of important changes occur to dominant mixes of
cereal species present in Europe and the Mediterranean during the 1st millennium BCE which was at least in part due to
the increasing scale of market economies, bulk grain shipment and growing taste in certain regions for breads over
porridges (for a summary see Bevan 2019, pp 130–134).
Amongst these changes, that occur several millennia after
our period focus here, there is shift towards further increased
use of T. spelta wheat in temperate Europe (from the Alps
northwards and also the Atlantic fringe, but not further
south, potentially linked to specific above-ground storage
practices such as small poster granaries, see Sigaut 1989;
Mills 2006). The twin attraction of T. spelta in this later
phase is that its substantial glumes provide a certain hardiness in colder and wetter parts of Europe’s mid-latitudes, but
also that its grain is glutinous enough to produce a bread,
whilst also being good for other traditional foods. T. spelta
continued to be a very important component in diets after
the end of the Roman Empire and into the Early Medieval
period (Devroey and van Mol 1989).
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Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
Supplementary information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-023-00978-2.
Acknowledgements Our sincere thanks to Atakan Guven for help digitising the Buchvaldek et al. (2007) cultural atlas, to Andy Bevan, UCL,
for suggestions, input and some remarks on the later history of spelt
and to two anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions
greatly improved the paper. The work of T. Kerig was funded by the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – Project-ID 290391021 – SFB 1266”.
Funding Open access funding provided by University of Stavanger &
Stavanger University Hospital.
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