Central Eurasian Paleoethnobotany

Archaeobotany on the Silk Road

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    • Dzhungar Mountains, Kazakhstan
    • Talgar, Kazakhstan
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    • Spring 2019 – Food Security in Flux
    • Spring 2019 – International Application of Archaeological Science
    • Spring 2018 – International Application of Archaeological Science
    • Fall 2017 – Telescopic and Microscopic Visions of Central Asian Prehistory
    • Spring 2015 – Introduction and Intensification of Agriculture in Central Eurasia
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Network with me online: LinkedIn | Academia.edu | ResearchGate

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Recent Publications

  • A Note About My Publications
  • Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat
  • Grazing Animals Drove Domestication in Grain Crops
  • Bronze and Iron Age urbanization in Turkmenistan: Preliminary results from the excavation of Togolok 1 on the Murghab alluvial fan
  • The origins of cannabis smoking: Chemical residue evidence from the first millennium BCE in the Pamirs

Archives

Publication Types

  • Articles (33)
    • Book Reviews (5)
    • Thesis Writings (2)
  • Book Chapters (6)
  • Books (1)
  • Edited Volumes (2)
  • Notes to Readers (1)

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A wonderful photo of my dear colleague, Patrick Roberts, at the Max Planck Institute in Jena Germany. We are displaying our books, both of which came out this past year and both deal with humans and their interactions with plants. If you are interested in knowing more about the cuisine of the ancient Silk Road, read #fruitfromthesands or visit my website robertnspengler.com #maxplanckinstituteforthescienceofhumanhistoy #mpishh #ecology #botany #humansandplants #silkroad #innerasia #centralasia #archaeobotany #archaeology #paleoethnobotant #spiceroutes #fruitsofthesilkroad #robertspengler #afrasiab #ancientsamarkand #samarkand #uzbekistan #silkroadarchaeology
This is a typical domestic kitchen from medieval Afrasiab, it looks much like other contemporary kitchens from along the Silk Road. This example was excavated by a team from the Institute of Archaeology in Samarkand a couple years ago and remains exposed at the site today. A flat stone or fired bring platform with an elevated oven of clay. The tandoori or tandir over could be used to boil meat or bake bread. If you are interested in knowing more about the cuisine of the ancient Silk Road, read #fruitfromthesands or visit my website robertnspengler.com #silkroad #innerasia #centralasia #archaeobotany #archaeology #paleoethnobotant #spiceroutes #fruitsofthesilkroad #robertspengler #afrasiab #ancientsamarkand #samarkand #uzbekistan #silkroadarchaeology
Oats and awned barley - large-seeded grasses (wheats and barley) were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent in a process of evolution under cultivation that began about 10,000 years ago. The wild relatives already had rather large seeds that had weak seed-dispersal mechanisms - mechanical dispersal through shattering awns. Interestingly, cereals are used as the main case study for understanding domestication, despite the fact that only a small number of domesticated plants evolved from large-seeded grasses or had mechanical dispersal. My new ERC-funded research initiative, Fruits of Eurasia: Domestication and Dispersal, seeks to understand what is going on in some of the least studied domesticated plants. #fedd #fruitsofeurasia #robertspengler #archaeology #archaeobotany #oats #fruitsofthesilkroad #fruitfromthesands #domestication #originsofagriculture #firstfarmers #ancientcrops
A throwback Thursday post to sometime a while back when I was inside an old redwood on the northwest coast. 📷 @monica.yanda @polewolf #redwoods #northwestcoast #seattle #mountrainier #insideatree #treefort #trees #bigtrees #nature #amazingwilderness
Did you know that pistachios were domesticated in southern Central Asia, where there were once wild pistachio forests. The almond was mostly domesticated further south in southwest Asia and the walnut has a broad range of domestication origins spanning from the Caucuses to Uzbekistan. Read #fruitfromthesands to learn more. #walnuts #pistachios #almonds #uzbekistan #silkroad #innerasia #robertspengler #fruitsfromthesands #nuts #archaeobotany #centralasia #originsofagriculture #
Book release party at #maxplanckinstituteforthescienceofhumanhistoy - wonderful research colleagues and so many fascinating projects on the origins of the food we all eat today. #originsofagriculture #jenagermany #robertspengler #archaeology #archaeobotany #silkroad #booksigning #fruitfromthesands #fruitsofthesilkroad #mpishh @uc_press
The Fruit from the Sands research team studying the ancient cultivation systems of the Silk Road. Processing sediment samples from ancient Silk Road cities using a flotation machine, operated by an amazing team of scholars - Sirozh, Husniddin, and Zhuldyz #fruitfromthesands #fruitsofthesilkroad #innerasia #silkroad #robertspengler #archaeology #archaeobotany #paleoethnobotany #ancientfoods #lostcrops #originsofagriculture #bukhara #samarkand #uzbekistan #ancientcuisine
Fragments of two different facades both from elite palaces or the houses of political figures in Bukhara during the seventh or eighth centuries AD. The first one is on display at the Afrasiab museum and the second one is at the archaeology museum of Samarkand. They illustrate the prominence of grapes on the Silk Road. To read more about grapes and wine on the Silk Road, check out #fruitfromthesands or robertnspengler.com #fruitsofthesilkroad #innerasia #robertspengler #archaeology #archaeobotany #centralasia #silkroad #archaeologyofthesilkroad #spiceroutes #paleoethnobotany #samarkand #bukhara #wine #viticulture #grapes #ancientgrapes

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