Press

Press Releases and News Articles

Videos compiled by Washington University’s the Source; Videography by Tom Malkowicz

Interview with Greger Larson

In this conversation, with the added input of one of our own researchers, Dr Rob Spengler, Greger talked to us about domestication, and the archaeological trail of evidence for how it came about. – The Human Niche

Interview with Dr. Spengler on Heritage Radio

“the intertwined history of Silk Road merchants and the first domesticated apples. Next week, we continue our exploration of food and trade with stories about spice. Further Reading: Get your own copy of “Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat” by Robert Spengler” – Heritage Radio

Faculty Focus: Sören Stark: New Excavations in the City Center of Bukhara: Results of the 2020 Season

“Despite the many difficulties posed by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic a team of the Uzbek-American Expedition to Bukhara, co-directed by Sören Stark (ISAW), and Jamal K. Mirzaakhmedov (Uzbek Academy of Sciences, Samarkand-Tashkent) managed to carry out a highly successful season of fieldwork.” – ISAW

Hielpen grote grazers de eerste landbouwers een handje?

“Spengler is convinced that the very characteristics that make a plant a potential agricultural crop are the result of an evolutionary process in relation to large grazers. These provide a more open, disturbed and dynamic landscape in which grass-like plants thrive. ‘It is precisely this type of landscape that shows similarities with the first fields,’ Spengler explains” (translated from Dutch) – EOS Wetenschap

“Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat”. An Interview with Robert Spengler

“Dr. Spengler is interested in the vast area between China and Europe, which was long thought to be a space for passing through rather than a source of anything significant, and his interest is physical and archeobotanical. His book confirms that this diverse land—arid in some areas and extremely fertile in others—is home to a vast range of crops, from almonds and apples to tea and rice.” – Voices (also published in Russian)

Milk fueled Bronze Age expansion of ‘eastern cowboys’ into Europe Ancient proteins show the Yamnaya dairy revolution took just 300 years

“To see what might have fueled the Yamnaya’s success, researchers from the United States, Europe, and Russia looked for milk proteins trapped and preserved in the dental calculus, or plaque, of people living on the steppes of modern-day Russia between 4600 and 1700 B.C.E. They examined 56 skeletons from more than two dozen sites north of the Caspian Sea. The team separated the preserved proteins from the mineral matrix of the plaque and then used mass spectrometry to identify individual proteins.” – Science

Agropastoralists in Central Tibet Chose a Barley-Based Farming System by 3,000 Years Ago

“Crop transitions are usually tied to complex sets of factors,” says Dr. Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute. “We speculate that a combination of factors drove this specific crop transition, including cold tolerance, low irrigation requirements, fuel-saving qualities, and benefit for a mobile pastoralism lifestyle.” – MPI SHH

Eating in Xi’an, Where Wheat and Lamb Speak to China’s Varied Palate

“It thrives on dry summers and winter rain, the opposite of the climate in northern China, and its migration here in the third millennium B.C. from the Fertile Crescent, a sweep of land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf, was an early example of ingredients crossing borders, as the archaeobotanist Robert N. Spengler III notes in ‘Fruit From the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat’ (2019).” – The New York Times

Ancient Globalization

“By 1000 CE, cotton seeds appear in archaeological sites across the Persian Gulf region to the central Asian highlands. While the spread of cotton through this region pre-dated Islamic expansion in areas like northwestern Uzbekistan, the expansion of trade networks across the Silk Road helped cotton spread to Beijing, Tehran, and Venice. This trade concentrated wealth through networks of exchange across Eurasia and Africa.” – The Global Lives of Indian Cotton

An Archaeology of Marijuana

“In 2019, archaeologists working in western China announced another major discovery: the oldest known evidence of cannabis smoking by humans. They uncovered 2,500-year-old braziers, vessels designed to create large quantities of smoke, that contained residues of a highly potent form of cannabis—suggesting that the plant was burned and inhaled” – SAPIENS

Anthropogenic Seed Dispersal: Rethinking the Origins of Plant Domestication

“In a new manuscript, Dr. Robert Spengler argues that all of the earliest traits of plant domestication are linked to a mutualistic relationship in which plants recruited humans for seed dispersal.” – MPI SHH

The co-evolution of plants and humans

“‘I think the domestication of plants and animals is one of the most important factors in the demographic shifts and cultural changes that have led humanity into the modern world,’ [Dr. Spengler] says.” – Cosmos Magazine

How plants have been using humans

“‘Therefore, the apple tree put extensive amounts of energy into producing high-sugar fruits in order to entice animals to spread the seeds.’ This included the earliest hominids, long before humans started consciously domesticating plants through breeding, Spengler writes in the journal Trends in Plant Science.” – Science and Technology

Anthropogenic seed dispersal: Rethinking the origins of plant domestication

“In a new study published in Trends in Plant Science, Dr. Robert Spengler examines these evolutionary responses and theorizes that all of the earliest traits to evolve in the wild relatives of modern domesticated crops are linked to human seed dispersal and the evolutionary need for a plant to spread its offspring.” – Science Daily

Anthropogenic seed dispersal: Rethinking the origins of plant domestication

“In the simplest biological sense, Spengler suggests, humans provide better seed-dispersal services for food crops than those plants would have had in the wild, causing them to evolve traits that facilitated agriculture and improved their own chances of reproduction.” – Phys.org

Wheat that Goes Around, Comes Around

“There’s lots of fascinating material in Robert Spengler’s new review paper on Agriculture in the Central Asian Bronze Age.” – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

FEDD: Fruits of Eurasia Domestication and Dispersal

“Robert Spengler’s project, “Fruits of Eurasia: Domestication and Dispersal”, will allow him to step beyond the heavy focus on cereal crops in domestication studies, to look more closely at long-generation perennials, notably fruit and nut trees.” – MPI SHH

Tracing the Legacy of the Silk Road

“When you visit Turkmenistan, make sure to taste the fresh melons and grapes, as well as the dried apricots, raisins, and nuts. Many of these fruits and nuts represent ancient legacy varieties. The sands of Turkmenistan have preserved six millennia of human history and you can still travel through a living museum today.” – Turkmen Sands

Ancient Mongolian Empires Sustained themselves with Millet

“The evidence challenges popular theories that Mongolia represents a unique example of dense human populations and hierarchical political systems developing without intensive farming or stockpiling grains.” – Cosmos

How Millets Sustained Mongolia’s Empires

“Dr. Spengler, the director of the archaeobotany labs at the MPI SHH, emphasizes the importance of this discovery, noting that ‘this study pulls the veil of myth and lore off of the real people who lived in Mongolia millennia ago and lets us peak into their lives.’” – MPI SHH

How millet sustained Mongolia’s empires

“The study also shows an increase in grain consumption and increasing dietary diversity through time, leading up to the well-known Mongolian Empire of the Khans.” – Phys.org

How millet sustained Mongolia’s empires

“During the Xiongnu Empire, human populations displayed a larger range of carbon values, showing that some people remained on the diet common in the Bronze Age, but that many others consumed a high amount of millet-based foods.” – Science Daily

5200-Year-Old Cereal Grains From the Eastern Altai Mountains Predate the Trans-Eurasian Crop Exchange

“Agricultural crops dispersed across Eurasia more than five millennia ago, causing significant cultural change in human populations across the ancient world. New discoveries in the Altai Mountains illustrate that this process occurred earlier than believed” – MPI SHH

5,200-year-old grains in the eastern Altai Mountains redate trans-Eurasian crop exchange

“As Dr. Spengler, one of the study’s lead authors, discusses in his recent book Fruit from the Sands, these ancient exchange routes shaped the course of human history. The mingling of crops originating from opposite ends of Asia resulted in the crop-rotation cycles that fueled demographic growth and led to imperial formation.” – Phys.org

5200-year-old grains in the eastern Altai Mountains redate trans-Eurasian crop exchange

“In this study, scientists illustrate that people moved these crops across Eurasia earlier than previously realized, adapting cultivation methods for harsh agricultural environments.” – Science Daily

5200-year-old grains in the eastern Altai Mountains redate trans-Eurasian crop exchange

“This new study, led by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, provides details of recently recovered ancient grains from the far northern regions of Inner Asia. Radiocarbon dating shows that the grains include the oldest examples of wheat and barley ever recovered this far north in Asia, pushing back the dates for early farming in the region by at least a millennium.” – Geology Page

5200-year-old grains in the eastern Altai Mountains redate trans-Eurasian crop exchange

“Agricultural crops dispersed across Eurasia more than five millennia ago, causing significant cultural change in human populations across the ancient world. New discoveries in the Altai Mountains illustrate that this process occurred earlier than believed” – Bioengineer.org

‘Fruit from the Sands’ explores the Silk Road origins of apples, tea and more

“In Fruit from the Sands, archaeobotanist Robert Spengler, who studies how people used plants in the past, surveys evidence suggesting that the ancient Silk Road was the conduit for dispersing much of what is now munched and sipped. Edibles with a Silk Road pedigree include almonds, apples, grapes, peaches, rice and wheat.” – Science News

Old road, fresh perspectives

“Robert Spengler’s new book, Fruits from the Sands, enlightens us about the origins, pathways and histories of many of the plants that we either unthinkingly use to prepare daily meals and feasts, or think are native to our homeland because they are so common to our recipe books, gardens and grocery stores today.” – Nature Plants

New book “Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat” by Dr. Robert N. Spengler III

“All of the plants on our kitchen tables have a long and mysterious history. Many of them can trace part of their ancestry back to the ancient Silk Road trade routes. New archaeobotanical data is illustrating how the domestication and dispersal process for the plants unfolded, as presented in Dr. Spengler’s new book.” – MPI SHH

Also publicized in:
New Books
Bookshout
Booktopia

Thank Bison and Their Dung for Domesticated Quinoa

“Mueller and Robert Spengler, director of the Paleoethnobotany Laboratories at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, have been interested in plant domestication since they were graduate students together at Washington University, under Gayle Fritz, one of the first scholars to recognize the importance of the American Midwest as a center of crop domestication.” – Futurity

The Origins of the Apple

Audio interview with Roland Pease about the origins of the apple. Fast forward to -4:05 to hear the interesting story of apples – BBC Science Radio

Exploring the Origins of the Apple

“In this study, Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History traces the history of the apple from its wild origins, noting that it was originally spread by ancient megafauna and later as a process of trade along the Silk Road.” – Science Daily

Tracing the Apple from Wild Origins to Best-Selling Fruit

“‘I see the apple case study as a wonderful contribution to our broader understanding of plant domestication. The results of this study demonstrate that there were very different pathways towards domestication for different plants,’ Spengler said.” – Courthouse News Service

How Megafauna and Humans Shaped the Apple’s Domestication

“But even long before the Silk Road was founded, the course of apple breeding and evolution was shaped by another major selective force — and it wasn’t humans. Writing in a new study, researchers led by Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, documented the processes that set the stage for the modern apple’s domestication.” – ZME Science

Forbidden fruit: The curious early history of apples

“Spengler, who’s the director of the archaeobotany lab system at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, has tracked the history of the apple from its wild origins to its distribution across the Silk Road until today.”
“‘Both the genetic and the fossil evidence seem to suggest that large-fruiting varieties seem to go back to the late Miocene,” Spengler told DW. ‘So probably in the range of nine to seven million years ago would be a good estimate.’” – DW Science

How apples evolved to attract animals and became domesticated

“Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History has traced the apple all the way back to its wild origins, beginning with when it evolved to attract megafauna as a strategy for seed dispersal.” – Earth.com

Exploring the Origins of the Apple

“In Spengler’s book Fruit from the Sands, he wrote that apples hold a deep connection with the Silk Road, and much of the genetic material for the modern apple originated from the ancient trade routes in the Tien Shan Mountains of Kazakhstan. This process caused the hybridization events that gave rise to the large red sweet fruits in the market today.” – Crop Biotech Update

Scientists: “domestication” of the apple tree began even before the people

The fruits of homemade apple trees (Malus domestica) may well be called the most beloved fruits of mankind – they have been cultivated everywhere and for a long time. Objects of classical art show that already in the era of Antiquity, apple trees were domesticated. Archaeological evidence preserved wild apple seeds, which were collected and spread almost the entire length of the Silk Road more than 10 thousand years ago. – The Earth Chronicles

Megafauna maakte de appel mee groot

Coverage of the apple study in the German newspaper, De Standaard – Issue from the 28th of May, 2019

Æblets vej

Coverage of the apple study in the Dutch newspaper, Weekendavisen – Issue from the 24th of May, 2019

Also publicized in:
BBC Portugal
El Norte de Castilla

Ancient Cannabis Smoking

Presented on the Daily Show by Trevor Noah

Cannabis traces from 2,500-year-old funeral braziers in China are the earliest evidence of pot smoking

“‘The debate over early cannabis use in Central Asia has been lively and filled with speculation,’ said Robert Spengler, a co-author on the paper who is also at the Max Planck Institute. ‘There are a few key archaeological accounts that have been discredited outright, and some speculations about references to plants in historical accounts that are not exactly clear,’ he said.” – ABC News

People may have smoked marijuana in rituals 2,500 years ago in western China

“Crucially, high-elevation mountain passes of Central and East Asia, including the Pamir region, hosted trade routes of the early Silk Road, which linked China with West Asia and Europe, says archaeobotanist and study co-author Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany.” – Science News

Ancient Humans of Glaciated Western China Consumed High-Potency Cannabis

“Robert Spengler, who worked on the study, is an archaeobotanist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, whose work focuses on the spread and intensification of agriculture in ancient Central Asia.” – GlacierHub

Archaeologists find signs of ritualized cannabis use 2,500 years ago in China

“The new research provides ‘a solid, unequivocal data point for actual use of this plant as a drug,’ said Robert Spengler, a co-author of the new paper and a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany.” – Washington Post

Also publicized in:
Business Insider
El Pais
Newsweek
Wired
Gizmodo
Inverse
The Guardian
CNN
New York Times
New Scientist
El Mundo
The Atlantic
National Geographic
Live Science
Ars Technica
Washington Post
Complex
LA Times
Discover
UPI
NewsHub
AAAS
PBS
CNET
Medical Daily
Vice
New York Post
Smithsonian
Popular Science
The Scientist
MedScape
Men’s Health
NPR
BBC
AP
USA Today
Reuters

Note: 170 news sources are reported to have picked up the story, according to Science Altmetrics.

Ancient Bison Herds of the American Midwest and the Domestication of the Lost Crops

“The project hopes to test this novel thesis of the emergence of agriculture and subsequent turn toward industrial agriculture. To do so, the project will carry out three sets of studies in the summer of 2019.” – The Anthropocene River Project

The Early Rise of North America’s Dominant Crop

“This project attempts to demonstrate how maize transformed North America’s ecology in a distinct way by linking the extant archaeobotanical record with a new, purpose-built database.” – The Anthropocene River Project

Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat, by Robert N. Spengler

“Many foods we consume today-from almonds and apples to tea and rice-have histories can be traced along the tracks of the Silk Road out of prehistoric Central Asia to European kitchens and American tables.” – Mongols China and the Silk Road

Der Reiseproviant der Globalisierer (The Travel Provisions of Globalizers)

[Translated from German] “The Silk Road, which stretched from China to Europe, once brought wealth to many places. Cities and regions along the route not only benefited from the fact that many goods changed owners several times on the road, the caravans also had to be cared for. With their pack animals, traders transported luxury goods such as silk fabrics and ceramics from China or gold and glass from the Mediterranean. They often had large quantities of food in their luggage, partly as merchandise, partly as travel provisions. No wonder, then, that various crops could spread across the Silk Road, from east to west as well as in the opposite direction.” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Corn domestication took some unexpected twists and turns

“The new study highlights a growing realization that pathways toward domestication differed for various plants and animals, says paleoethnobotanist Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany.” – Science News

Economic processes in ancient Central Asia influenced the formation of the modern world

“His work says that the exchange of different varieties of agricultural crops in Central Asia created the economy of the ancient world in the third Millennium BC.” – Orient

The increasingly fluid Silk Road

“This work adds to that of Robert Spengler III et al. that underlines the importance of agriculture and exchange to social developments of the communities in Central Asia during the Iron Age, in the first millennium BC/BCE.” – Botany One

Origins and spread of Eurasian fruits traced to the ancient Silk Road

“The archaeobotanical study, conducted by Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, is among the first systematic analyses of medieval agricultural crops in the heart of the ancient Silk Road.” – Phys.Org

Origins and spread of Eurasian fruits traced to the ancient Silk Road

“Studies of ancient preserved plant remains from a medieval archaeological site in the Pamir Mountains of Uzbekistan have shown that fruits, such as apples, peaches, apricots, and melons, were cultivated in the foothills of Inner Asia.” – Science Daily

Tracing the Overlooked Legacy of the Silk Road’s Fruits and Nuts

“History is very Eurocentric, and so everybody thinks that Rome was one of the major hubs of the Silk Road,” says Spengler. “The traders and the major economic and political players of the Silk Road were in Central Asia, and it has been a region largely overlooked in scholarship. But if you are a historian or archaeologist studying the Mediterranean, you really need to know what was going on [there].” – Atlas Obscura

Also publicized in:
Max Planck MPI
Mongols, China, and the Silk Road
Ancient Foods
The Stand News
Archaeology News
Today Chan
The London Economic
PressCute.com
EurekAlert! AAAS

Begash (Kazakhstan): Evidence of 3rd Millennium International Trade

“Within soils samples taken from the Phase 1a burial cist and associated funerary fire pit were discovered seeds of domesticated wheat, broomcorn millet and barley. This evidence is interpreted by the excavators, an assertion supported by many other scholars, as indication of a distinct route of transmission of wheat and millet from the central Asian mountains and into the steppes by the late 3rd millennium BC.” – ThoughtCo.

Broomcorn (Panicum miliaceum) – History of Domestication: When and Where Was Broomcorn Millet First Domesticated?

“Broomcorn millet seeds were recently found at the central Eurasian site of Begash, Kazakhstan, and Spengler et al. (2014) argue that this represents evidence for the transmission of broomcorn outside of China and into the broader world.” – ThoughtCo.

The Ancient Societies of the Central Asian Steppe: Bronze Age Mobile Pastoralists of Central Asia

“Spengler and colleagues argue that these nomadic herders were one of the ways in which these crops moved outside of their domestications: broomcorn from the east; and wheat and barley from the west.” – ThoughtCo.

Archaeobotanical Chenopodium Seeds from across Central Asia

“Scholars working in Central Asia continue to discuss the possible economic significance of these remains and what use they are for understanding paleoecology and anthropogenic landscape change as well as human and herd animal diet.” – tDAR

The Feelings and Missions of East Asian Archeology: A Side Record of the East Asia Archaeological Congress

In addition to merchandise trade, the Silk Road was a bridge connecting East and West during the prehistoric period. It played an indispensable role in the spread of agriculture. It can be said that the “seed” also walked on the Silk Road. Constantly interpreting the changes in the world’s agricultural civilization. Robert Spengler from the Max Planck Institute for Human History in Germany, taking the remains of Tasbas, Tuzusai and the Tashbulak site in Uzbekistan, for example, presented the report entitled “Plant Archaeology on the Silk Road”. – SOHU; Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

How Ancient Exchanges in Central Asia Shaped the Modern World

Spengler’s work has shown that for at least 4,000 years, the mountains of Central Asia (and the people who lived in them) helped to move domestic crops such as millet, wheat, barley, and rice into parts of the continent where they were previously unknown. “As early as the 3rd millennium BCE,” he says, “exchange in crop varieties across Central Asia shaped the economies of the ancient world.” – The Diplomat

How Asian nomadic herders built new Bronze Age culture

“Herders moving through those valleys brought southwestern Asian crops into China and eastern Asian crops back the other way, says archaeologist Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. While working their way across Asia through mountain valleys, pastoralists incorporated crops into their own way of life.” – Science News

Change that came from the plowed field

“All over the globe, it was agriculture that set off wide-ranging social changes. The exception is the area that is today’s Mongolia, Western China, and Eastern Russia: the textbook opinion since the 1930s. … For around ten years now, this worldview has been showing cracks. The man stirring up trouble — in a positive sense — is Robert Spengler.” – Max Planck Research (p 26-33)

Before the Silk Road, the Grain Road?

“Dorian Fuller, a leading expert in ancient grains based at University College London, calls the finds “important and well dated.” He adds that Chinese crops such as millet began to appear in southwest Asia around 1900 B.C., a few centuries after they reached Begash, which could mean the passage through the mountain regions was a means of gradual transmission from east to west.” – Early History of Silk and the Silk Road

Targeted Excavating Leads to Lost City

“Robert Spengler, MA ’09, PhD ’13, research associate in the Department of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University, leads the team studying the ancient plants or archaeobotany, of the archaeological site and ancient environment. For Spengler, a small peach pit excavated from Tashbulak is yet another puzzle piece in his larger quest to understand how modern crops made their way to dinner tables around the globe.” – theSource, Washington University

Publicity for Sarazm Site

“Evidence for the agricultural nature of Sarazm include archaeobotanical analysis of seeds at the site. (Spengler and Willcox 2013). Seed samples, taken from hearths, house floors and middens, were analyzed by flotation, allowing comparison between native flora of the area.” – Vassar College

Jus Galbaat Punjabi Television Show with Clinical Psychologist, Arvind Kaur

“Studying the development of cuisines through time, helps us understand how people view themselves and connect with others on a national or regional level; food is at the root of culture.” – Circle Through New York, Live from ISAW

Scarsdale Inquirer | January 27, 2017

“The Archaeological Institute of America Westchester Society will host Professor Robert Spengler to explore the Silk Road at his lecture at Scarsdale Public Library.”
– Scarsdale Inquirer

Wash U Alumni News

“Spengler was offered two outstanding opportunities that were both anticipated to begin this coming year. Robert was offered a one-year Visiting Research Fellowship at Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) in NYC as well as a position as a laboratory director of the Central Asian Paleoethnobotany Laboratory in Jena, Germany, at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Human Evolution.

German Research Announcement

“The earliest evidence of agriculture in Central Asia dates from around 800 B.C. In Kazakhstan researchers have now discovered evidence that along the Silk Road back to 2800 B.C. Trade was driven by shepherds and farmers.” (translation)
Click here for more information.

Conference Announcements

The Wenner-Gren Foundation:  “Spengler, Dr. Robert N., Washington U., St. Louis, MO – To aid workshop on ‘Introduction & Intensification of Agriculture in Central Eurasia: Exception to rule or exception that proves rule?,’ 2015, Berlin, Germany, in collaboration with Dr. Mayke Wagner”
Click here for more information.

Infoabad.com: “Ashgabat has completed its three-day international scientific conference ‘Turkmenistan’s experience in studying and museumification archaeological finds.’ …  Here are some interviews with participants of the conference.”

Publicity for Proceedings of the Royal Society B Publication (AVAILABLE HERE)

Washington University’s Newsroom: “‘This study starts to rewrite the model for economic change across Eurasia,’ said first author Robert Spengler, PhD, a paleoethnobotanist and research associate in Arts & Sciences at WUSTL.”

Phys.org: “‘This is one of the first systematic applications of archaeobotany in the region, making the potential for further future discovery very exciting,’ Spengler said.”

Popular Archaeology Magazine: “… nomadic sheepherders played a surprisingly important role in the early spread of domesticated crops throughout a mountainous east-west corridor along the historic Silk Road, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.”

Also publicized in:
The Smithsonian Magazine
New York Times
Buffalo News
Science 2.0
Discovery News
The Wannabe Scientist
Yahoo Food
Counsel & Heal
Nautilus
Ancient Foods
Tech Times
Futurity
Archaeology News Report
Science Daily
NSF news
Nature World News
Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog
Heritage Daily

Review of American Journal of Botany Publication (AVAILABLE HERE)

Awkward Botany: “…a well-researched and detailed article concerning the fascinating topic of early plant domestication. Honestly, my synopsis hardly does it justice, so I urge you to read it for yourself if this topic interests you. I particularly appreciated the emphasis that the authors placed on using multiple methods and tools to collect and interpret data and how our perspectives should be revised as new and updated data emerge.”

Dissertation ANNOUNCEMENT & Review (AVAILABLE HERE)

Washington University, Anthropology News: “PhD Recipients 2012-13 .. Robert Spengler …Thesis: Botanical Resource Use in the Bronze and Iron Age of the Central Eurasian Mountain/Steppe Interface: Decision Making in Multiresource Pastoral Economies”

Asian Archaeology, Dissertation Reviews: “A review of Botanical Resource Use in the Bronze and Iron Age of the Central Eurasian Mountain/Steppe Interface: Decision Making in Multiresource Pastoral Economies, by Robert N. Spengler III.”

Undergraduate Work

UB Today: “At two archaeological sites in Western New York, Spengler sifted through the dirt, using an acid technique created in the 1960s to help dissolve everything from his soil samples but the pollen shell. Over this past summer, he spent a month collecting samples at a Viking-era site in Denmark, fieldwork he anticipates will shed light on the agriculture of that period.”