Jennifer Bates

The Indus civilization in South Asia (c. 320 – 1500BC) was one of the most important Old World Bronze Age cultures. Located at the cross-roads of Asia, in modern Pakistan and India, it encompassed ca. one million square kilometers, making it one the largest and most ecologically, culturally, socially, and economically complex among contemporary civilisations. In this study, Jennifer Bates offers new insights into the Indus civilisation through an archaeobotanical reconstruction of its environment. Exploring the relationship between people and plants, agricultural systems, and the foods that people consumed, she demonstrates how the choices made by the ancient inhabitants were intertwined with several aspects of society, as were their responses to social and climate changes. Bates' book synthesizes the available data on genetics, archaeobotany, and archaeology. It shows how the ancient Indus serves as a case study of a civilization navigating sustainability, resilience and collapse in the face of changing circumstances by adapting its agricultural practices.

I am marked by the Black Rose, the symbol of my father's cruelty and arrogance. It's a stain that will never wash out, the same mark all those girls carry-the ones who keep turning up dead. My father, underboss for a powerful crime family, killed my fianc , then told me he'd see me dead too. The only reason he didn't kill me right then and there was because he wanted me to suffer first. But he will never break me. I ran away. I survived. Those other girls...they weren't so lucky. To stop the murders, I'll have to go back and give my father what he wants. Me. My blood. And then there's Hunter...the only man I want, and the only one I can never have. If he finds out who I am, everything I've fought for will fall apart. There will never be a knight in shining armor to rescue the girls of the Black Rose. I'll have to do that myself. The blood of the Family runs in my veins, and I will not go down without a fight.

This volume contains the final publication of the archaeobotanical remains recovered from four sites at the village of Asvan in eastern Turkey, which were excavated between 1968 and 1973 as part of the archaeological rescue project in the Keban Dam region. An extensive programme of archaeobotanical research involved detailed study of the modern flora, the observation and recording of pre-mechanised agricultural practices and large-scale recovery of ancient botanical samples by water sieving. The report traces the evolution of cultivation in the region from the Chalcolithic to the Medieval period, charting the dominance of emmer and hulled barley in the Chalcolithic period, the emergence of free-threshing wheats in the Early Bronze Age and the introduction of irrigated summer crops, especially millet, by the Hellenistic period. Detailed attention is also given to the assemblage of weed seeds as proxy evidence for environmental conditions and climate change from around 4000 BC to the present day.