ABSTRACT
T he ve International Workshops of African Archaeobotany held since 1994 have presented a signi cant body of new archaeobotanical data from the continent and have provided a forum for discussion of issues associated with the history of plant use in Africa (Acta Palaeobotanica 35 [1] 1995; Cappers 2007, this volume; Neumann, Butler, and Kahlheber 2003; van der Veen 1999 ). Although the number of systematically sampled sites has increased dramatically since the 1980s and several overviews exist that refer to or include the data from a range of sites, and plot occurrences of certain crops (for example, Neumann 2003; Wetterstrom 1998), there has been little attempt to explore the empirical data on a pan-regional basis. e syntheses that have been undertaken have tended to focus on the origins of domestication and introduction of key crop species. Consequently, less attention has been directed toward wild taxa and the formation of anthropogenically in uenced arable weed ora, with the exception of work within the Nile Valley (for example, El-Hadidi 1992; Fahmy 1997).
