ABSTRACT

Over the past few years, palaeoethnobotanists have made an increasing effort to apply their data to the questions of cultural process: the evolution of early nutritional systems, cultivation strategies, long-term stability of subsistence strategies, and the process of agricultural intensification, among other current research problems in archaeology. This chapter applies palaeoethnobotanical data to the problem of determining stability of subsistence strategies through time and drawing ecological implications on vegetation through the data from Semthan. It restricts statistical evaluation to the evidence from Semthan. In addition to the parameters applied by early workers, the chapter explores the possibility of application of some other parameters such as species evenness, species richness, and species diversity. The endocarps and weed seeds show chi-square values of 47.0 and 21.03, indicating significant differences of 0.01 and 0.20 respectively. These values indicate that weed seeds are more randomly distributed then endocarps among the time periods.