Most of the contributions in this volume were presented at the seventh International Workshop on African Archaeobotany (IWAA), held in Vienna, 2-5 July 2012. They address past interrelationships between people and plants as evident in the rich archaeobotanical, ethnographic, and linguistic record of Africa.
Since its inception two decades ago, IWAA has developed into a tightly knit community of scholars from all continents who share a profound interest in African ways of plant exploitation, trade networks, questions of origin, domestication and subsequent dispersal of African crops, as well as the introduction of crops of Asian and American origin.
Preface vii
Ursula Thanheiser
Ahmed Gamal el-Din Fahmy 1962-2013 1
Mary Anne Murray
The history of conifers in Egypt, part I: Mediterranean cypress(Cupressus sempervirens L., Cupressaceae) 3
Victoria Asensi Amoros
Reconstructing African agrarian prehistory by combining different sources of evidence: Examples for West African economic plants 13
Roger Blench
Modelling shifts in cereal cultivation in Egypt from the start of agriculture until modern times 27
R.T.J. Cappers
An investigation of taphonomic processes by means of digital image analysis of Phoenix dactylifera L. seeds from Roman Karanis (Fayum, Egypt) 37
Federica Fantone
Archaeobotanical research and related ethnobotanical observations in the central andsouthern Sahara 49
Assunta Florenzano, Eleonora Rattighieri, Isabella Massamba N’siala & Anna Maria Mercuri
Taro across the oceans: Journeys of one of our oldest crops 67
Ilaria Maria Grimaldi
The identification of non-dietary crop products of Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn. ssp. coracana, Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br., and Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench by phytolith analysis 83
Welmoed A. Out & Marco Madella
Charred plant macroremains (seeds, fruits) and phytoliths from villa E12.10 at Amara West, a pharaonic town in northern Sudan 95
Philippa Ryan, Caroline R. Cartwright & Neal Spencer
Pearl millet, Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R.Br. ssp. glaucum, in the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt 115
Ursula Thanheiser, Stefanie Kahlheber & Tosha Dupras
Wood use in Graeco-Roman Karanis (Fayum, Egypt): Local origin or import? First results 127
Caroline Vermeeren
