British Academy Lecture at Nottingham Trent University

Two very different agricultural ecologies emerged through domestication processes in Neolithic China, dry steppe millets in the north and wetland rice in the south. These systems differed in terms of their potential productivity and the extent to which this changed through domestication. The reliable production of wetlands and rice supported a long-term trajectory from sedentary foragers to increasingly intensive, population dense farmers and labour-hungry farming. By contrast low yield millets encouraged higher migration rates, agricultural diversification and land-hungry farming.

The talk will be delivered by Profesor Dorian Fuller, an archaeologist and archaeobotanist at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, working on ancient agriculture, plant domestication and its impact on social and environmental change.

The event will take place on Wednesday 11 March at 5pm, and will be held at Nottingham Trent University: Room LT5, Newton Bulding, 10 Goldsmith Street, Nottingham, NG1 4BU

Learn more about the British Academy Lectures.