Cereals, fruits and nuts in the Scottish Neolithic

Abstract

The importance of wild and domestic plants in the British Neolithic economies has been much disputed, but the contribution of Scottish archaeobotanical evidence has previously been understated. This paper assesses the use of plants in the Scottish Neolithic economy using the archaeobotanical evidence from 75 sites. It is argued that plant exploitation was geographically and socially diverse in Neolithic Scotland; while domesticated plants became the mainstay of the economy for some social groups, wild plant exploitation remained an important part of the subsistence strategies for other groups. In this context, geographic, social and temporal differences in the importance of wheat and barley are also discussed.