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      You will now find the journal, all publications and submission information, at https://journals.uclpress.co.uk/ai

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      The Archaeology of Neolithic Cooking Traditions: Archaeobotanical Approaches to Baking, Boiling and Fermenting

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      1 , , 1
      Archaeology International
      Ubiquity Press

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          Abstract

          The Neolithic was not only a shift in how food was obtained, through farming, but it also set up long-lasting traditions in how foods were prepared and cooked. Archaeologists have increasingly recognized regionally distinctive emphases on cereal preparations, such as baked breads or boiled porridges that characterize different Neolithic traditions. While these can be inferred through features, such as ovens on archaeological sites, it has become possible to recognize the charred crumbs of past breads, batters or porridges from typical charred archaeobotanical assemblages. We illustrate recent developments in micro-structural analysis of such remains, including wheat breads from Neolithic and pre-Neolithic western Asia, and sorghum breads and porridges from Early Historic (Meroitic) Sudan. The study of such archaeobotanical remains has great potential to help map the distribution of cereal cooking practices in time and space.

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          Bread, beer and wine: Saccharomyces cerevisiae diversity reflects human history.

          Fermented beverages and foods have played a significant role in most societies worldwide for millennia. To better understand how the yeast species Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the main fermenting agent, evolved along this historical and expansion process, we analysed the genetic diversity among 651 strains from 56 different geographical origins, worldwide. Their genotyping at 12 microsatellite loci revealed 575 distinct genotypes organized in subgroups of yeast types, i.e. bread, beer, wine, sake. Some of these groups presented unexpected relatedness: Bread strains displayed a combination of alleles intermediate between beer and wine strains, and strains used for rice wine and sake were most closely related to beer and bread strains. However, up to 28% of genetic diversity between these technological groups was associated with geographical differences which suggests local domestications. Focusing on wine yeasts, a group of Lebanese strains were basal in an F(ST) tree, suggesting a Mesopotamia-based origin of most wine strains. In Europe, migration of wine strains occurred through the Danube Valley, and around the Mediterranean Sea. An approximate Bayesian computation approach suggested a postglacial divergence (most probable period 10,000-12,000 bp). As our results suggest intimate association between man and wine yeast across centuries, we hypothesize that yeast followed man and vine migrations as a commensal member of grapevine flora.
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              A population genomics insight into the Mediterranean origins of wine yeast domestication.

              The domestication of the wine yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is thought to be contemporary with the development and expansion of viticulture along the Mediterranean basin. Until now, the unavailability of wild lineages prevented the identification of the closest wild relatives of wine yeasts. Here, we enlarge the collection of natural lineages and employ whole-genome data of oak-associated wild isolates to study a balanced number of anthropic and natural S. cerevisiae strains. We identified industrial variants and new geographically delimited populations, including a novel Mediterranean oak population. This population is the closest relative of the wine lineage as shown by a weak population structure and further supported by genomewide population analyses. A coalescent model considering partial isolation with asymmetrical migration, mostly from the wild group into the Wine group, and population growth, was found to be best supported by the data. Importantly, divergence time estimates between the two populations agree with historical evidence for winemaking. We show that three horizontally transmitted regions, previously described to contain genes relevant to wine fermentation, are present in the Wine group but not in the Mediterranean oak group. This represents a major discontinuity between the two populations and is likely to denote a domestication fingerprint in wine yeasts. Taken together, these results indicate that Mediterranean oaks harbour the wild genetic stock of domesticated wine yeasts.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                2048-4194
                Archaeology International
                Ubiquity Press
                2048-4194
                05 December 2018
                : 21
                : 1
                : 109-121
                Affiliations
                [1 ]UCL Institute of Archaeology 31–34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, GB
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4859-080X
                Article
                10.5334/ai-391
                fd03b69d-3678-4e52-b789-f514967edc35
                © 2018 The Author(s)

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

                History
                : 12 September 2018
                : 14 September 2018
                Categories
                Research article

                Archaeology,Cultural studies
                Archaeology, Cultural studies

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