Norwegian Vikings grew hemp

Cannabis was cultivated 1,300 years ago at a farm in Southern Norway


The Sosteli farmsted, in Norway's southermmost Vest-Agder County, offers strong evidence that Vikings farmers actively cultivated cannabis, a recent analysis shows. The cannabis remains from the farmsted date from 650 AD to 800 AD.

This is not the first sign of hemp cultivation in Norway this far back in time, but the find is much more extensive than previous discoveries. “The other instances were just individual finds of pollen grains. Much more has been found here,” says Frans-Arne Stylegar, an archaeologist and the county's curator.

Sosteli is also further away from current-day settlements than other sites where cannabis finds have been made. Hemp is the same plant as cannabis, or marijuana. But nothing indicates that the Vikings cultivated the plant to get people high.

Most likely it was grown for making textiles and rope.

Click here to read this article from Science Nordic

Vikings grew barley in Greenland

A sensational find at the bottom of an ancient rubbish heap in Greenland suggests that Vikings grew barley on the island 1,000 years ago.


The Vikings are both famous and notorious for their like of beer and mead, and archaeologists have discussed for years whether Eric the Red (ca. 950-1010) and his followers had to make do without the golden drink when they settled in Greenland around the year 1,000.

The Greenland climate was mild when they landed, but was it warm enough for growing corn?

Researchers from the National Museum in Copenhagen say the answer to the question is ‘yes’. In a unique find, they uncovered very small pieces of charred grains of barley in a Viking rubbish heap on Greenland.

The find is final proof that the first Vikings to live in Greenland did grow barley – the most important ingredient in brewing beer, making a form of porridge or baking bread, traditionally seen as staple foods in the Vikings’ nutritional diet.

“Archaeologists have always believed that the Vikings tried to cultivate the soil on their farms in fertile southern Greenland,” says Peter Steen Henriksen, who holds an MSc in agriculture. “But this hasn’t been proved until now.”

Click here to read this article from ScienceNordic

Click here to see our feature on Vikings in Greenland

Peter Steen Henriksen Nordboernes agerbrug i groenland

View more presentations from Association of Danish Museums / Organisationen Danske Museer

Study examines rise of agriculture in Stone Age Northern Europe

One of the most debated developments in human history is the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies. This week’s edition of Science presents the genetic findings of a Swedish-Danish research team, which show that agriculture spread to Northern Europe via migration from Southern Europe.


“We have been able to show that the genetic variation of today’s Europeans was strongly affected by immigrant Stone Age farmers, though a number of hunter-gatherer genes remain,” says Assistant Professor Anders Götherström of the Evolutionary Biology Centre, who, along with Assistant Professor Mattias Jakobsson, co-led the study, a collaboration with Stockholm University and the University of Copenhagen.

“What is interesting and surprising is that Stone Age farmers and hunter-gatherers from the same time had entirely different genetic backgrounds and lived side by side for more than a thousand years, to finally interbreed,” Mattias Jakobsson says.

Click here to read this article from History of the Ancient World

Ancient Egyptian cotton unveils secrets of agricultural evolution

Scientists studying 1,600-year-old cotton from the banks of the Nile have found what they believe is the first evidence that punctuated evolution has occurred in a major crop group within the relatively short history of plant domestication.

The findings offer an insight into the dynamics of agriculture in the ancient world and could also help today’s domestic crops face challenges such as climate change and water scarcity.

The researchers, led by Dr Robin Allaby from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick, examined the remains of ancient cotton at Qasr Ibrim in Egypt’s Upper Nile using high throughput sequencing technologies.

Click here to read this article from History of the Ancient World

Ancient cooking pots reveal gradual transition to agriculture

Humans may have undergone a gradual rather than an abrupt transition from fishing, hunting and gathering to farming, according to a new study of ancient pottery.

Researchers at the University of York and the University of Bradford analysed cooking residues preserved in 133 ceramic vessels from the Western Baltic regions of Northern Europe to establish whether these residues were from terrestrial, marine or freshwater organisms.

The project team studied ceramic pots from 15 sites dating to around 4,000 BC– the time when the first evidence of domesticated animals and plants was found in the region. The research, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, is published online in the latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Click here to read this article from History of the Ancient World

Remains of oldest fruit trees found in Iberian Peninsula

Researchers have found that the seed samples gathered over the years at medieval archaeological sites in the historic old quarter of Hondarribia are the remains of the oldest fruit trees in Southern Europe.

The town of Hondarribia lies on the coast of the Basque province of Gipuzkoa, Spain. The research was undertaken by the archaeobiology research team from the CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas) under the direction of Doctor Leonor Pena-Chocarro.

Click here to read this article from Sify

Study on Early Medieval Ireland shows importance of Cows and Milk

A recently published article has found that cows and the milk they made were a vital part of Irish agriculture and society during the Early Middle Ages.

"The Decline of the Cow: Agriculture and Settlement Change in Early Medieval Ireland," was written by Finbar McCormick for the latest issue of Peritia: Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland. It uses documentary and archaeological sources to find that "cattle, more specifically cows, were of exceptional importance in the lives of early medieval Irish."

McCormick explains that the cow was the basic unit of wealth, with fines, tribute and marriage presentations being paid in cows. But it was not necessarily the cow that was valuable, but the milk she could produce. A whole range of dairy products were produced in early medieval Ireland, such as milk, cream, butter and cheese. The 10th century text Tochmarc Ailbe states that milk is the best food as it "is good when fresh, good when old, good when thick and good when thin."

The article also notes the importance of cattle raiding in early medieval Ireland, adding that ringforts between the sixth and eighth centuries were designed specifically to protect cattle. There is an estimated 40-50000 ringforts in Ireland - farms that had a bank and ditch which could hold the cows if they were threatened by raids or attacks. "Protective scatterred farmsteads of this type do not occur anywhere else in contemporary western Europe and they are a unique response to the value system of Ireland," McCormick writes.

McCormick also finds that the predominance of cows in Irish society began to decline by the late-eighth century, with farmers now starting to build ringforts that had an elevated setting for the dwellings, which were designed to be more protective of people. Furthermore, there was an expansion of grain processing, as seen by archaeological evidence such as mills.

McCormick suggests that Ireland was changing in the late-eighth and ninth centuries, becoming a "slave economy" where farms were changing from being ones that primarily raised cattle, to ones that grew cereals - a more labour intensive process that required the use of slaves and the means to protect them.

The article, "The Decline of the Cow: Agriculture and Settlement Change in Early Medieval Ireland," by Finbar McCormick appears in Peritia, Volume 20 (2008)

Medieval Peasants grew the best grapes, study finds

Scientists in Cambridge have discovered that a lowly grape variety grown by peasants – but despised by noblemen – during the Middle Ages was the mother of many of today’s greatest grape varieties, including the Chardonnay used in Champagne.

Several venerable grape varieties - including Chardonnay and Gamay noir - stem from crosses between Pinot noir and Gouais blanc. Until now, which variety was the father and which the mother has been a mystery.

Using the same kind of genetic marker that forensic scientists use for human DNA fingerprinting, the team from the University of Cambridge examined DNA from the chloroplasts of 12 widely grown grape varieties.

Chloroplasts are structures in plant cells where photosynthesis takes place. Like most plants, the DNA in chloroplasts of grape vines is inherited from the mother.

The scientists looked at microsatellites - regions of DNA that are highly variable and are therefore useful for tracking family trees - and found that Gouais blanc was the maternal parent of Aligoté, Auxerrois, Bachet, Chardonnay, Franc noir, Gamay noir, Melon, Romorantin and Sacy. Pinot noir was the maternal parent for Aubin vert, Knipperlé and Roublot.

Scientists and wine producers are interested in grapes' maternal line because the mother provides more of the offspring's DNA than the father, and so is more important in genetic terms. In other economically significant plants the chloroplast genes can contribute to important characteristics such as tolerance to cold and fungal attack.

According to Professor Christopher Howe of the University of Cambridge, one of the study's authors: "It is ironic that the despised grape Gouais blanc was not just a parent for several of the world's best-known and most important varieties, such as Chardonnay and Gamay noir, it was the maternal parent, providing additional DNA and potentially determining important characteristics of the offspring."

"This is a striking conclusion, as Gouais is generally considered a highly inferior variety, and its cultivation was banned for many years in parts of Europe."

Both Pinot noir and Gouais blanc were widely grown in north-eastern France during the Middle Ages. But while Pinot was grown in vineyards owned by the church and aristocracy, peasants grew Gouais.

Between the late Sixteenth and the Eighteenth Centuries, several attempts were made to ban Gouais blanc. In 1732, an act of the Parlement of Besancon tried to eliminate the grape, describing it as "rustic", "inferior" but also "high-yielding". The Parlement of Metz took similar steps the same year.

Although their attempts to ban the grape failed, Gouais largely disappeared at the end of the Nineteenth Century and now survives only in a few vineyards and reference collections around the world.

Co-author of the study John Haeger of Stanford University said: "Gouais was held in low esteem in the late medieval and early modern periods. Typically, varieties of this sort were grown on flat land by peasants. Good vineyards, on the other hand, growing better and lower yielding varieties were owned and farmed under the supervision of the church or nobility."

"Many of the 'bans' were designed either to favour aristocrats and monastic orders over peasants, or force more arable land into the production of cereals and legumes to eliminate food shortages."

The results are published this month in Biology Letters.

Medieval Apples were Healthier than Modern Ones

A 12th century organically grown apple called Pendragon has higher levels of health- giving plant compounds than modern non organically grown rivals, such as Golden Delicious, Royal Gala and Cox. From peel to core, the mighty Pendragon outperformed 14 other pipsqueak competitors, pharmacist Michael Wakeman told delegates at a recent pharmaceutical conference in Manchester, England.

"Of all the organic varieties, Pendragon was the best apple variety and contained 7 of the 8 kinds of healthy components at the highest levels. In contrast, the non-organic apples consistently had low levels and less major healthy components in both the flesh and the peel," said Wakeman.

Twelve organically grown and three non organically grown varieties of apple were tested for a range of plant compounds with beneficial properties that have been linked to health-giving actions, including cholesterol and blood sugar reduction, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, antioxidant and anti-ageing effects.

Higher levels of healthy substances were found in all of the organically grown varieties compared to non-organically grown apples, especially in the peel. Runners up to Pendragon were an organically grown variety of Golden Delicious, a cider apple called Collogett Pippin, and old Cornish and Devon apple varieties, Ben's Red and Devonshire Quarrenden.

Mr Wakeman explained that in the absence of pesticides, organically grown apples produce larger amounts of many plant compounds to protect themselves from fungal and other infections, and some of these also have health-giving properties for humans.

"This research confirms that whilst some measures of organic versus non-organic food benefits might appear equivocal, more sophisticated analysis of compounds which are newly recognised as being of importance to good health do show a significant difference.

"Moreover, it demonstrates that these compounds, which are only available from plants, are disappearing from our diet as a result of modern day farming and food production techniques combined with the need to develop produce which meets our desire for perfect shapes and sweeter tastes" he said.