The Crop History Consortium (CHC)

Nearly everyone alive today depends on agriculture for subsistence. The origins of agriculture are widely viewed as a prerequisite to the rise of urbanism and complex societies and are foregrounded in popular syntheses of human history. Likewise, archaeological research on the trajectories of agricultural crop plants tends to focus on domestication in prehistory, with little attention to the more recent trajectories that have shaped the agricultural landscapes of today.

Yet attention to these more recent trajectories is essential to improved efforts at preserving agricultural biodiversity and heritage. Cultivation, conservation and reintroduction of diverse plant species, including 'underutilized' crops, contributes to global agrobiodiversity, living ecosystems and sustainable food production. Such efforts benefit from traditional and historical knowledge of crop plants' evolutionary and cultural trajectories. By delving into the history of agricultural plants, researchers have gained valuable insights into the diversity of evolutionary paths taken by cultivated plants, including cases of geographic expansion, contraction, and extinction. Globally, these pathways are often part of a single phenomenon in which a few select crops of global economic importance push aside and drive to extinction traditional cultivars. Meanwhile, traditional and indigenous knowledge of crop plant diversity and usage is rapidly disappearing due to urbanisation, migration, and socio-cultural changes affecting people's preferences. To better understand these processes in the present it is essential to understand them in the past.

The Crop History Consortium (CHC) brings together researchers working on historical crop diffusion - particularly of the past 2,000 years - to promote synthesis and dissemination of knowledge on the historical trajectories giving rise to current agricultural landscapes and diversity. Our focus is on the data and research possibilities provided by ancient plant remains and texts from the Middle East and Mediterranean, as well as Central Asia and South Asia. This data has reached a critical mass which now justifies bringing together archaeological specialists, historians, and ethnobotanists to produce multi-disciplinary collaborative research and syntheses.

To attain these goals, outputs will be pursued through collaborative work. First, we will initiate an online seminar series showcasing the latest in multi-disciplinary crop history research, especially by early career researchers. Second, we will collaborate on a joint synthesis paper on historical crop diffusion in Afro-Eurasia. While addressing important historical questions, the paper will also showcase the added value of consortium-level interdisciplinary collaboration in crop history research. Third, as part of a commitment to accessibility of knowledge, we will produce interactive maps and other digital engagement tools, informing on where crop plants went between their original domestication and their current cultivation. These will be showcased on the consortium website, and a social media community will be cultivated. Through these outputs we expect to build the consortium on the basis of collaborative efforts that will promote both research and eventual public engagement. Project outputs are designed not only to make the CHC an attractive choice for larger grants, but also to enable low-level maintenance (of online seminars, media presence) in the event of a gap in funding.

The CHC addresses a genuine and timely need for interdisciplinary integration and multidisciplinary synthesis in crop history research, bridging between archaeological and historical specialisms involved in crop history research. The proposed project aims at establishing the CHC through joint outputs aimed at synthesising crop histories and making them more accessible. Strategically, this project represents a crucial stage in a long-term plan for cultivating the CHC.