The Domestication of Europe

In collaboration with the University of Manchester, the University of Cambridge and the National Institute of Agricultural Botany, engaged in a 3-year NERC consortium grant (2004-7) to investigate the `domestication´ of Europe through phylogenetic, archaeobotanical and DNA analysis. The project was aimed at determining the extent to which phylogeographical analysis of modern landraces of barley and wheat, combined with examination of ancient DNA in preserved specimens, could reveal genetic information pertaining to the spread and establishment of cereal cultivation from its points of origin in Southwest Asia into and through Europe. This project built on earlier archaeobotanical research in Greece, Hungary and northern Italy indicating past genetic diversity and helped to determine the shape of subsequent research into cultural and environmental events that resulted in the domestication of Europe. Crop genetics was being used to evaluate, for example, the relative roles of climatic adaptation and human assimilation in determining the rate of agricultural spread and the success of cereal cultivation in different geographical regions.
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Funded by: NERC Consortium Grant NER/O/S/2003/00708
Grant Period: 2004 - 2007
Grant Holder: Prof. T.A. Brown (PI)(Manchester), Prof. G. Jones (Sheffield), Dr. M. Charles (Sheffield), Prof. M. Jones (Cambridge), and Dr. J.C. Reeves (NIAB)
Researchers: Dr Sue College