Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology
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Item Late Pleistocene humans in Sri Lanka used plant resources: A phytolith record from Fahien rock shelter(Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 2018) Premathilake, R.; Hunt, C.O.Little is known of the human use of rainforest plant resources of prehistoric Sri Lanka due to the lack of preservation of organic material and the effects of various destructive taphonomic processes. Phytoliths recovered from a AMS radiocarbon and OSL dated sequence at Fahien Rock Shelter indicate interactions of anatomically modern humans with the lowland rainforests of south-western Sri Lanka from 44,952–47,854 cal. BP to 11,991–12,402 cal. BP. During this period, the Rock Shelter occupants extracted their livelihood from a number of wild plants including bananas, rice, breadfruits, durians, canarium and species of palm and bamboo. These taxa are associated with present-day disturbed lowland rainforests. Gathering and processing of plant resources by existing modern rainforest foragers cannot directly be compared with the subsistence activities of the Late Pleistocene Rock Shelter occupants.Item Implications of phytolith records from an Early Historicmegalithic burial site at Porunthal in Southern India(Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2017) Premathilake, R.; Anupama, K.; Prasad, S.; Orukaimani, G.; Yathees Kumar, V.P.Collateral phytolith records from four megalith cist burials uncovered at Porunthal on the foot hills of the Western Ghats, Tamil Nadu, are presented. This has contributed to the current knowledge of the landscape in association with the flora and megalith culture that prevailed in South India during the Early Historic time at 540– 410 cal BCE. Evidence shows that Early Historic megalith people engaged less in pastoral activities on the open landscape, dominated by herbs e.g., Cyperaceae and Poaceae, and also by Palmae species in semi-arid environment. The presence of strong mode of settled-paddy and millet farming cultures, cereal-processing activities and grazing in association with the burial practices were significant as early as 6th century BCE. Seeds, leaves and sheath from domesticated rice, millet and some materials fromsedges and Palmae specieswere deliberately deposited indicating variable burial rituals in each grave. Burial tradition indicates that Iron Age and EarlyHistoric megalithic people of southern India may have carried out burial rituals with more rice than millets. Evidence for the early appearance of Brahmi writing as part of the ‘complex’ megalith social life marks the beginning of Early Historic Period, previously not reported in southern Asia. Phytolith evidence also provides new insight into the transformation of urban-fringe landscapes with possible irrigated agriculture in those broad ecological and cultural contexts.Item Earliest Musa banana from the late Quaternary sequence at Fahien Rock Shelter in Sri Lanka(JOURNAL OF QUATERNARY SCIENCE, 2018) Premathilake, R.; Hunt, C.O.The domestication and time of arrival of bananas in South Asia and Africa are unresolved issues. We provide banana seed and leaf phytolith evidence from the archaeological sequence at Fahien Rock Shelter, south-west Sri Lanka, to help understand the geographical con®guration of hybridization, dispersal, cultural association and chronology of banana domestication. Phytolith evidence indicates that Musa accuminata subspecies and M. balbisiana existed in the south-western lowland rainforest of Sri Lanka from 44952±47854 to 3845±3985 cal a BP. Rock Shelter occupants exploited those taxa for starchy food. Edible diploid bananas may have been introduced from Indonesia or Papua New Guinea before 5994±6194 cal a BP. From this time onwards, phytoliths morphologically identical to those from triploid banana cultivars appeared in the lowland rainforest of Sri Lanka. This precocity appears unique to Sri Lanka. Dispersal of these triploids to the east coast of Africa may have followed maritime trade networks in the Indian Ocean from the ®rst half of the sixth millennium BP. Northward dispersal, e.g. to urban Harappan sites, occurred in the middle of the ®fth millennium BP. This discovery shows the interconnection of prehistoric cultures and their engagement with the management of starchy staples in the lowland rainforests of Sri Lanka. Copyright # 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Item Sri Lanka’s Earliest Wild Musa Bananas?(Global Journal of Archaeological & Anthropology, 2018) Premathilake, R.; Hunt, C.O.In spite of their importance as a crop today, records of the use of wild banana and the antecedents of the modern domesticated bananas are relatively obscure. Banana dispersal pattern from their native range (e.g. Island South East Asia and New Guinea) is also poorly known. Excavation at Fahien Rockshelter in South Western Sri Lanka yielded phytolith sequence dating from 48,354 to 3900 cal BP. Phytolith evidence suggests that Rockshelter occupants used wild banana (Musa. acuminata and M. balbisiana) through the late Pleistocene to early Holocene, i.e. 8000 cal BP. After this age, occupants significantly decreased the use of wild bananas.Item Phytoliths as indicators of Quaternary vegetation at the Paleolithic site of Attirampakkam, India(Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2017) Premathilake, R.; Akhilesh, K.; Anupama, K.; Pappu, S.; Prasad, S.; Gunnell, Y.; Orukaimani, G.The paleoecological context of hominin occupation in South Asia during the early and middle Pleistocene is virtually unknown. Attirampakkam, India, is an archeological site of global importance, with an early Acheulian occupation (age bracket of ~1.07–1.77 Ma) succeeded by Middle Paleolithic levels. Here we report on the recovery of phytoliths from artifact-bearing Quaternary deposits in excavated trenches. We focus on the reconstruction of past vegetation during hominin occupation of the site. The present study provides information on hominin microenvironments and local habitats in South Asia, situating them in a more tangible ecological context than so far achieved. Results show that this region was arid during the earlier stages of the early Pleistocene, and was occupied by hominins living in a landscape locally lacking woody plants. Herbaceous vegetation was dominated by C4 Chloridoid grasses. In the later phase of the early Pleistocene, the landscape was wooded and dominated by C4 Panicoid grasses, with a significant reduction of C4 Chloridoid grasses indicating a shift from a drier to a relatively more humid climate. A diverse husk and leaf phytolith assemblage of wild Oryza spp. (rice) occurring as natural annual or perennial components of the vegetation in the area, other herbaceous plants such as Cyperaceae (sedges), and the continuous presence of blackened phytoliths, suggest the establishment a grassland landscape with enclaves of wetland habitat affected by seasonal flooding and frequent fires. The transition from the early to the middle Pleistocene was marked by a moderately humid climate, with a shift toward aridity during the late Pleistocene, during which we note an environment dominated by C4 Chloridoid grasses, by a sharp reduction of C4 Panicoid grasses, and by a rise in woody taxa. During the middle to late Pleistocene, Middle Paleolithic populations would have witnessed water bodies near the site, as reflected by the presence of plants adapted to swampier conditions such as Cyperaceae and Oryza spp. The archeological record terminates in Layer 1, when human occupation decreased drastically, possibly because of increased aridity and/ or greater environmental variability. The phytolith fingerprint at ATM sheds light on the co-occurrence of, vegetation, fire and early prehistoric land occupation. An important aspect is the evidence of Oryza spp., suggesting that wild rice occurred in the environment frequented by these early hominins.Item ශ්රී ලංකාවේ පැරණි අධිකරණ ව්යුහය හා ඒවායේ ක්රියාකාරිත්වය (ශිලාලේඛන ඇසුරෙන් කෙරෙන පර්යේෂණයක්)(2013) Gamage, A.P.D.S.Item පිටිගල් කෝරළේ පිහිටි වෙල්පැල්ල ග්රාමයේ ඓතිහාසික භූමි දර්ශනය පිළිබඳ අධ්යයනයක්(2011) Wijesinghe, H.D.C.K.Item කලා ඉතිහාසය අධ්යයනය කිරීමේදී ගම්පහ ප්රදේශය සීමා කරගන්නේ කෙසේද?(2011) Dahanayake, H.P.K.N.U.