Wild or cultivated? a study of Vitis sylvestris in natura in Slovakia and implications for archaeology and archaeobotany (morphometric approach)

• Published in: Vegetation history and archaeobotany 2023-07, Vol.32 (4), p.321-337
• Main Authors: Hajnalová, Mária, Látková, Michaela, Kajanová, Martina, Eliáš jun, Pavol, Ďurišová, Ľuba
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anthropology; Archaeology; Biogeosciences; Bleaching; Bronze Age; Classification; Climate Change; Cultivars; Cultivation; Dimensional measurement; Domestication; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Fruits; Grapevines; Morphology; Original Article; Paleontology; Vitis vinifera sylvestris
• ISSN: 0939-6314; 1617-6278
• DOI: 10.1007/s00334-023-00909-1

The archaeobotanical identification of Vitis pips, which is often based only on visual assessment of the finds or on morphometric methods, is problematic. The problem of distinguishing wild from domesticated strains arises especially in the differentiation of early cultivars. Correct identification often fails even when mathematical methods based on dimensional measurements are used. To verify the success of two classification methods commonly used in archaeology, their procedures were applied to modern pips of wild Vitis sylvestris grown in natura in Slovakia, coming from different localities and with different numbers of pips. The results of these measurements were concordant with archaeobotanical findings of grapevine pips from the Great Moravian site of Mikulčice-Valy situated in the region of South Moravia (Czech Republic). The results show that traditional methods have difficulty in correctly classifying pips from fruits with more than one pip and, to a lesser extent, pips of fruits from sun-bleached stands. These grape species tend to be classified as cultivated. Thanks to the results on the error rate of morphometric methods, it is also possible to characterize the archaeobotanical finds from Mikulčice, which were defined as cultivated.