Recent publication of the new R package WeedEco, and of a related database of plant functional traits released on Oxford University Research Archive here, marks the culmination of several decades of collaborative research between scholars at the Department of Archaeology at the University of Sheffield and the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford.
This open access database and R package enables researchers to compare archaeobotanical data on past farming with present-day ’traditional’ farming systems. These latest developments build on work begun in the mid 1990s by Glynis Jones and Mike Charles at the University of Sheffield, where they collaborated with John Hodgson and others of the NERC Unit of Comparative Plant Ecology (UCPE), led by Philip Grime. The aim of this collaboration was to use plant functional ecology (the characteristics of plants which allow them to thrive in certain conditions) as a means of framing comparisons between present and past farming systems, through the weed flora associated with crops.
Dr Elizabeth Stroud, who led development of the new R package WeedEco, has commented: “the new publication for the first time makes these datasets and models accessible to anyone interested in comparative study of past and present arable farming. This means that anyone from developer-funded or university-based archaeology, or from the plant science and ecology side, can engage directly with this research and conduct their own analyses. The models we are releasing in the R package have featured prominently in recent farming-related research projects in the School of Archaeology, such as FeedSax and AgricUrb. This work has shed new light on how a range of different societies through time produced their staple crops”.
Professor Amy Bogaard, senior author on the new paper, notes: “it is fantastic to see the new R package and the newly published dataset of functional traits for nearly 1000 weed species become publicly available. It is a testimony to the dedication of everyone involved, and above all to the vision and commitment of colleagues at the University of Sheffield, where the functional ecological approach, and the connection to archaeobotany, originated. This is very much a joint celebration with colleagues in Sheffield and the School of Archaeology in Oxford”.
Some datasets and research questions take generations of scholars to collect and frame. As such they rely on the generosity of those scholars who are willing to share and ultimately, hand-on their research to their academic descendants. The plant functional traits dataset is the result of decades of good relationships between members of the Sheffield and Oxford archaeology schools.
