14–16 May 2025 | University College London & Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
This interdisciplinary workshop brought together scholars from archaeobotany, anthropology, ethnobotany, and archaeogenomics to examine the social, ecological, and historical dimensions of cereal crops—particularly millets, rice, wheat, and barley—across cultural landscapes in Asia and Africa. Convened to foster critical dialogue on cereal assemblages across time, the event opened with introductory presentations by researchers from the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) and the Frobenius Institute (Germany), who shared findings from long-term ethnographic and archaeobotanical fieldwork in Odisha, India. Their contributions offered grounded case studies that situated staple cereals within local ritual, economic, and gendered practices, highlighting the socio-cultural frameworks through which cultivation and crop selection are shaped.
The first two days included presentations by archaeobotanists from UCL and scholars from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, tracing the historical trajectories of cereal cultivation across Asia and Africa. Sessions focused on the development of cereal agriculture from the Iron Age to early historic periods in India, highlighting crop movements and culinary transitions across eastern and western regions. Comparative research from West and Northeast Africa illustrated transformations in cropping patterns and emphasized the roles of memory and heritage in maintaining cereal biodiversity.
On the final day at Kew, presentations demonstrated how herbarium specimens are valuable for tracing the evolution, environmental adaptation, and genetic diversity of rice. They also emphasized the essential role of linking archival, ethnographic, and laboratory research to conserve landraces and indigenous agricultural knowledge within an interdisciplinary framework.
The workshop concluded with a call to revisit herbarium and ethnographic collections—particularly the visual archives at the Frobenius Institute—as vital resources. Participants advocated for a multispecies perspective on cereal research that foregrounds so-called minor crops and their entanglements with soils, microbes, farm animals, termites, water bodies, and other life forms constituting broader agro-ecological systems. Emphasis was placed on participatory knowledge production, underscoring the importance of inclusive, accessible scholarship that bridges scientific inquiry with lived cultivation and consumption practices—through digital platforms and collaborations with governmental and civil society organisations working closely with cultivating communities.
