A combined archaeobotanical and palaeogenetic analysis of charred pea (Pisum sativum) seeds from an Early Iron Age storage pit at the hill fort settlement Hissar, Leskovac, southeast Serbia

Abstract

A unique example of 2,572 carbonized pea seeds was recovered from the 11th century B.C. deposits at Hissar, a multilevel settlement of the Brnjica cultural group (1,350-1,000 B.C.) in southeast Serbia. Five hundred seeds maintained pea-like hilum, only few had preserved intact smooth-surfaced testa and the majority of seeds had no seed coat. Fortunately, only few seeds of other pulses were observed in the sample and their identity was clearly determined. Applying the exclusion principle, all the “naked”, 3-4 mm large seeds, mainly broad ellipsoid and less often globose, with flattenings or concavities, were determined to correspond to cultivated pea (Pisum sativum L.). Additionally, a high thousand seed weight of charred seeds (24.4 g) suggested cultivated status. To confirm our finding, we processed two samples with molecular tools. A sequence analysis of four chloroplast DNA loci (trnSG, trnK, matK and rbcL) in total length of 1329bp, showed intermediate position to cultivated P. sativum and wild P. sativum subsp. elatius.