Adil GÜNER, Vehbi ESER - optima

Posters
116
ARE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES THE LAST REFUGIA FOR
WILD RELATIVES OF CROP PLANTS?
A FLORAL SURVEY IN FERTILE CRESCENT
ON TILMEN HÖYÜK/GAZIANTEP-TURKEY
Halil ÇAKAN 1 , Maria SPERANZA 2 , Paola ROSSI 2 , Nicolò MARCHETTI 3
1 Çukurova Üniversitesi, Faculty of Sci. and Letters, Dept. of Biology, Adana, Turkey. hcakan@cu.edu.tr
2 Università di Bologna, DiSTA, Bologna, Italy. maria.speranza@unibo.it; ppisa@agrsci.unibo.it;
3 Università di Bologna, Archeologia, Bologna, Italya, nicolo.marchetti@unibo.it
Tilmen Höyük is located in the “Fertile Crescent” where the first area humans started
cultivating crops and abandoning the gatherer and hunter basis of their life around 10,000 B.P.
Nowadays, it is still possible to find wild relatives of cultivated plants such as barley, olive,
grape and fig tree, etc. in the present-day flora of archaeological sites at Fertile Crescent.
The vascular flora and vegetation of Tilmen Höyük were extensively surveyed at 2006. More
than 400 plan specimens were collected from research area. Total vascular flora of Tilmen
Höyük area has been determined as 220 plant taxa at species and subspecies ranks belonging
to 156 genera and 52 families. The first three largest families of vascular taxa are Fabaceae
(34 taxa), Asteraceae (34 taxa) Poaceae (25 taxa). Nearly, 70 % of spontaneous plant species
growing in Tilmen Höyük were found as wild relatives or progenitors of crop plant species.
Also, 25 % of the total flora in Tilmen Höyük is medicinal plants. Some of plant species such
as herbs, shrubs and trees in the Flora of Tilmen can be introduced and cultivated as
ornamental plants. There is no doubt that these plants were used by ancient local people.
Conservation of Archaeological sites flora is very important for the archaeological and
environmental heritage and also to keep important genetic resources for the future generation
of humanity.
Keywords: conservation, Flora, wild crop relatives, archaeological site
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