Zohary and Hopf coined the term ‘founder crops’ to refer to a specific group of eight plants, namely three cereals (einkorn, emmer and barley), four legumes (lentil, pea, bitter vetch and chickpea), and a fibre/oil crop (flax), that founded early Neolithic agriculture in southwest Asia. Zohary considered these taxa as the first cultivated and domesticated species, as well as those that agricultural communities exploited and eventually spread to Europe and other regions. As a result, these eight species soon become the hallmark of the Neolithic plant-based subsistence. However, the ‘founder crops’ concept was defined at the end of the 1980s, when the development of agriculture was considered a rapid event, and therefore, terms like domestication, agriculture and plant cultivation were used interchangeably in the literature. The aim of this paper is thus to revisit concept of the ‘Neolithic founder crops’. Through a critical review of the archaeobotanical evidence gathered in the last 40 years, we evaluate the relative contribution of the ‘eight founder crop’ species to the plant-based subsistence across different periods of the southwest Asian Neolithic. We conclude that multiple groups of ‘founder’ species could be defined depending on whether one seeks to represent the most exploited plants of the Neolithic period, the first cultivated and domesticated crops, or the species that agricultural communities cultivated and eventually spread to Europe. Improved understanding of Neolithic plant-based subsistence in general, and agriculture in particular, will be attained by moving beyond conventional narratives and exploring the evolutionary history of plants other than the original ‘founder’ species.

Zohary 和 Hopf 创造了“创始作物”一词来指代一组特定的八种植物，即三种谷物（单粒小麦、二粒小麦和大麦）、四种豆类（扁豆、豌豆、苦紫云英和鹰嘴豆），以及一种纤维/油料作物（亚麻），在西南亚建立了早期新石器时代的农业。Zohary 认为这些分类群是最早的栽培和驯化物种，也是农业社区开发并最终传播到欧洲和其他地区的物种。结果，这八个物种很快成为新石器时代以植物为基础的生存方式的标志。然而，“创始作物”概念是在 20 世纪 80 年代末定义的，当时农业的发展被认为是一个快速事件，因此，驯化、农业和植物栽培等术语在文献中可以互换使用。因此，本文的目的是重新审视“新石器时代创始作物”的概念。通过对过去 40 年收集的考古植物学证据的批判性回顾，我们评估了“八种创始人作物”物种对西南亚新石器时代不同时期以植物为基础的生存的相对贡献。我们的结论是，可以根据一个人是否试图代表新石器时代最受开发的植物、第一批栽培和驯化的作物，或者农业社区培育并最终传播到欧洲的物种来定义多组“创始人”物种。提高对新石器时代以植物为基础的一般生存方式，特别是农业的理解，