Abstract Plant domestication is often discussed as a form of mutualism between humans and crop plants. Ethnographies provide records of a multitude of adaptive strategies employed by human societies with varying degrees of reliance on manipulation of wild plant resources. These manipulations have included vegetation clearance, controlled burning, pruning, coppicing, tilling, sowing and more. Such activities can be viewed as cultivation of wild plants (known as “pre-domestication cultivation” in the Near Eastern research milieu, or in a somewhat different framework as “low level food production”), often considered a necessary step leading to domestication. Since cultivated fields are constructed niches, Niche Construction Theory (NCT) has recently been recruited to provide a theoretical evolutionary framework for explaining plant domestication. This review on plant domestication in the Near East discusses elements that we consider intimately related to the abovementioned trajectories of thought: the concept of “pre-domestication cultivation”; the view that domesticated plants arose via evolutionary mutualism; and the conceptualization of plant domestication in terms of NCT. We review and discuss the logic of these approaches, their biological, cultural and archaeological foundations; and highlight their association with the old “dump heap” scenario. We argue that based on the biology of the Near Eastern crop plants and the available archaeological evidence, these approached and respective arguments are inadequate. Rather, we contend that the biological idiosyncrasies of the Near Eastern founder crops depict a picture of a knowledge-based and conscious domestication that emanated from the newly emerging Neolithic world view and Humans-World relationships.

中文翻译：

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新石器时代近东的植物驯化：人与植物的联系

摘要 植物驯化经常被讨论为人类与作物植物之间的一种共生形式。民族志记录了人类社会在不同程度上依赖操纵野生植物资源所采用的多种适应性策略。这些操作包括植被清除、控制燃烧、修剪、伐木、耕作、播种等。此类活动可被视为野生植物的栽培（在近东研究环境中称为“驯化前栽培”，或在略有不同的框架中称为“低水平粮食生产”），通常被认为是导致驯化的必要步骤。由于耕地是构建生态位，最近招募了生态位构建理论 (NCT) 来提供解释植物驯化的理论进化框架。这篇关于近东植物驯化的综述讨论了我们认为与上述思想轨迹密切相关的要素：“驯化前栽培”的概念；驯化植物是通过进化共生产生的观点；以及从 NCT 角度对植物驯化的概念化。我们回顾和讨论这些方法的逻辑，它们的生物学、文化和考古学基础；并强调它们与旧的“转储堆”场景的关联。我们认为，基于近东农作物的生物学和可用的考古证据，这些接近的和各自的论点是不充分的。相当，