Agriculture has been crucial in sustaining human populations in South Asia across dramatically variable environments for millennia. Until recently, however, the origins of this mode of subsistence in India have been discussed in terms of population migration and crop introduction, with limited focus on how agricultural packages were formulated and utilised in local contexts. Here, we report the first measurements of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values in well-preserved charred crop remains from sites spanning the Neolithic/Chalcolithic to the Early Historic in two very different environmental zones: tropical East India and the semi-arid Deccan. The results show that this approach offers direct insight into prehistoric crop management under contrasting environmental constraints. Our preliminary results plausibly suggest that early farmers in India experimented with and made strategic use of water and manure resources in accordance with specific crop requirements and under varying environmental constraints. We suggest that the development of modern crop isotope baselines across India, and the application of this methodology to archaeological assemblages, has the potential to yield detailed insight into agroecology in India's past.

几千年来，农业对于维持南亚人口在剧烈变化的环境中至关重要。然而，直到最近，印度这种生计模式的起源一直在人口迁移和作物引进方面进行了讨论，对如何在当地环境中制定和使用农业一揽子计划的关注有限。在这里，我们报告了在两个非常不同的环境区：热带东印度和半干旱德干地区，从新石器时代/铜石时代到早期历史遗址保存完好的烧焦作物残骸中稳定碳和氮同位素值的首次测量。结果表明，这种方法可以直接了解在对比环境约束下的史前作物管理。我们的初步结果合理地表明，印度早期的农民根据特定的作物需求和不同的环境限制，尝试并战略性地利用水和粪肥资源。我们建议在印度发展现代作物同位素基线，并将这种方法应用于考古组合，有可能对印度过去的农业生态学产生详细的了解。