Fieldwork
Hillman's research was underpinned by long periods of botanical and archaeological fieldwork. His first excavation (1969-70) was the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B site of Can Hasan III on the Konya Plain of central Turkey. [1] From 1970-73 Hillman joined the excavations at the Aşvan Project, on the Murat river in eastern Turkey. This was a pioneering multi-disciplinary excavation of four sites around the village of Aşvan, led by David French and involving a wide range of specialists, including those from anthropology, geography, zoology and botany. Here Hillman implemented a large-scale flotation system for the second time, and carried out the ethnoarchaeological work on crop-processing that has been so influential in Old World archaeobotany.[2]
In 1971-2 Hillman joined the excavations at Abu Hureyra directed by Andrew M. T. Moore. Again, large-scale flotation was applied, resulting in the retrieval of over 500 litres of plant remains; the study of these formed the main subject of Hillman's research for much of the next 25 years. Seeds and herbarium specimens collected in the vicinity of these excavations in Syria and Turkey formed the basis of Hillman's large seed reference collection, now divided between the British Institute at Ankara and the UCL Institute of Archaeology. Subsequent field trips followed, with a focus on the ecology of wild cereals, to eastern Turkey and Syria.
Hillman's final fieldwork was to initiate archaeobotany at the Neolithic site of Jeitun, Turkmenistan, in 19.
- ^ French, David (1972). "Excavations at Can Hasan III 1969-1970". In Higgs, Eric (ed.). Papers in Economic Prehistory. Cambridge University Press. pp. 181–190. ISBN 9780521084529.
- ^ French, David (1972). "Excavations at Can Hasan III 1969-1970". In Higgs, Eric (ed.). Papers in Economic Prehistory. Cambridge University Press. pp. 181–190. ISBN 9780521084529.