Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jasrep Digging sticks and agriculture development at the ancient Neolithic site of la Draga (Banyoles, Spain) Oriol López-Bultó a, ⁎ , Raquel Piqué a , Ferran Antolín b , Joan Antón Barceló a , Antoni Palomo c , Ignacio Clemente d a Prehistory Department, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain b Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Basel, Switzerland c Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya, Spain d Archaeology of Social Dynamics, IMF-CSIC, Spain ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Digging sticks Wooden tools Agriculture Use-wear analysis Neolithic 3D ABSTRACT Wooden digging sticks are one of the earliest kinds of tool in human evolution, and provably one of the most widely used in prehistory. This paper will focus on its role in the early agriculture development focusing on the case of the digging sticks assemblage of the Early Neolithic waterlogged site of la Draga (Spain). Ethnographically different uses can be attributed to this type of tool, being soil tilling for agricultural proposes the most economically and socially significant. Based on that hypothesis it has been developed an experimental analysis, followed by the use-wear analysis of 3D models, which suggests the use of the digging sticks of la Draga as agricultural tools. This experimental and use-wears new results are combined with the carpological record at la Draga in order to characterise the early agricultural development at the site. 1. Introduction The study of the origins and development of agriculture has been mainly focused on the domesticated plants and the instruments used for sowing those plants (Chocarro and Peña, 2012; García-Puchol and Salazar-García, 2017; Terradas et al., 2017; Zapata et al., 2004). However, little attention has been paid to the instruments used in the preparation techniques for tilling soil before planting, prior to the in- troduction of the plough. This activity is necessary in order to soften the soil and also to encourage the germination and development of the plant. Thus the action of tilling the soil is essential in the early devel- opment of agriculture, especially when the sediment is hard. Wooden digging sticks are the instruments related to this action, which is geographically and chronologically widespread. As has been observed among communities of farmers that do not use the plough, digging sticks have played a fundamental role in agricultural processes. Ethnography provides abundant evidence of the use of wooden digging sticks in societies with preindustrial economies in almost all the con- tinents (Gascon, 1977; Raynaut, 1984; Tessmann, 1922). Among these societies, the sticks are used for several purposes during agricultural processes: they can be used to till the soil of the plots before planting, for planting seeds (especially those of big size), or to unearth sub- terranean organs of cultivated and non-cultivated plants (Vincent, 1985), or for gathering shellfish (Moss, 1993). Digging sticks tradi- tionally have been related to the shifting cultivation, and have also been associated with woman’s work (Alesina et al., 2013; Alonso, 2016; Boserup, 1970). It is also important to mention that digging sticks are also an in- strument of pre-agricultural tradition. Their use is well documented among hunter-gatherers, as for example “the San” (Lee and DeVore, 2013), the Australian aborigines (Nugent, 2006) or hunter-gatherer groups from America (Yae, 1993). The archaeological evidence is very scarce due to the organic nature of the raw material used. However, their use is well documented from the middle Palaeolithic (Andersen, 2013; Aranguren et al., 2018; Gramsch, 1992; Milner et al., 2018; Rios-Garaizar et al., 2018) which confirms the pre-agricultural origin of this instrument. Moreover, these instruments can be used for purposes other than agriculture, such as gathering or building underfloor structures (Cummings et al., 2014; Deniker, 1901; Mauss, 2009). The variety of sizes and shapes of ethnographic digging sticks is wide, ranging from a simple branch with a pointed end to more elaborated, manufactured or split big branches, through to composed digging sticks consisting of a wooden sticks and a stone acting as a weight. Despite their importance in modern societies, the study of pre- historic digging sticks in relation to agriculture is limited. The main https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2020.102193 Received 21 August 2019; Received in revised form 24 December 2019; Accepted 3 January 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 30 (2020) 102193 2352-409X/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T