The Emergence of Arboriculture in the 1st Millennium BC along the Mediterranean’s “Far West”

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a straight forward study in classical genetics of the horsegram crop documenting the phenotypic expression of indeterminate vs determinate grow habit based on F1 and F2 crosses. It has established that determinate growth is indeed dominant (unlike some other legume crops). Determinate growth is potential significant in terms increasing yield and synchronicity of ripening.

I would suggest, however, that the authors offer some additional discussion. 

In terms of background how widespread are determinate vs indeterminate cultivars amongst traditional landraces? Are these evenly distributed across India or are there regional patterns of preference or predominance of indeterminate types. For example is one or the other preferring monocropping of horsegram, or for intercropping with other crops?

How do these different habit type affect the typical cultivation cycle, i.e. length of cultivation season from sowing to harvesting? I would expect the indeterminate cultivars might have a longer cultivation season in general?

Are indeterminate types adaptive in some other way, e.g. by having a lower water demand at anyone time due to a prolonged cultivation season? I might expect the determinate types would be more demanding over the short term, and if so this might favour indeterminate types where regular droughts are a major concern, or in more marginal soil/water conditions of cultivation?

One of the reason this latter questions may be relevance is in terms of evolutionary history. If determinate types are always more productive than one might expect this type to have come to dominate cultivation early in the history of this crop, whereas the persistence of many indeterminate land races over the millennia might imply other factors, such as drought tolerance, contributed to their persistence. 

Author Response

Dear Editor,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript titled The emergence of arboriculture in the 1^st millennium BC along the Mediterranean’s "Far West" to Agronomy. We appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers.

Here is a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and concerns.

 

 

Reviewer 1:

We are unable to respond to reviewer 1, as the comments he has uploaded do not correspond to our work.

We look forward to hearing from you in due time regarding our submission and to respond to any further questions and comments you may have.

Sincerely,

Guillem Pérez-Jordà

Reviewer 2 Report

Please make sure all scientific names are properly italicized throughout the text. I.e they are not on lines 139-140.

Author Response

Dear Editor,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript titled The emergence of arboriculture in the 1^st millennium BC along the Mediterranean’s "Far West" to Agronomy. We appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers.

Here is a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and concerns.

 

 

Reviewer 2:

Please make sure all scientific names are properly italicized throughout the text. I.e they are not on lines 139-140.

DONE

 

We look forward to hearing from you in due time regarding our submission and to respond to any further questions and comments you may have.

Sincerely,

Guillem Pérez-Jordà

Reviewer 3 Report

Although the article is based on a large amount of data, some of which unpublished, their processing and presentation is very unclear and this makes the entire article very heavy and difficult to read.

I think that a different choice in the presentation and processing of data should have originated a very interesting article.

My first criticism concerns the absence of a historical-archaeological introduction that serves as a basis for the understanding of the cultural evolution of the study areas.

The choice of clusters is, in my opinion, the second strong weakness of the article. It makes the result section very long and boring and the discussion just a re-elaboration of the result section.

The cluster used for the statistical analysis seems to me a nonsense. You could have used cultural phases or, alternatively, centuries, less meaningful but better that geographic proximity.

There isn’t any attempt in giving to these data a wider significance, at the Mediterranean scale, where the same cultures were present. There is no comparison with other sites nor with other kind of data, such as pollen sequences, that could have given a more regional image of the landscape changes, especially considering that you used charred fruits from archaeological sites, that means very local evidence.

Only in the conclusion, I found some interesting hints but they are completely detached from the preceding text, where no reference to cultural development is illustrated.

 

Some punctual suggestions:

Due to the complexity of data processing and presentation, more information should be given in the Materials and methods section. Tables should be re-elaborated (smaller font in Tab 1, bigger in Tab 2…) and explicated in the caption. Figures are illegible, very small fonts. Apart from its nebulous meaning, in Fig 3 site numbers are different from those of Fig 1, very confusing. What are dots? Colors are difficult to distinguish; again, more information in the caption is necessary.

Author Response

Dear Editor,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript titled The emergence of arboriculture in the 1^st millennium BC along the Mediterranean’s "Far West" to Agronomy. We appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers.

Here is a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and concerns.

Reviewer 3:

Although the article is based on a large amount of data, some of which unpublished, their processing and presentation is very unclear and this makes the entire article very heavy and difficult to read.

I think that a different choice in the presentation and processing of data should have originated a very interesting article.

My first criticism concerns the absence of a historical-archaeological introduction that serves as a basis for the understanding of the cultural evolution of the study areas.

DONE

The choice of clusters is, in my opinion, the second strong weakness of the article. It makes the result section very long and boring and the discussion just a re-elaboration of the result section.

The cluster used for the statistical analysis seems to me a nonsense. You could have used cultural phases or, alternatively, centuries, less meaningful but better that geographic proximity.

As explained in the introduction, the diversity of the processes that took place in the study area (and the differences in the number of available sites and samples) render it nonsensical to attempt to offer a historical-archaeological overview of the area. Moreover, it would only lead to a false sense of uniformity. For this reason, we decided to group the sites according to their historiographical territories. Although it is an option that can obviously be criticised, it was a conscious choice with a clear objective. In the graphs of Figures 3, 4 and 5, the data from the different sites were not grouped, but instead depicted individually to indicate the general trends of each established territory. We think that it is more relevant to reveal if the data from the different sites are similar or not to each zone and chronological moment and then attempt to explain the differences.

It is for this reason that we do not believe that it is reasonable to reorder the data along the lines the reviewer suggests. Moreover, all the chronological phases of all the territories are identical (centuries). Then the results of each of these phases are discussed globally (Discussion, section 4.2).

There isn’t any attempt in giving to these data a wider significance, at the Mediterranean scale, where the same cultures were present. There is no comparison with other sites nor with other kind of data, such as pollen sequences, that could have given a more regional image of the landscape changes, especially considering that you used charred fruits from archaeological sites, that means very local evidence.

We have introduced a comment to contextualise the data in the Mediterranean framework (mainly in the Western Mediterranean).

Moreover, the option of resorting primarily to carpological data is based, as indicated by the reviewer, on that the study intends to offer a vision of each site's local reality. Pollen analyses, however, offer regional views and, as in the case of charred wood remains, deliver a weaker taxonomic resolution, especially in the case of many fruit trees. It is for these reasons that we consider carpological analyses as the best to carry out research of this type.

Only in the conclusion, I found some interesting hints but they are completely detached from the preceding text, where no reference to cultural development is illustrated.

Some punctual suggestions:

Due to the complexity of data processing and presentation, more information should be given in the Materials and methods section. Tables should be re-elaborated (smaller font in Tab 1, bigger in Tab 2…) and explicated in the caption. Figures are illegible, very small fonts. Apart from its nebulous meaning

We have made some changes to the figures and tables to make them easier to read, but we believe that decisions such as changing the font size of some of the tables should be taken when they are laid out, which is when we will be able to see whether or not any changes need to be made.

 

We look forward to hearing from you in due time regarding our submission and to respond to any further questions and comments you may have.

Sincerely,

Guillem Pérez-Jordà

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The text was ameliorated and enriched but I still find that the presentation of results is rather hard to digest and the article is too long. I have no other suggestion to make apart from increasing the very small font size of numbers in the diagrams of figures 2 to 5

Author Response

1- The text was ameliorated and enriched but I still find that the presentation of results is rather hard to digest and the article is too long

"We think it is interesting to keep the results part as it is, although it may indeed be a bit long and heavy, but it is a lot of sites and quite a large geographical area".

2.  I have no other suggestion to make apart from increasing the very small font size of numbers in the diagrams of figures 2 to 5

"We have increased the font size to make it easier to read.