Seeing the fields through the weeds: introducing the WeedEco R package for comparing past and present arable farming systems using functional weed ecology

Abstract

The functional ecology of arable weeds provides a way of comparing present-day and past farming regimes. This paper presents the R package WeedEco, an open-source resource which allows users to compare their archaeobotanical dataset against three previously published arable weed models to understand fertility, disturbance or a combination of both. The package provides functions for data organisation, classification and visualisation, allowing users to enter raw archaeobotanical data, obtain trait values from the functional trait dataset, conduct discriminant analysis and plot the results against the relevant present-day model. Using data from the early medieval site of Stafford in the UK, the paper provides a detailed example of the use of the package, demonstrating its different functions, as well as how the results can be interpreted.

Metadata

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Stroud, E. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4299-6638 Charles, M. Jones, G. Hodgson, J.G. Bogaard, A.
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Keywords:	Arable farming regimes; Archaeobotany; Statistical R package; Functional weed ecology
Dates:	Published: July 2024 Published (online): 19 October 2023 Accepted: 18 September 2023
Institution:	The University of Sheffield
Academic Units:	The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of Archaeology (Sheffield)
Depositing User:	Symplectic Sheffield
Date Deposited:	15 Jan 2024 11:48
Last Modified:	21 Oct 2024 10:38
Published Version:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00334-023-00964-8
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.1007/s00334-023-00964-8
Related URLs:	Author Erratum/Corrigendum
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:207563

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Seeing the fields through the weeds: introducing the WeedEco R package for comparing past and present arable farming systems using functional weed ecology

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