Biagetti, StefanoRuiz-Giralt, AbelMadella, MarcoMagzoub, Mongeda KhalidMeresa, YemaneGebreselassie, Mulubrhan HaileVeesar, Ghulam MohiuddinAbro, Tasleem AlamChandio, AminLancelotti, Carla2024-01-112024-01-112021Biagetti S, Ruiz-Giralt A, Madella M, Magzoub, MK, Meresa Y, Gebreselassie MH, et al. No rain, no grain? Ethnoarchaeology of sorghum and millet cultivation in dryland environments of Sudan, Pakistan, and Ethiopia. Ethnoarchaeology. 2021;13(1-2):80-104. DOI: 10.1080/19442890.2022.20599941944-2890http://hdl.handle.net/10230/58667Includes supplemental materials for the online appendix.Drylands cover more than 40% of the earth’s land surface, are found on all continents, and are home to 30% of the world’s population. Due to water scarcity, they are generally considered unsuitable for lasting human settlement. While pastoralism has been reconceptualized recently as a rational, efficient, and sustainable way to live in drylands, agriculture without irrigation is generally considered unfeasible in hyper-arid and arid drylands. This article presents data collected in ethnographic interviews in dryland areas in three countries, Sudan, Pakistan, and Ethiopia, to document and understand the cultivation practices of pearl millet, finger millet, and sorghum in drylands. Contrary to general trends favoring adoption of more water-intensive crops, our results show that farming without irrigation represents a viable strategy even where rainfall is considered insufficient. We argue that it is important to recognize the sustainability and value of dryland agricultural systems, past, present, and future.application/pdfeng© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19442890.2022.2059994DrylandsEthnoarchaeologyRainfed cultivationResilienceTraditional ecological knowledgePearl milletFinger milletSorghuminfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess