Agricultural History Review, Volume 44 Part 2 (1996), pp. 206–222

The mulching of agricultural fields and gardens with stones, pebbles, cinder and similar lithic materials is a variant agricultural strategy that has been used to evade drought and increase crop yield for more than a thousand years in the Old and New Worlds. Lithic mulch agriculture (LMA) is uniquely suited to the constraints of dryland environments, yet its use has remained confined both spatially and temporally. Prehistoric and contemporary LMA cases are synthesized and treated as a taxonomically discrete form of agriculture. This serves to alert scholars to the possibility of LMA at other historic sites. 

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