Rethinking Agriculture: Archaeological and Ethnoarchaeological Perspectives

by Denham,Timothy P

• ISBN13: 9781598742619
• ISBN10: 1598742612
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2009-06-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Although the need to study agriculture in different parts of the world on its own terms” has long been recognized and re-affirmed, a tendency persists to evaluate agriculture across the globe using concepts, lines of evidence and methods derived from Eurasian research. Researchers working in different regions are becoming increasingly aware of fundamental differences in the nature of, and methods employed to study, agriculture and plant exploitation practices in the past. Contributions to this volume rethink agriculture in terms of existing regional chronologies, the techniques employed, and the concepts that frame our interpretations. This volume highlights new archaeological and ethnoarchaeological research on early agriculture in understudied non-Eurasian regions—including Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific, the Americas and Africa—to present a more balanced view of the origins and development of agricultural practices around the globe.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Rethinking Agriculture: Introductory Thoughts	p. 1
Agriculture, Cultivation and Domestication: Exploring the Conceptual Framework of Early Food Production	p. 16
Selection, Cultivation and Reproductive Isolation: A Reconsideration of the Morphological and Molecular Signals of Domestication	p. 36
Subterranean Diets in the Tropical Rain Forests of Sarawak, Malaysia	p. 50
Early to Mid-Holocene Plant Exploitation in New Guinea: Towards a Contingent Interpretation of Agriculture	p. 78
Unravelling the Story of Early Plant Exploitation in Highland Papua New Guinea	p. 109
The Meaning of Ditches: Interpreting the Archaeological Record from New Guinea Using Insights from Ethnography	p. 126
Perspectives on Traditional Agriculture from Rapa Nui	p. 149
New Perspectives on Plant Domestication and the Development of Agriculture in the New World	p. 167
Keepers of Louisiana's Levees: Early Mound Builders and Forest Managers	p. 189
Modeling Prehistoric Agriculture through the Palaeoenvironmental Record: Theoretical and Methodological Issues	p. 210
Chronicling Indigenous Accounts of the 'Rise of Agriculture'in the Americas	p. 231
Starch Remains, Preservation Biases and Plant Histories: An Example from Highland Peru	p. 241
Emerging Food-Producing Systems in the La Plata Basin: The Los Ajos Site	p. 256
A Tale of Two Tuber Crops: How Attributes of Enset and Yams may have Shaped Prehistoric Human-Plant Interactions in Southwest Ethiopia	p. 273
Multidisciplinary Evidence of Mixed Farming during the Early Iron Age in Rwanda and Burundi	p. 299
The Development of Plant Cultivation in Semi-Arid West Africa	p. 320
Human Impact and Environmental Exploitation in Gabon during the Holocene	p. 347
The Establishment of Traditional Plantain Cultivation in the African Rain Forest: A Working Hypothesis	p. 361
African Pastoral Perspectives on Domestication of the Donkey: A First Synthesis	p. 371
Using Linguistics to Reconstruct African Subsistence Systems: Comparing Crop Names to Trees and Livestock	p. 408
Subject Index	p. 439
Botanical Index	p. 457
About the Contributors	p. 463
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