Rethinking agriculture : archaeological and ethnoarchaeological perspectives / edited by Tim Denham, José Iriarte, and Luc Vrydaghs.

Format:

Book

Conference/Event

Contributor:

Denham, Tim.

Iriarte, José, Ph. D.

Vrydaghs, Luc

Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.

Conference Name:

World Archaeological Congress (5th : 2003 : Washington, D.C.)

Series:

One world archaeology ; 51.

One world archaeology

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Plant remains (Archaeology).

Ethnoarchaeology.

Paleoethnobotany.

Agriculture--Origin.

Agriculture.

Plants, Cultivated--Origin.

Plants, Cultivated.

Physical Description:

vi, 468 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Walnut Creek, CA : Left Coast Press, [2007]

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. However, 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, whether in terms of existing regional chronologies, in terms of techniques employed, or in terms of 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.

Contents:

Rethinking agriculture : introductory thoughts / Luc Vrydaghs and Tim Denham

Agriculture, cultivation and domestication : exploring the conceptual framework of early food production / David R. Harris

Selection, cultivation, and reproductive isolation : a reconsideration of the morphological and molecular signals of domestication / Martin Jones and Terry Brown

Subterranean diets in the tropical rain forests of Sarawak, Malaysia / Huw Barton and Victor Paz

Early to mid-Holocene plant exploitation in New Guinea : towards a contingent interpretation of agriculture / Tim Denham

Unravelling the story of early plant exploitation in highland Papua New Guinea / Jack Golson

The meaning of ditches : interpreting the archaeological record from New Guinea using insights from ethnography / Tim Bayliss-Smith

Traditional perspectives on agriculture from Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) / Geertrui Louwagie and Roger Langohr

New perspectives on plant domestication and the development of agriculture in the New World / José Iriarte

Keepers of Louisiana's levees : early moundbuilders and forest managers / Gayle J. Fritz

Modeling prehistoric agriculture through the palaeoenvironmental record : theoretical and methodological issues / Deborah M. Pearsall

Chronicling indigenous accounts of the "rise of agriculture" in the Americas / Matthew P. Sayre

Starch remains, preservation biases, and plant histories : an example from highland Peru / Linda Perry

Emerging food-producing systems in the La Plata Basin : the Los Ajos Site / José Iriarte

A tale of two tuber crops : how attributes of enset and yams may have shaped prehistoric human-plant interactions in south-west Ethiopia / Elisabeth Anne Hildebrand

Multi-disciplinary evidence of mixed farming during the early Iron Age in Rwanda and Burundi / Marie-Claude Van Grunderbeek and Emile Roche

The development of plant cultivation in semi-arid West Africa / Stefanie Kahlheber and Katharina Neumann

Human impact and environmental exploitation in Gabon during the Holocene / Richard Oslisly and Lee White

The establishment of traditional plantain cultivation in the African rain forest: a working hypothesis / Edmond De Langhe

African pastoral perspectives on domestication of the donkey : a first synthesis / Fiona Marshall

Using linguistics to reconstruct African subsistence systems : comparing crop names to trees and livestock / Roger Blench.

Notes:

"Developed from a session entitled 'Inherited Models and the Denial of Prehistory: Challenging Existing Concepts of Agriculture' at the Fifth World Archaeological Congress (WAC5) in Washington DC in June 2003"--Pref.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.

ISBN:

9781598742602

1598742604

OCLC:

124036305