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16 - Early agriculture in Southeast Asia and the Pacific

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

By
Huw Barton
Edited by
Graeme Barker  and
Candice Goucher
Graeme Barker
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Candice Goucher
Affiliation:
Washington State University
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Summary

Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) and island Southeast Asia (ISEA) form a complex geographic and political region consisting of eleven countries spread from India to China and New Guinea. The best evidence currently of an early vegecultural agriculture lies in the intermontane valleys of New Guinea at the site of Kuk Swamp. Identification of vegecultural propagation systems require distinguishing, via proxy evidence, between what some may term systems of plant management as opposed to plant cultivation. The putative dispersal of East Asian agriculture and other Neolithic characteristics, into ISEA is argued to have occurred from Taiwan or mainland China and is often linked to the spread of Austronesian languages. Generally thought to derive from the red-slipped pottery tradition of ISEA, the phenomenon of Lapita pottery is yet another hotly contested archaeological expression of the Neolithic. Lapita peoples were originally thought to have practised horticulture involving root crops such as yams and taros as well as utilizing nuts and other tree crops.

Keywords

urban hinterlandurban agriculturedespotic control
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History , pp. 411 - 444
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

Further reading

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