Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-g9frx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-15T05:59:41.579Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Across the Indian Ocean: the prehistoric movement of plants and animals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Dorian Q Fuller ,
Nicole Boivin ,
Tom Hoogervorst  and
Robin Allaby
Dorian Q Fuller
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31–34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK (Email: [email protected])
Nicole Boivin
Affiliation:
School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, New Barnett House, 28 Little Clarendon Street, Oxford OX1 2HU, UK
Tom Hoogervorst
Affiliation:
School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, New Barnett House, 28 Little Clarendon Street, Oxford OX1 2HU, UK
Robin Allaby
Affiliation:
School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, Wellesbourne, Warwick CV35 9EF, UK
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Here is a major research project that is peopling the Indian Ocean with prehistoric seafarers exchanging native crops and stock between Africa and India. Not the least exciting part of the work is the authors' contention that the prime movers of this maritime adventure were not the great empires but a multitude of small-scale entrepreneurs.

Keywords

IndiaSri LankaIsland Southeast AsiaNeolithicBronze Agemilletbananachicken
Type
Debate
Information
Antiquity , Volume 85 , Issue 328 , June 2011 , pp. 544 - 558
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2011

References

Arnold, J. E. 1995. Transportation innovation and social complexity among maritime hunter-gatherer communities. American Anthropologist 97(4): 733–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asouti, E. & Fuller, D. Q. 2008. Trees and woodlands of South India. Archaeological perspectives. Walnut Creek (CA): Left Coast Press.Google Scholar
Auffray, J.-C., Vanlerberghe, F. & Brittondavidian, J. 1990. The house mouse progression in Eurasia: a palaeontological and archaeozoological approach. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 41:13–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bellina, B. & Glover, I. 2004. The archaeology of early contact with India and the Mediterranean world, from the fourth century BC to the fourth century AD, in Glover, I. & Bellwood, P. (ed.) Southeast Asia: from prehistory to history: 68–88. London: Routledge Curzon.Google Scholar
Bellina-Pryce, B. & Silapanth, P. 2008. Weaving cultural identities on trans-Asiatic networks: Upper Thai-Malay Peninsula – an early socio-political landscape. Bulletin de l'Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient 93:257–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bellwood, P. 1987. The Polynesians. Prehistory of an island people. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Bellwood, P. 1997. Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago. Honolulu (HI): University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
Berthouly-Salazar, C., Rognon, X., Nhu Van, T., Gély, M., Vu Chi, C., Tixier-Boichard, M., Bed'hom, B., Bruneau, N., Verrier, E., Maillard, J. C. & Michaux, J. R. 2010. Vietnamese chickens: a gate towards Asian genetic diversity. BMC Genetics 11:53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blench, R. M. 2009. Bananas and plantains in Africa: re-interpreting the linguistic evidence. Ethnobotanical Research and Applications 7:363–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boivin, N. L. & Fuller, D. Q. 2009. Shell middens, ships and seeds: exploring coastal subsistence, maritime trade and the dispersal of domesticates in and around the ancient Arabian Peninsula. Journal of World Prehistory 22:113–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boivin, N., Blench, R., & Fuller, D. Q. 2009. Archaeological, linguistic and historical sources on ancient seafaring: a multidisciplinary approach to the study of early maritime contact and exchange in the Arabian Peninsula, in Petraglia, M. D. & Rose, J.I. (ed.) The evolution of human populations in Arabia. Paleoenvironments, prehistory and genetics: 251–78. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Boursot, P., Auffray, J.-C., Britton-Davidian, J. & Bonhomme, F. 1993. The evolution of house mice. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 24:119–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burkill, I. H. 1966. A dictionary of the economic products of the Malay Peninsula. Kuala Lampur: Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives.Google Scholar
Cappers, R. 2006. Roman foodprints at Berenike. Los Angeles (CA): Costen Institute of Archaeology.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castillo, C. & Fuller, D. Q. 2010. Still too fragmentary and dependent upon chance? Advances in the study of early Southeast Asian archaeobotany, in Bellina, B., Bacus, E., Pryce, O. & Wisseman-Christie, J. (ed.) Studies in honour of Ian Glover: 91–111. Bangkok: River Books.Google Scholar
De Langhe, E. 2007. The establishment of traditional plantain cultivation in the African rain forest: a working hypothesis, in Denham, T., Iriarte, J. & Vrydaghs, L. (ed.) Rethinking agriculture: archaeological and ethnoarchaeological perspectives: 361–70. Walnut Creek (CA): Left Coast Press.Google Scholar
Donohoe, M. & Denham, T. 2009. Banana (Musa spp.) domestication in the Asia-Pacific region: linguistics and archaeobotanical perspectives. Ethnobotany Research & Applications 7:293–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doran, E. 1981. Wangka. Austronesian canoe origins. College Station (TX): Texas A & M University Press.Google Scholar
Duplantier, J.-M., Orth, A., Catalan, J. & Bonhomme, F. 2002. Evidence for a mitochondrial lineage originating from the Arabian Peninsula in the Madagascar house mouse (Mus musculus). Heredity 89:154–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eriksson, J., Larson, G., Gunnarsson, U., Bed'hom, B., Tixier-Boichard, M., Strömstedt, L., Wright, D., Jungerius, A., Vereijken, A., Randi, E., Jensen, P. & Andersson, L. 2008. Identification of the Yellow Skin gene reveals a hybrid origin of the domestic Chicken. PLoS Genetics 4(2): e1000010.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fischer, C.E.C. 1938. Where did the sandalwood tree (Santalum album Linn.) evolve? Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 40:458–66.Google Scholar
Frachetti, M. D., Spengler, R. N., Fritz, G. J. & Mar'yashev, A. N. 2010. Earliest direct evidence for broomcorn millet and wheat in the Central Eurasia steppe region. Antiquity 84:993–1010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuller, D.Q. 2003. African crops in prehistoric South Asia: a critical review, in Neumann, K., Butler, A. & Kahlheber, S. (ed.) Food, fuel and fields. Progress in African archaeobotany (Africa Praehistorica 15): 239–71. Cologne: Heinrich-Barth Institut.Google Scholar
Fuller, D.Q. 2007. Non-human genetics, agricultural origins and historical linguistics, in Petraglia, M. & Allchin, B. (ed.) The evolution and history of human populations in South Asia: interdisciplinary Studies in archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics and genetics: 389–439. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Fuller, D.Q. 2008. The spread of textile production and textile crops in India beyond the Harappan zone: an aspect of the emergence of craft specialization and systematic trade, in Osada, T. & Uesugi, A. (ed.) Linguistics, archaeology and the human past (Indus Project Occasional Paper 3): 1–26. Kyoto: Indus Project, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature.Google Scholar
Fuller, D. Q. & Boivin, N. L. 2009. Crops, cattle and commensals across the Indian Ocean: current and potential archaeobiological evidence. Etudes Ocean Indien 42/43:13–46.Google Scholar
Fuller, D. Q. & Madella, M. 2001. Issues in Harappan archaeobotany: retrospect and prospect, in Settar, S. & Korisettar, R. (ed.) Protohistory: archaeology of the Harappan civilization: 317–90. New Delhi: Manohar.Google Scholar
Fuller, D. Q. & Madella, M. 2009. Banana cultivation in South Asia and East Asia: a review of the evidence from archaeology and linguistics. Ethnobotany Research & Applications 7:333–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuller, D. Q. & Qin, L. 2009. Water management and labour in the origins and dispersal of Asian rice. World Archaeology 41(1): 88–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuller, D. Q., Sato, Y.-I., Castillo, C., Qin, L., Weisskopf, A. R., Kingwell-Banham, E. J., Song, J., Ahn, S.-M. & Van Etten, J. 2010. Consilience of genetics and archaeobotany in the entangled history of rice. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 2:115–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glidden, H. W. 1942. A comparative study of the Arabic nautical vocabulary from Al-’Aqabah, Transjordan. Journal of the American Oriental Society 62(1): 68–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanotte, O., Bradley, D. G., Ochieng, J. W., Verjee, Y., Hill, E. W. & Rege, J.E.O. 2002. African pastoralism: genetic imprints of origins and migrations. Science 296:336–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harbaugh, D. T. & Baldwin, B. G. 2008. Phylogeny and biogeography of the sandalwoods (Santalum, Santalaceae): repeated dispersals throughout the Pacific. American Journal of Botany 94:1028–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayden, B. 2009. The proof is in the pudding: feasting and the origins of domestication. Current Anthropology 50(5): 597–601.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Helms, M. W. 1988. Ulysses' sail: an ethnographic odyssey of power, knowledge, and geographical distance. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hingston, M., Goodman, S. M., Ganzhorn, J. U. & Sommer, S. 2005. Reconstruction of the colonization of southern Madagascar by introduced Rattus rattus. Journal of Biogeography 32:1549–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutterer, R. & Tranier, M. 1990. The immigration of the Asian house shrew (Suncus murinus) into Africa and Madagascar: vertebrates in the tropics, in Peters, G. & Hutterer, R. (ed.) Proceedings of the International Symposium on Vertebrate Biogeography and Systematics in the Tropics: 309–319. Bonn: Zoologisches Forschungsinstitut und Museum Alexander Koenig.Google Scholar
Ibeagha-Awemu, E.M., Jann, C. O., Weimann, C. & Erhardt, G. 2004. Genetic diversity, introgression and relationships among West/Central African cattle breeds. Genetics Selection Evolution 36:637–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnstone, T. M. & Muir, J. 1964. Some nautical terms in the Kuwaiti dialect of Arabic. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 27(2): 299–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kanginakudru, S., Metta, M., Jakati, R. D. & Nagaraju, J. 2008. Genetic evidence from Indian red jungle fowl corroborates multiple domestication of modern day chicken. BMC Evolutionary Biology 8:174.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kennedy, J. 2009. Bananas: towards a revised prehistory, in Fairbairn, A. & Weiss, E. (ed.) From foragers to farmers. Papers in honour of Gordon C. Hillman: 190–204. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
Khalidi, L. 2009. Holocene obsidian exchange in the Red Sea region, in Petraglia, M. & Rose, J. (ed.) The evolution of human populations in Arabia: 279–91. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Kurachi, M., Chau, B.-L., Dang, V.-B., Dorji, T., Yamamoto, Y., Nyunt, M. M., Maeda, Y., Chhum-Phith Namikawa, L. & Yamagata, T. 2007. Population structure of wild musk shrews (Suncus murinus) in Asia based on mitochondrial DNA variation, with research in Cambodia and Bhutan. Biochemical Genetics 45(3/4): 165–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lejju, B. J., Robertshaw, P. & Taylor, D. 2006. Africa's earliest bananas? Journal of Archaeological Science 33:102–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lentfer, C. 2009. Tracing domestication and cultivation of bananas from phytoliths: an update from Papua New Guinea. Ethnobotany Research and Applications 7:247–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liebner, H. 1993. Remarks on the terminology of boatbuilding and seamanship in some languages of southern Sulawesi. Indonesia and the Malay World 21(59/60): 18–44.Google Scholar
Macdonald, K. 1992. The domestic chicken (Gallus gallus) in Sub-Saharan Africa: a background to its introduction and its osteological differentiation from indigenous fowls (Numidinae and Francolinus sp.). Journal of Archaeological Science 19:303–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macdonald, K. 2000. The origins and development of domesticated animals in arid West Africa, in Blench, R. & Macdonald, K. (ed.) The origins and development of African livestock: archaeology, genetics, linguistics and ethnography: 127–62. London: UCL Press.Google Scholar
Madella, M. & Fuller, D. Q. 2006. Palaeoecology and the Harappan civilisation of South Asia: a reconsideration. Quaternary Science Reviews 25:1283–1301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mahdi, W. 1999. The dispersal of Austronesian boat forms in the Indian Ocean, in Blench, R. & Spriggs, M. (ed.) Archaeology and language III. Artefacts, languages and texts: 144–79. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Marshall, F. 1989. Rethinking the role of Bos indicus in Sub-Saharan Africa. Current Anthropology 30:235–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mbida, CH., De Langhe, E., Vrydaghs, L., Doutrelpont, H., Swennen, R., Van Neer, W. & De Maret, P. 2006. Phytolith evidence for the early presence of domesticated banana (Musa) in Africa, in Zeder, M., Bailer, D., Emshwiller, E. & Smith, B. D. (ed.) Documenting domestication: new genetic and archaeological paradigms: 68–81Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.Google Scholar
Miller, J. I. 1968. The spice trade of the Roman Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mohebbi, P. 1996. A Persian nautical glossary from ca. 1900. Iran 34:129–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrison, K. 2002. Pepper in the hills: upland– lowland exchange and the intensification of the spice trade, in Morrison, K. D. & Junker, L. L. (ed.) Forager-traders in South and Southeast Asia: 105–128. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murdoch, G. P. 1959. Africa: its peoples and their culture history. New York: McGraw-HillGoogle Scholar
Neumann, K. & Hildebrand, E. 2009. Early bananas in Africa: the state of the art. Ethnobotany Research & Applications 7:353–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noda, K., Teerawatsakul, M., Prakongvongs, C. & Chaiwiratnukul, L. 1985. Major weeds in Thailand. Bangkok: Department of Agriculture.Google Scholar
Pearson, M. 2003. The Indian Ocean. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plu, A. 1985. Bois et graines, in Balout, L. & Roubet, C. (ed.) La momie de Ramse’s II. Contribution scientifique à l'égyptologie: 166–74. Paris: Editions Recherches sur les Civilisations.Google Scholar
Possehl, G. L. 1986. African millets in South Asian prehistory, in Jacobson, J. (ed.) Studies in the archaeology of India and Pakistan: 237–56. New Delhi: Oxford & IBH Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Possehl, G. L. 1997. The seafaring merchants of Meluhha, in Allchin, R. & Allchin, B. (ed.) South Asian archaeology 1995: 87–100. New Delhi: Oxford & IBH Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili nautical dictionary. Dar es Salaam: Chuo cha Uchunguzi wa Lugha ya Kiswahili.Google Scholar
Ratnagar, S. 1994. Harappan trade in its ‘world context’. Man and Environment 19(1/2): 115–28.Google Scholar
Ratnagar, S. 2000. The end of the great Harappan tradition. New Delhi: Manohar.Google Scholar
Ray, H. P. 2003. The archaeology of seafaring in ancient South Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Reddy, S. N. 1994. Plant usage and subsistence modeling: an ethnoarchaeological approach to the late Harappan of northwest India (PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin). Ann Arbor (MI): University Microfilms.Google Scholar
Southworth, F. 2005. The linguistic archaeology of South Asia. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tollenaere, C., Brouat, C., Duplantier, J.-M., Rahalison, L., Rahelinirina, S., Pascal, M., Moore, H., Mouahid, G., Liers, H. & Cosson, J-F. 2010. Phylogeography of the introduced species Rattus rattus in the western Indian Ocean, with special emphasis on the colonization history of Madagascar. Journal of Biogeography 37:398–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, S. A. 1991. Plants and Harappan subsistence. An example of stability and change from Rojdi. New Delhi: Oxford & IBH Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Williamson, K. 2000. Did chickens go west?, in Blench, R. & Macdonald, K. (ed.) The origins and development of African livestock: archaeology, genetics, linguistics and ethnography: 368–448. London: UCL Press.Google Scholar
Yamagata, T., Ohishi, K., Faruque, M. O., Masangkay, J. S., Ba-Loc, C., Vu-Binh, D., Mansjoer, S. S., Ikeda, H. & Namikawa, T. 1995. Genetic variation and geographic distribution of the mitochondrial DNA in local populations of the musk shrews, Suncus murinus. Japanese Journal of Genetics 70:321–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zumbroich, T. J. 2007. The origin and diffusion of betel chewing: a synthesis of evidence from South Asia, Southeast Asia and beyond. eJournal of Indian Medicine 1:87–140.Google Scholar