Rethinking Agriculture

Archaeological and Ethnoarchaeological Perspectives

Timothy P Denham, José Iriarte, Luc Vrydaghs, Timothy P Denham, José Iriarte, Luc Vrydaghs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781598742602
• eBook ISBN: 9781315420998
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

CHAPTER 1

Rethinking Agriculture: Introductory Thoughts

Luc Vrydaghs and Tim Denham

… thoughts about food in prehistory are changing and that with a proper combination of the theoretical and technical a rounded disciplinary approach is possible, which will do justice to the richness of the subject-matter (Gosden 1999: 8).

Each contributor to this book accepted an invitation to rethink agriculture, whether in terms of existing regional chronologies, in terms of techniques employed, or in terms of the concepts that frame our interpretations. In this book, new archaeological and ethnoarchaeological research on agriculture, and mostly on early agriculture, is presented for several non-Eurasian regions, including Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific, the Americas and Africa. These broad geographical regions include places often underrepresented in discussions of early agriculture, namely, New Guinea, lowland South America, and the African tropics (see Bellwood 2005 for a recent example).

Although the need to study agriculture in different parts of the world on its ‘own terms’ has long been recognised (Harris 1977) and reaffirmed (Piperno and Pearsall 1998), 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 across the globe are becoming increasingly aware of fundamental differences in the nature of, and methods employed to study, agriculture and plant exploitation in the past. Most contributions to this volume bring a conceptual and technical richness to their understanding of agriculture and plant exploitation, a richness developed through research in specific geographical, social and temporal contexts. In doing so, contributors build upon and extend the substantive, technical and theoretical deliberations of previous One World Archaeology books (ie Gosden and Hather 1999; Harris and Hillman 1989; Hather 1994).

In the following three sections, conceptual themes discussed by contributors to this volume, which are of general significance to the study of early agriculture, are briefly considered. These themes comprise: persistent problems with domestication-based definitions of agriculture, the diffuseness of early agricultural practices, and the importance of understanding the social contexts within which agriculture is practised. The last section of this introduction sketches how the new substantive findings reported here change our regional interpretations of early agriculture.

DEFINING AGRICULTURE: PERSISTENT PROBLEMS

Despite attempts to provide an inclusive definition, there are persistent disagreements about what constitutes agriculture (eg Harris 1989, 1996a, chapter 2). Problems of definition and corresponding archaeological visibility are most acute for differentiating early agriculture from other practices. Alternative conceptions centre on animal and plant domestication, as determined by genetic and morphological changes attributed to human agency (Harris chapter 2; cf Jones and Brown chapter 3), environmental change (Pearsall chapter 11), and social dependence (Spriggs 1996). Some have argued for the abandonment of the term altogether (Terrell et al 2003), while others have worked without an explicit definition of agriculture (Golson 1997, chapter 6). These disagreements are usually more than ‘semantic’ (cf Harris 1996b: 3); they are fundamental and relate to the idea of agriculture that we bring to our work and transform through our work.

None of the contributors to this volume follow the call by Terrell et al (2003) to abandon the term ‘agriculture’. The word has a long tradition in several European societies from which it has colonised other areas of the world (Harris chapter 2). Although the word and its meaning are inevitably Eurocentric and not always directly transferable to other sociocultural situations (Sayre chapter 12), the term is widely used in academic and public discourse across the globe. Certainly more attention should be paid to how words, categories and concepts relevant to the study of agriculture translate between different regions and people, but this is true of many words and does not necessarily negate the value of their continued use.

If we abandon ‘agriculture’, surely the arena of debate will only shift onto other words and categories that replace it. Such problems are amply demonstrated by attempts to insert intermediate categories between the traditional terms of ‘hunter-gatherer’ and ‘agriculture’ – such as ‘domiculture’ (Hynes and Chase 1982), ‘incipient agriculture’ (Ford 1985), ‘complex hunter-gatherers’ (Zvelebil 1986), ‘transitional’ and ‘proto-agricultural’ (Yen 1989), ‘wild-plant food production’ (Cauvin 1997; Harris 1989, 1996b), ‘hunter-horticulturalism’ (Guddemi 1992), ‘low-level food production’ (Smith 2001) and the list goes on – as well as attempts to subsume these traditional categories using more inclusive concepts – such as ‘domus’ (Hodder 1990) or ‘domesticated landscapes’ (Terrell et al 2003). These new terms do not fully solve the problem. The conceptual battleground shifts from ‘agriculture’ to alternative categorical and linguistic lines designed to demarcate or include.

Problems of definition are most acute in the demarcation of early agriculture and its differentiation from other types of practice in the past. These problems arise whether morphogenetic, environmental or social interpretations are followed. For example, many researchers, including several contributors to this volume, consider domestication, or at least a high level of dependence upon domesticates, to be a key determinant of ‘agriculture’. Undoubtedly, deliberate and unintentional morphological changes in plants and animals, and more recent genetic engineering, have greatly augmented people’s ability to obtain food. However, if morphogenetic changes in the past, as argued by Jones and Brown (chapter 3), have potentially been a product of genetic (often geographic) isolation of an animal or plant from its wild population (to prevent crossbreeding with wild varieties, etc), as well as a product of selective pressure, then three problems arise in trying to link the earliest agricultural practices and morphogenetic traces of initial domestication.

First, if we assume people practising a nascent form of agriculture took a species out of its original natural range, then the locus of the earliest agricultural practices may not necessarily yield the anticipated domestication signal (evident through morphogenetic change), or at least not one that is as marked as the signal in the region into which the early agriculturalists spread. In other words, the earliest practices need not yield the earliest clear evidence of morphogenetic change (consider Marshall chapter 20); only beyond the natural range can interbreeding with wild populations be prevented and reproductive isolation be assured (Jones and Brown chapter 3). Thus the clearest signals of domestication are likely to show up in the archaeobotanical or archaeozoological records at a later date and in a neighbouring region beyond the natural range of the plant or animal. According to this scenario, signals of domestication for cultivated plants and animals, whether dispersing as a result of demic expansion (eg papers in Bellwood and Renfrew 2003) or cultural interaction (eg Thomas 1996), would not be anticipated to be congruent in time or space. For example, archaeobotanical evidence of supposedly ‘African crops’, ie finger millet (Eleusine coracana L.) and sorghum millet (Sorghum bicolor [L.] Moench), on the Indian subcontinent are older than most reported for the African continent (Misra and Kajale 2003). Similarly, claims for the presence of Sorghum in Korea during the Plain Pottery Period (c 4000–2500 BP) are noteworthy (Kim et al 1978; Yim 1978). Changes through time and the sociospatial distribution of domestication signals would be animal- and plant-specific and depend upon variations in natural ranges, the abilities of species to adapt to new environmental conditions and social contexts of use (Denham 2005; Marshall chapter 20).

Secondly, and conversely, if we assume a wild plant or animal was taken out of its natural range, then signals comparable to those anticipated for domestication could be generated by what would otherwise be considered a non-agricultural practice. The claimed Pleistocene translocation of plants, most notably Canarium indicum (Yen 1996) and marsupials (White 2004), between New Guinea and islands of the Bismarck Archipelago (cf Spriggs 1997: 53–54) would undoubtedly result in reproductive isolation and could have, depending upon the nature of subsequent exploitation practices in different locales, yielded morphogenetic markers akin to those anticipated from agricultural dispersal (Yen 1996 on Canarium indicum). A similar case may pertain to the movement of starch-rich plants, most notably Musa bananas, taro (Colocasia esculenta) and yams (Dioscorea spp.) in the interior of New Guinea at the end of the Pleistocene and in the early Holocene (Denham and Barton 2006). Highland and lowland locales are so close together, ie within a day’s walk, that people may have moved plants out of their natural ranges through adventitious exploitation, curation of reproductive portions, translocation and planting. In highland environments, the plants might have established a foothold and slowly adapted under human intervention, either sexually or somatically, to produce distinctive morphotypes and phenotypes (cf Golson chapter 6). Thus practices more generally regarded as typical of foraging behaviour, and not ordinarily acknowledged as representing agriculture, can yield distinctive macrofossil, microfossil and molecular characteristics.

Third, a similar argument pertains to the exploitation of morphogenetically altered plants and animals that are known to have radiated from a geographical region, or regions, as a result of natural dispersal or by people practicing extensive forms of plant exploitation. The presence of morphologically ‘domesticated’ plants and animals does not assure the presence of ‘agriculture’. Such a scenario may be relevant to the dispersal of maize (Zea mays) after it diffused into some regions of North and South America, where it remained a minor crop and contributor to diet for extended periods. The incorporation of maize into preexisting wild plant food production strategies need not signal the advent of ‘agriculture’, because much depends upon the importance of maize cultivation relative to other food-yielding practices (Fritz chapter 10).

The fixation with morphogenetic changes in plants and animals as indicators of agriculture was initially derived from work in Eurasia, and particularly Southwest Asia (Harris chapter 2). However, chronological and spatial records of morphogenetic change have yet to be fully analysed for most intensively managed animals and plants in other regions, although such records are beginning to be developed (eg Harris chapter 2; Iriarte chapter 9). Of note, the reconstruction of morphogenetic transformations resulting from the human management of vegetatively propagated starch-rich plants are poorly understood. For some plants, eg the greater yam (Dioscorea alata), the wild ancestors of cultivated varieties are not known (Martin and Rhodes 1977), whereas for other plants, eg taro (Colocasia esculenta), some knowledge of wild ancestors is emerging (Matthews 1991, 1995), but there is a lack of research and knowledge tracking morphogenetic changes into the past. Additionally, there are environmental and social reasons why some plants and animals have not undergone full domestication despite millennia of cultivation and stockbreeding, eg pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum; Kahlheber and Neumann chapter 17) and donkeys (Equus spp.) in Africa (Marshall chapter 20). The absence of morphogenetic change does not necessarily signal an absence of agriculture.

If morphogenetic signals are not to be used as definitive indicators of early agriculture, upon what types of evidence are signals of early agriculture to rest? A striking characteristic of most investigations of early and later agriculture in the regions discussed in this book is a reliance on multiple lines of evidence. These range from morphogenetic changes in plants and animals to worldviews; they do not fetishise one effect of agriculture as a diagnostic indicator of its presence, but embed archaeobotanical and archaeozoological evidence within broader environmental and social contexts.

DIFFUSENESS OF EARLY AGRICULTURE

The lack of a clear definition for agriculture, particularly early agriculture, reflects its multifaceted nature. The resultant porosity of the concept of agriculture mirrors a diffuseness in its geographical, social and temporal manifestations in the past. From such a perspective, there is less of a concern with identifying cores/peripheries and centres/non-centres; rather, we begin to see a diffuseness manifest as asynchronies and mosaics of practices related to cultivation, domestication and environmental transformation in diverse social contexts, both across space and through time (Denham 2005). Several contributors to this volume emphasise the social or environmental contexts of agriculture, as well as animal and plant exploitation practices (Denham chapter 5; Fritz chapter 10; Iriarte chapter 14; Kahlheber and Neumann chapter 17), and others do so by drawing explicitly on ethnobotanical or ethnographic information to enliven their interpretations (Bayliss-Smith chapter 7; Hildebrand chapter 15; Louwagie and Langohr chapter 8; Marshall chapter 20; Pearsall chapter 11; Sayre chapter 12).

Early agriculture in New Guinea, Africa and the Americas is characterised by a ‘diffuseness’ (after Bellwood’s [2005] application of the term to early agriculture in the Americas). In contrast to discrete centres of early agricultural development and spread, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Rethinking Agriculture: Introductory Thoughts
• 2 Agriculture, Cultivation and Domestication: Exploring the Conceptual Framework of Early Food Production
• 3 Selection, Cultivation and Reproductive Isolation: A Reconsideration of the Morphological and Molecular Signals of Domestication
• 4 Subterranean Diets in the Tropical Rain Forests of Sarawak, Malaysia
• 5 Early to Mid-Holocene Plant Exploitation in New Guinea: Towards a Contingent Interpretation of Agriculture
• 6 Unravelling the Story of Early Plant Exploitation in Highland Papua New Guinea
• 7 The Meaning of Ditches: Interpreting the Archaeological Record from New Guinea Using Insights from Ethnography
• 8 Perspectives on Traditional Agriculture from Rapa Nui
• 9 New Perspectives on Plant Domestication and the Development of Agriculture in the New World
• 10 Keepers of Louisiana’s Levees: Early Mound Builders and Forest Managers
• 11 Modeling Prehistoric Agriculture through the Palaeoenvironmental Record: Theoretical and Methodological Issues
• 12 Chronicling Indigenous Accounts of the ‘Rise of Agriculture’ in the Americas
• 13 Starch Remains, Preservation Biases and Plant Histories: An Example from Highland Peru
• 14 Emerging Food-Producing Systems in the La Plata Basin: The Los Ajos Site
• 15 A Tale of Two Tuber Crops: How Attributes of Enset and Yams may have Shaped Prehistoric Human-Plant Interactions in Southwest Ethiopia
• 16 Multidisciplinary Evidence of Mixed Farming during the Early Iron Age in Rwanda and Burundi
• 17 The Development of Plant Cultivation in Semi-Arid West Africa
• 18 Human Impact and Environmental Exploitation in Gabon during the Holocene
• 19 The Establishment of Traditional Plantain Cultivation in the African Rain Forest: A Working Hypothesis
• 20 African Pastoral Perspectives on Domestication of the Donkey: A First Synthesis
• 21 Using Linguistics to Reconstruct African Subsistence Systems: Comparing Crop Names to Trees and Livestock
• Subject Index
• Botanical Index
• About the Contributors