| Abstract: |
Indonesia has a very long record of hominin occupation involving at least three human species. It also has a rich diversity of plants and a suite of economically important starch-rich staples that include taro (<i>Colocasia esculenta</i>), yams (<i>Dioscorea</i> spp.), bananas (<i>Musa</i> spp.) and sago palms. However very little is known about the prehistory of plant exploitation in the island archipelago. Key archaeological issues that are often discussed and debated, but remain poorly understood, include human adaptations and economic strategies used in different and changing environments, how local economies contributed to the development of plant management systems within the southeast Asian/Pacific regions, and how they might have been influenced by plant management systems initiated and developed elsewhere. Crucial to a burgeoning focus on archaeobotany in island Southeast Asia is the establishment of comparative modern reference collections for the flora of the region. This paper discusses the ‘Indonesian Starch Project’, the relevance of a comparative modern starch reference collection to Indonesian archaeology and the methods and procedures used in its development. The collection is broad-based and focuses on economically and ecologically important plant groups. To date 121 families and 451genera are represented in the collection.
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