Ref ID:	37916
Ref Type:	Journal Article
Authors:	Huw Barton
Title:	16 - Early agriculture in Southeast Asia and the Pacific
Date:	May 2015
Source:	The Cambridge World History
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
DOI:	doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511978807.017
Abstract:	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.
Editors:	Graeme Barker and Candice Goucher
Page Start:	411
Page End:	444