| Abstract: |
Several recent articles in <i>Antiquity</i> (Barker et al. 2011a
Hung et al. 2011
Spriggs 2011), discuss the validity of, and revise, portrayals of an Austronesian farming-language dispersal across Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) during the mid-Holocene (approximately 4000-3000 years ago). In conventional portrayals of the Austronesian dispersal hypothesis (e.g. Bellwood 1984/85, 1997, 2002, 2005
Diamond 2001
Diamond & Bellwood 2003), and its Neolithic variant (e.g. Spriggs 2003, 2007), farmer-voyagers mirated out of Taiwan approximately 4500-4000 cal BP to colonise ISEA from 4000 cal BP (Bellwood 2002) and the Mariana Islands and Palau by c. 3500-3400 cal BP (Hung et al. 2011). The descendants of these voyagers subsequently established the Lapita Cultural Complex in the Bismarck Archipelago by c. 3470-3250 cal BP (Kirch 1997
Spriggs 1997) and became the foundational cultures across most of the Pacific from c. 3250-3100 cal BP (Kirch 2000
Addison & Matisoo-Smith 2010
dates for Lapita in Denham et al. 2012). A major problem with this historical metanarrative is the absence of substantial archaeological evidence for the contemporaneous spread of farming from Taiwan (Bulbeck 2008
Donohue & Denham 2010
Denham 2011). There is widespread consensus that the colonization of most of Remote Oceania after 3250-3100 cal BP was enabled by vegetative forms of cultivation and plants characteristic of the New Guinea region, as well as a suite of animal domesticates-chicken, dog and pig-of the ultimate mainland Asian origin. There is considerable uncertainty and debate concerning how this Pacific production system developed within the maritime landscape of ISEA and Near Oceania during the mid-Holocene, especially within the putative framework of Austronesian dispersal (from c.4500-4000 cal BP), and before its dispersal eastward to Remote Oceania (from 3250-3100 cal BP). In this discursive note, which draws upon a host of recent literature, an alternative view of early agriculture in ISEA is proposed that does not rely upon Austronesian dispersal from Taiwan. This alternative working hypothesis is based upon multidisciplinary evidence from ISEA, including the generation and spread of associated animal and plant domesticates. This interpretation does not privilege on region over another
rather it is multilocal and multidirectional.
|
