Early Agriculture and Plant Domestication in New Guinea and Island Southeast Asia

Abstract

A multidimensional conceptual framework is advanced that characterizes early agriculture as a subset of human-environment interactions. Three cross-articulating dimensions of human-environment interaction are considered that accommodate the varied expressions of early agriculture in different parts of the world: spatial scales, transformative mechanisms, and temporalities of associated phenomena. These ideas are applied and exemplified at two different scales of resolution-contextual and comparative-in terms of early agricultural development in the highlands of New Guinea and the dispersal of domesticates from New Guinea into Island Southeast Asia.