Full Description
There is broad agreement that any unilineal progressive view of the `origins and spread of agriculture' is no longer sufficient to explain this most debated of topics in prehistory. Archaeological evidence for local (pre)historic trajectories, detailing the relationships between plants and animals, often beginning far back in the Palaeolithic and extending deep into the Holocene, now requires that we view the `transition to agriculture' in new ways, emphasising human action, perception and choice in place of the spread of farming peoples.This edited volume presents new research on the origins and spread of agriculture in the Japanese archipelago in a global perspective. Contributions include regional trajectories towards agriculture in East and Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas.
The papers advance discussion beyond models dominated by traditional understandings of the Neolithic revolution in southwestern Asia and Europe, to a truly global perspective on one of the most significant sets of developments in human history.
Contents
1. Introduction.- 2. The origins of agriculture: a global perspective.- 3. Re-assessing the `Wave of Advance' model and the Neolithic Revolution in Europe: the appearance of domesticates in the southeastern Baltic region.- 4. Comparing Models of Domestication: The Natufian and Beyond.- 5. Early agricultural dynamics in South and Central America.- 6. The Origins of Agriculture in Southeast Asia.- 7. Confronting old orthodoxies in the Chinese Neolithic.- 8. The spread of agricultural land-use strategy: the Chulmun-Mumun transition in Korea.- 9. Towards the introduction of wet rice cultivation in Japan: western Japan.- 10. Early agricultural histories in central Japan + The development of agricultural societies in eastern Japan.- 11. TBD.- 12. Conclusions.
