The roots of agriculture and arboriculture in New Guinea: Looking beyond Austronesian expansion, Neolithic packages and indigenous origins

2004/12/01 by Tim Denham · 114 citations
Arts and Humanities · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Social Sciences · #Agriculture #Agroforestry #Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory #Anthropology #Arboriculture #Archaeology #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Austronesian languages #Ecology #Ethnology #Geography #History #Indigenous #Indigenous culture #Linguistics #New guinea #Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies #Sociology

paper · doi:10.1080/0043824042000303791

published in World Archaeology 36(4), 610-620 (Routledge)

openalex publication_date 2004/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

Agriculture and arboriculture in New Guinea, like many other aspects of material culture, are often characterized as either introduced by Austronesian language-speakers in the mid-Holocene or as earlier and independent developments by pre-existing Papuan language-speakers. I raise concerns with both interpretative tendencies, which have often yielded superficial regional histories that provide one-dimensional impressions of people, practices and places in the past. Drawing on my own archaeological research into early agriculture and arboriculture, I illustrate alternative possibilities for historical interpretation that do not over-emphasize the pre-Lapita isolation of New Guinea, but instead focus on regional interactions and mutual transformations of practice before, during and after the presumed arrival of Austronesian language-speakers in the region.

Cited by

• Evidence of forest management and arboriculture from wood charcoal data: an anthracological case study from two New Caledonia Kanak pre-colonial sites
• Holocene landscape intervention and plant food production strategies in island and mainland Southeast Asia
• Farming and Language in Island Southeast Asia
• Early Agriculture and Plant Domestication in New Guinea and Island Southeast Asia

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• Reading Early Agriculture at Kuk Swamp, Wahgi Valley, Papua New Guinea: the Archaeological Features (Phases 1–3)
• West New Guinea: Social, Biological, and Material Histories
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