| Why Cultivate? Anthropological and Archaeological Approaches to Foraging-Farming Transitions in Southeast Asia Contributor(s): Barker, Graeme (Editor), Janowski, Monica (Editor) |
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ISBN: 1902937589 ISBN-13: 9781902937588 Publisher: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Researc OUR PRICE: $66.50 Product Type: Hardcover Published: May 2011 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | Ancient - General - Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social - Social Science | Archaeology |
| Dewey: 630.959 |
| Series: McDonald Institute Monographs |
| Physical Information: 0.6" H x 8.4" W x 11.1" (1.95 lbs) 142 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - Ancient (To 499 A.D.) - Cultural Region - Southeast Asian |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Does it make sense to understand the prehistory, history and present-day patterns of life in Southeast Asia in terms of a distinction between two ways of life: "farming" and "foraging"? This is the central question addressed by the anthropologists and archaeologists contributing to this volume. Inherent within the question "Why Cultivate?" are people's relationships with the physical world: are they primarily to do with subsistence and economics or with social and/or cultural forces? The answers given by the contributors are complex. On a practical level they argue that there is a continuum rather than a sharp break between different levels of management of the environment, but rice-growing usually represents a profound break in people's relations to their cultural and symbolic landscapes. An associated point made by the archaeologists is that the "deep histories" of foraging-farming lifeways that are emerging in this region sit uncomfortably with the theory that foraging was replaced by farming in the mid Holocene as a result of a migration of Austronesian-speaking Neolithic farmers from southern China and Taiwan. |