ABSTRACT

This volume, the first in the One World Archaeology series, is a compendium of key papers by leaders in the field of the emergence of agriculture in different parts of the world. Each is supplemented by a review of developments in the field since its publication.



Contributions cover the better known regions of early and independent agricultural development, such as Southwest Asia and the Americas, as well as lesser known locales, such as Africa and New Guinea. Other contributions examine the dispersal of agricultural practices into a region, such as India and Japan, and how introduced crops became incorporated into pre-existing forms of food production.



This reader is intended for students of the archaeology of agriculture, and will also prove a valuable and handy resource for scholars and researchers in the area.

chapter 1|25 pages

Early agriculture

Recent conceptual and methodological developments

chapter 4|20 pages

Non-affluent foragers

Resource availability, seasonal shortages, and the emergence of agriculture in Panamanian tropical forests

chapter 5|23 pages

The impact of maize on subsistence systems in South America

An example from the Jama River valley, coastal Ecuador

chapter 10|10 pages

Subsistence changes in India and Pakistan

The Neolithic and Chalcolithic from the point of view of plant use today

chapter 12|25 pages

Agrarian change and the beginnings of cultivation in the Near East

Evidence from wild progenitors, experimental cultivation and archaeobotanical data