ABSTRACT

This chapter is an attempt to go beyond what is strictly known about the agricultural history of New Guinea. What is known derives mainly from the highlands of Papua New Guinea. It also derives disproportionately from highly indirect forms of evidence, such as pollen diagrams and estimated rates of soil erosion, and from the archaeological record of ditches-especially those at the Kuk site near Mount Hagen and at Tari. These sources can be used to generate a history of the longue dureé (Golson and Gardner 1990; BaylissSmith 1996; Golson 1997), but in these accounts there is a striking lack of detail about the lives of the people who shaped this prehistory.