ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author outlines conceptual viewpoints that have been developed over the last 20 years. These are the farming/language dispersal hypothesis proposed by Peter Bellwood and Colin Renfrew, the concept of ‘low-level food production’ proposed by Bruce Smith, and a ‘post-processual’ turn to the study of early agriculture illustrated through Tim Ingold’s work. Proponents of the farming/language dispersal hypothesis consider the independent transition to agriculture by pre-existing ‘hunting-gathering-fishing’ communities to have been a rare historical event. They consider agriculture and non-agriculture to be two distinct and separate lifeways, with few groups in the past or the present occupying the intervening middle-ground. The resultant temporal–developmental disjuncture between domestication and agriculture is highlighted by Smith with reference to his own research into early agriculture. The author discusses key methodological developments in microfossil and molecular analyses of relevance to the investigation of early agriculture.
