The Emergence of Agriculture ─ A Global View

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.

Tim Denham is a Monash and Australian Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Geography and Environmental Science. His research focuses on early agriculture in New Guinea, with additional interests in environmental archaeology and archaeological theory. He has recently initiated a 6-year project investigating rockshelter and cave sites along a highland-to-lowland transect in a remote region of Papua New Guinea.

Peter White is Honorary Research Associate in Archaeology, University of Sydney. His lifetime research interest is the archaeology of New Guinea and Australia. He has edited the journal Archaeology in Oceania for more than 20 years. His recent publications include articles on Pleistocene animal translocation, Lapita pottery and writing for publication.