The Prehistory of Food sets subsistence in its social context by focusing on food as a cultural artefact. It brings together contributors with a scientific and biological expertise as well as those interested in the patterns of consumption and social change, and includes a wide range of case studies.
This book tackles the issues of subsistence in its social context by focusing on food as a cultural artefact.
List of figures viii(3) List of tables xi(1) List of contributors xii(3) Preface xv Introduction 1(10) Chris Gosden Part I Food and culture 11(116) 1 Cash-crops before cash: organic consumables and trade 13(22) Andrew Sherratt 2 Cultural implications of crop introductions in Andean prehistory 35(24) Christine A. Hastorf 3 Uywana, the house and its indoor landscape: oblique approaches to, and beyond, domestication 59(24) Alejandro F. Haber 4 Of water and oil: exploitation of natural resources and social change in eastern Arabia 83(16) Soren Blau 5 Plant exploitation among the Nukak hunter-gatherers of Amazonia: between ecology and ideology 99(28) Gustavo G. Politis Part II Introductions 127(70) 6 Food processing technology: its role in inhibiting or promoting change in staple foods 129(10) Helen M. Leach 7 Subsistence changes in India and Pakistan: the Neolithic and Chalcolithic from the point of view of plant use today 139(8) K.L. Mehra 8 Megalithic monuments and the introduction of rice into Korea 147(19) Sarah Milledge Nelson 9 The dispersal of domesticated plants into north-eastern Japan 166(18) Catherine DAndrea 10 Native Americans and animal husbandary in the North American colony of Spanish Florida 184(13) Elizabeth J. Reitz Part III Food and the landscape 197(178) 11 The meaning of ditches: deconstructing the social landscapes of New Guinea, Kuk, Phase 4 199(33) Tim Bayliss-Smith Jack Golson 12 Different histories: a common inheritance for Papua New Guinea and Australia? 232(20) Chris Gosden Lesley Head 13 From the swamp to the terrace: intensification of horticultural practices in New Caledonia, from first settlement to European contact 252(18) Christophe Sand 14 Warfare and intensive agriculture in Fiji 270(18) Robert Kuhlken 15 Whose land is it anyway? An historical examination of land tenure and agriculture in northern Jordan 288(18) Carol Palmer 16 Getting a life: stability and change in social and subsistence systems on the North-West Frontier, Pakistan, in later prehistory 306(16) Ken Thomas 17 Interaction of maritime and agricultural adaptations in the Japan Sea basin 322(11) Yuri E. Vostretsov 18 Invisible pastoralists: an inquiry into the origins of nomadic pastoralism in the West African Sahel 333(17) Kevin MacDonald 19 Evidence for agricultural change in the Balikh basin, northern Syria 350(25) Willem van Zeist Part IV Plants and people 375(126) 20 Tracking the banana: its significance in early agriculture 377(20) Edmond De Langhe Pierre de Maret 21 The puzzle of the late emergence of domesticated sorghum in the Nile valley 397(22) Randi Haaland 22 The impact of maize on subsistence systems in South America: an example from the Jama river valley, coastal Ecuador 419(19) Deborah M. Pearsall 23 Starch in sediments: a new approach to the study of subsistence and land use in Papua New Guinea 438(25) Michael Therin Richard Fullagar Robin Torrence 24 Traditional seed cropping systems in the temperate Old World: models for antiquity 463(15) Ann Butler 25 Agrarian change and the beginnings of cultivation in the Near East: evidence from wild progenitors, experimental cultivation and archaeobotanical data 478(23) George Willcox Index 501
Chris Gosden, Jon G. Hather
