First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies

627 Pages·2004·9.43 MB·English

by  Peter Bellwood

FIRST
FARMERS
For Claudia, Tane, Hannah, and Charlie
The Origins of
Agricultural Societies
Peter Bellwood

Summary Contents
Detailed Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface
1 The Early Farming Dispersal Hypothesis in Perspective
2 The Origins and Dispersals of Agriculture: Some Operational Considerations
3 The Beginnings of Agriculture in Southwest Asia
4 Tracking the Spreads of Farming beyond the Fertile Crescent: Europe and Asia
5 Africa: An Independent Focus of Agricultural Development?
6 The Beginnings of Agriculture in East Asia
7 The Spread of Agriculture into Southeast Asia and Oceania
8 Early Agriculture in the Americas
9 What Do Language Families Mean for Human Prehistory?
10 The Spread of Farming: Comparing the Archaeology and the Linguistics
11 Genetics, Skeletal Anthropology, and the People Factor
12 The Nature of Early Agricultural Expansion
Notes
References
Index
Detailed Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface
1 The Early Farming Dispersal Hypothesis in Perspective
The Disciplinary Players
Broad Perspectives
Some Key Guiding Principles
2 The Origins and Dispersals of Agriculture: Some Operational Considerations
The Significance of Agriculture: Productivity and Population Numbers
Why Did Agriculture Develop in the First Place?
The Significance of Agriculture vis-a-vis Hunting and Gathering
Under What Circumstances Might Hunters and Gatherers Have Adopted
Agriculture in Prehistory?
Group 1: The "niche" hunter-gatherers of Africa and Asia
Group 2: The "unenclosed" hunter-gatherers of Australia, the Andamans, and the
Americas
Group 3: Hunter-gatherers who descend from former agriculturalists
Why Do Ethnographic Hunter-Gatherers Have Problems with Agricultural
Adoption? A Comparative View
To the Archaeological Record
3 The Beginnings of Agriculture in Southwest Asia
The Domestication of Plants in the Fertile Crescent
The Hunter-Gatherer Background in the Levant, 19,000 to 9500 BC
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic and the Increasing Dominance of Domesticated
Crops
How Did Cereal Domestication Begin in Southwest Asia?
The Archaeological Record in Southwest Asia in Broader Perspective
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic A
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic B
The Real Turning Point in the Neolithic Revolution
4 Tracking the Spreads of Farming beyond the Fertile Crescent: Europe and Asia
The Spread of the Neolithic Economy through Europe
Southern and Mediterranean Europe
Cyprus, Turkey, and Greece
The Balkans
The Mediterranean
Temperate and Northern Europe
The Danubians and the northern Mesolithic
The TRB and the Baltic
The British Isles
Hunters and farmers in prehistoric Europe
Agricultural Dispersals from Southwest Asia to the East
Central Asia
The Indian Subcontinent
The domesticated crops of the Indian subcontinent
Regional Trajectories from Hunter-Gathering to Farming in South Asia
The consequences of Mehrgarh
Western India: Balathal to Jorwe
Southern India
The Ganges Basin and northeastern India
Europe and South Asia in a nutshell
5 Africa: An Independent Focus of Agricultural Development?
The Spread of the Southwest Asian Agricultural Complex into Egypt
The Origins of the Native African Domesticates
The Development and Spread of Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa
The Appearance of Agriculture in Central and Southern Africa
6 The Beginnings of Agriculture in East Asia
Environmental Factors and the Domestication Process in China