Gardens and fields: the intensity and scale of food production

Abstract

The title of this issue, Garden Agriculture, may be regarded as unusual or even contentious; after all, the term 'agriculture' tends to be used to refer to larger-scale cultivation of seed crops in fields, while 'horticulture' or 'gardening' refers to small-scale cultivation of a range of food plants in gardens. In some parts of the world this opposition seems valid, referring simultaneously to the scale and intensity of cultivation and the type or range of crops cultivated. In parts of the tropics, however, the term horticulture, or gardening, has come to be used as a synonym for agriculture (Harris 1989: 19; paper by Denham); here garden cultivation is the dominant practice and gardens may contain both wild and domesticated species. What this highlights is the need for clarity in the terminology used when describing past agricultural systems (Leach 1997). Several separate though interrelated aspects come into play when trying to define the context, nature, and scale of ancient farming: intensity and scale of cultivation, range and type of plant species cultivated, archaeological recognition of different forms of cultivation and the social context in which these practices develop and thrive. Most would agree that gardens are more intensively cultivated than fields, but ever since Boserup's seminal work on The Conditions of Agricultural Growth (1965) archaeologists have struggled with the concept of agricultural intensification, wrongly equating differences in the intensity of cultivation with evolutionary stages of agricultural development. Based on ethnographic work, Boserup argued that an increase in population density was responsible for an increase in the intensity of cultivation, with extensive forms of swidden or slash-and-burn agriculture gradually becoming more intensive by a reduction of the fallow length (forest, fallow, bush fallow, short fallow, annual cropping, multi-cropping). Her suggestion that farming systems moved from extensive to intensive systems over time has been taken by some to mean that agriculture developed along a unidirectional evolutionary sequence starting with an extensive form of shifting cultivation. This is not the place to review Boserup's theory or the subsequent modifications or critiques (see Johnston 2003; Leach 1999; Morrison 1994, 1996; Netting 1993), but it is important to point out briefly some common misunderstandings. First, it is important to point out that shifting cultivation or swidden agriculture is an agricultural system adapted to a specific set of ecological circumstances, found primarily in the humid inner tropics, to ensure maintenance of soil fertility. It cannot, therefore, be seen to represent the starting point of all agricultural development. Ecologically, it does not make sense to try and apply such a system to areas like Europe and the Near East, where different soil types and the presence of domestic animals allowed different forms of nutrient restoration (Rowley-Conwy 1981; Sherratt 1981). In this region shifting cultivation is not an appropriate strategy. Moreover, archaeological evidence points to