Production systems and the colonization of the Western Pacific

Abstract

Abstract This paper summarizes the evidence for prehistoric subsistence systems in the Western Pacific. A number of points are made. First, that there is evidence for the genetic manipulation of plants and the movement of animals beyond their natural range in the Pleistocene within Papua New Guinea. Horticulture is not a sudden invention during the Holocene but derives from the slow transition of practices over millennia. Changing forms of subsistence gradually open the remote Pacific to human colonization. The colonization of remote Oceania (the area east of the Solomons) takes place after 3000 BP, at which time there is direct evidence of complex forms of tree cropping in the archaeological record and the probable existence of root crops. Even in the initial stages of the colonization of remote Oceania there is considerable evidence of a diversity of subsistence systems. This diversity is also paralleled in the production of material culture, indicating that the process of colonization was also one of social pioneering and experiment.