Abstract
Borneo has a 50,000-year record of Homo sapiens' interactions with rainforest on the coastal lowlands assembled especially by the interdisciplinary investigation of the archaeology and palaeoecology of the Niah Caves on the coastal plain of Sarawak (Barker et al., 2007; Barker, 2013). More recent work by many of the same team in the interior of Borneo, in the Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak, has combined those approaches with ethnography and anthropology to investigate recent and present-day, as well as past, human-rainforest interactions. In combination, the two projects indicate that the present-day rainforests of Borneo are the product of a deep ecological history related to both natural factors such as climate change and cultural factors such as how different groups of people chose to extract their livelihoods from the forest, including in ways that do not have simple analogies with the subsistence activities of present-day rainforest foragers and farmers in Borneo.
Highlights
As late as the 1980s it was commonly held that Quaternary climates in the tropics were virtually stable and that the great tropical forests of the world had been little affected by climate change
Botanical and archaeological opinion held that these tropical forests were effectively primeval, largely unaffected by human activity until recent times (e.g. Gamble 1993; Meggers, 1971; Balee, 1989), even though the 1950s and 1960s excavations by Tom and Barbara Harrisson in the Niah Caves in Sarawak, Borneo (Harrisson, 1970) and the 1960s and 1970s work of Jack Golson at Kuk in the New Guinea Highlands (Golson and Hughes 1980; Golson, 1985; Golson, 1989) had demonstrated that archaeological sites existed in the Pleistocene and Early Holocene where the available evidence suggested that there had been rainforest environments contemporary with the human activity
By the 1990s it was apparent that tropical forests had waned in area and changed markedly in composition during the Pleistocene glaciations (e.g. Flenley, 1996; van der Kaars and Dam, 1997; Morley, 2000) and in Southeast Asia and New Guinea palynologists were reporting biomass burning and forest disturbance across the region (e.g. Maloney, 1980; Maloney, 1985; Hope, 1998; Kealhofer and Piperno, 1998; Maloney, 1999; Flenley and Butler, 2001)
Summary
As late as the 1980s it was commonly held that Quaternary climates in the tropics were virtually stable and that the great tropical forests of the world had been little affected by climate change. Gamble 1993; Meggers, 1971; Balee, 1989), even though the 1950s and 1960s excavations by Tom and Barbara Harrisson in the Niah Caves in Sarawak, Borneo (Harrisson, 1970) and the 1960s and 1970s work of Jack Golson at Kuk in the New Guinea Highlands (Golson and Hughes 1980; Golson, 1985; Golson, 1989) had demonstrated that archaeological sites existed in the Pleistocene and Early Holocene where the available evidence suggested that there had been rainforest environments contemporary with the human activity It was debated amongst archaeologists and anthropologists whether past foraging (hunting and gathering) peoples would have been able to live in rainforest, because trading forest products with neighbouring agriculturalists was a critical part of the survival strategies of most present-day tropical foragers These spatially and temporally variable ecological histories were related to people’s different ways of living together as well as how they extracted their livelihoods from the forest, including in ways that do not have simple analogies with the subsistence activities of present-day rainforest foragers and farmers in Borneo
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
