The Origins of Agriculture: New Data, New Ideas

Abstract

The Origins of Agriculture: New Data, New Ideas resulted from a Wenner-Gren-sponsored symposium held at the Hacienda Temozon, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, March 6–13, 2009 (fig. 1). The symposium was organized by T. Douglas Price (University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Aberdeen) and Ofer Bar-Yosef (Harvard University). The major aim of the symposium was to better understand the origins of agriculture in light of new fieldwork, new sites, new analytical techniques, and more radiocarbon dates. The global nature of agricultural origins was a key theme, and a major focus of the discussions was on East Asia as well as lesser-known regions such as Papua New Guinea, Africa, and eastern North America, alongside more traditional areas such as the Near East and Mesoamerica. The papers presented in this supplementary issue are designed to provide the latest information on the antiquity of agriculture covering at least 10 different centers of domestication. The organizers, Price and Bar-Yosef, note in their introduction that emerging data point to an unexpected synchronicity in the timing of the first domesticates around the end of the Pleistocene. They also note that, contrary to earlier thought, the environments in which agriculture originated were not marginal and that agricultural experimentation took place in areas of concentrations of populations and resources. Each major area may also have included multiple loci for domestication. These were major areas of agreement in a meeting that was characterized by lively debate over the variety of hypotheses proposed for agricultural origins and whether global or more area-specific explanations were most appropriate. As in any good meeting, there were more questions than answers, but this is the sign of a dynamic field. The degree of collegiality and collaboration among the diverse symposium participants and the speed at which new data are accumulating are good signs that our understanding of this important period in human adaptation will continue to evolve rapidly. The Wenner-Gren Foundation has had a long-standing in-