Abstract
The Holocene histories of Island Southeast Asia, New Guinea and Australia have often been portrayed in terms of clear regional distinctions. Each region had a distinctive character or signature: the maritime landscapes of Island Southeast Asia were widely inhabited by hunter-gatherer-fisher communities prior to colonisation by Austronesian language-speaking farmer-voyagers ultimately derived from Taiwan, the island of New Guinea was a place of early and independent agricultural development and plant domestication, whereas Australia was the continent of hunter-gatherers until settlement by Europeans within the last 250 years. A consideration of new multidisciplinary data challenges these regional (mis)conceptions, which are heavily based on isolationist and essentialist characterisations of long-term history. Humanaided dispersals of animal and plant species shed an increasing light on the socio-spatial inter-connections between the people who inhabited these regions.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Human Dispersal and Species Movement |
Subtitle of host publication | From Prehistory to the Present |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 164-193 |
Number of pages | 30 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781316686942 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781107164147 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2017 |