Putting the Dark Emu debate into context

IF 1.1 3区 历史学 Q2 ANTHROPOLOGY
Tim Denham, Mark Donohue
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

In this review of the Dark Emu debate we start out by summarising Bruce Pascoe's original work and Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe's critique. However, the majority of this contribution is to place this Australian-focussed debate into broader conceptual, methodological and evidential contexts generally associated with the investigation of early agriculture in other parts of the world. If we are to apply the term “agriculture” to Aboriginal plant management practices, then this requires a global, rather than a continental-centric comparative perspective. We argue debates regarding the character of plant exploitation practices on the Australian mainland, including whether they included forms of agriculture or experimental horticulture, have been hindered by a lack of terminological clarity, the absence of a methodological framework to assess empirically verifiable evidence, and – even more problematically – a lack of relevant data on the putative plants and practices involved. Here, terminology is clarified and a bottom-up, practice-based method is advocated for the assessment of recent (using oral, visual and written histories) and ancient (using archaeological, archaeobotanical and palaeoecological evidence) forms of food plant exploitation in Australia. The terminology and methodological framework are heuristically applied to three scenarios: (1) ethnographic and historical records for the exploitation of underground storage organs (USOs) on the Australian mainland; (2) historical documentation regarding the botany, potential human roles in dispersal, and Aboriginal exploitation of banana (Musa spp.), taro (Colocasia esculenta) and greater yam (Dioscorea alata) in northern Australia and (3) archaeobotanical evidence for the exploitation of USOs and other plants from The Top End.

Abstract Image

把关于黑暗鸸鹋的争论放到上下文中
在对黑暗鸸鹋辩论的回顾中,我们首先总结了布鲁斯·帕斯科的原著以及彼得·萨顿和凯琳·沃尔什的批评。然而,这一贡献的主要部分是将这场以澳大利亚为重点的辩论置于更广泛的概念、方法和证据背景中,这些背景通常与世界其他地区的早期农业调查有关。如果我们要将“农业”一词应用于土著植物管理实践,那么这需要一个全球的比较视角,而不是以大陆为中心的比较视角。我们认为,关于澳大利亚大陆植物开发实践的特征的辩论,包括它们是否包括农业或实验园艺的形式,由于缺乏术语清晰度,缺乏方法框架来评估经验可验证的证据,而且-更有问题的是-缺乏有关假定植物和实践的相关数据。在这里,术语被澄清,并提倡一种自下而上的、基于实践的方法来评估澳大利亚最近(使用口头、视觉和书面历史)和古代(使用考古、考古植物学和古生态证据)形式的食用植物开发。术语和方法框架启发式地应用于三种情况:(1)澳大利亚大陆地下储存器官(USOs)开采的民族志和历史记录;(2)关于植物学的历史文献,人类在香蕉(Musa spp.)、芋头(Colocasia esculenta)和山药(Dioscorea alata)在澳大利亚北部的传播和土著开发中的潜在作用;(3)来自the Top End的开发USOs和其他植物的考古植物学证据。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
1.80
自引率
0.00%
发文量
24
期刊介绍: Archaeology in Oceania is published online and in print versions three times a year: April, July, October. It accepts articles and research reports in prehistoric and historical archaeology, modern material culture and human biology of ancient and modern human populations. Its primary geographic focus is Australia, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and lands of the western Pacific rim. All articles and research reports accepted as being within the remit of the journal and of appropriate standard will be reviewed by two scholars; authors will be informed of these comments though not necessarily of the reviewer’s names.
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