Crops and Cultures in the Pacific: New data and new techniques for the investigation of old questions

Abstract

Fifty years ago Carl Sauer suggested, controversially and
on  the basis of  theory  rather  than evidence,  that South-
east Asia was the source area for agriculture throughout
the Old World,  including  the Pacific. Since  then,  the ar-
chaeobotanical  record  (macroscopic  and  microscopic)
from the Pacific islands has increased, leading to sugges-
tions, also still controversial,  that Melanesia was a cen-
ter of origin of agriculture independent of South-east Asia,
based on tree fruits and nuts and vegetatively propagated
starchy  staples.  Such  crops  generally  lack morphologi-
cal markers of domestication, so exploitation, cultivation
and domestication  cannot easily be distinguished  in  the
archaeological  record. Molecular  studies  involving  tech-
niques such as chromosome painting, DNA fingerprinting
and DNA sequencing, can potentially complement the ar-
chaeological  record by suggesting where species which
were  spread  through  the Pacific by man originated and
by what  routes  they  attained  their  present  distributions.
A combination of archaeobotanical and molecular studies
should therefore eventually enable the rival claims of Mel-
anesia versus South-east Asia as independent centers of
invention of agriculture to be assessed.