Early Holocene vegetation, human activity and climate from Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo

Hunt, Chris; Premathilake, Rathnasiri

doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2011.04.027

Cited by 34 publications

(31 citation statements)

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“…Multiple lines of evidence of ancient human activities have been recorded, however, across the tropics and these have likely influenced tropical forest structure and composition . Indeed, recent research has attested to early agriculture and land management dated to several thousand years ago in currently sparsely populated or depopulated areas (Barker et al 2007;Summerhayes et al 2010; Arroyo-Kalin 2012; Barton 2012; Barton et al 2012;Haberle et al 2012;Hunt and Premathilake 2012;Kennedy 2012;Kingwell-Banham and Fuller 2012;McNeil 2012;Rostain 2012;Sémah and Sémah 2012;Stahl and Pearsall 2012;Torrence 2012). In central Africa, artifacts (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Evidence of Human Activities During the Holocene in the Lowland Forests of the Northern Congo Basin

et al. 2014

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In the last decade, the myth of the pristine tropical forest has been seriously challenged. In central Africa, there is a growing body of evidence for past human settlements along the Atlantic forests, but very little information is available about human activities further inland. Therefore, this study aimed at determining the temporal and spatial patterns of human activities in an archaeologically unexplored area of 110,000 km 2 located in the northern Congo Basin and currently covered by dense forest. Fieldwork involving archaeology as well as archaeobotany was undertaken in 36 sites located in southeastern Cameroon and in the northern Republic of Congo. Evidence of past human activities through either artifacts or charred botanical remains was observed in all excavated test pits across the study area. The set of 43 radiocarbon dates extending from 15,000 BP to the present time showed a bimodal distribution in the Late Holocene, which was interpreted as two phases of human expansion with an intermediate phase of depopulation. The 2300-1300 BP phase is correlated with the migrations of supposed farming populations from northwestern Cameroon. Between 1300 and 670 BP, less material could be dated. This is in agreement with the population collapse already reported for central Africa. Following this, the 670-20 BP phase corresponds to a new period of human expansion known as the Late Iron Age. These results bring new and extensive evidence of human activities in the northern Congo Basin and support the established chronology for human history in central Africa.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Evidence of Human Activities During the Holocene in the Lowland Forests of the Northern Congo Basin

et al. 2014

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“…3). There is consistent evidence from the beginning of the Loagan Bunut record at the Pleistocene/Holocene transition for smallscale burning and the local presence of sago species including not only Eugeissona, Caryota, Arenga and but also, from 10.5 ka, Metroxylon, a sago palm that is native to New Guinea (Hunt and Premathilake, 2012;Hunt and Rabett, 2014, 26). Its apparent translocation to Borneo at this remarkably early date over some 3000 km of ocean is part of the growing evidence for the extensive maritime connections that linked the coastal communities of Island Southeast Asia from the very beginning of the Holocene following the flooding of the Sunda shelf (Blench, 2012;Blench, 2013;Bulbeck, 2008;Denham, 2010;Rabett and Piper, 2012;Rabett et al, 2013), thousands of years before the supposed Austronesian diaspora of Austronesian rice farmers.…”

Section: The Coastal Lowlands: Late Pleistocene Foraging and Its Ecolmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…Did these 'Neolithic people' cultivate rice? Rice pollen, some of it comparable morphologically with that of domestic rice (Oryza) but not attributable to species (either wild or domestic), is present in the two Niah cores from the time of the Neolithic cemetery and there are numerous rice phytoliths in the Loagan Bunut core, many of them burnt (Hunt and Premathilake, 2012). The latter point to some form of rice cultivation or management possibly being practised at Logan Bunut by the Mid Holocene, though whether this involved morphologically-cultivated or wild species is at present unclear, as is the nature of the human intervention practices.…”

Section: The Coastal Lowlands: Late Pleistocene Foraging and Its Ecolmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ‘cultured rainforests’ of Borneo

Barker

Hunt

Barton

et al. 2017

Quaternary International

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The cultured rainforests of Borneo http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/4693/ Article LJMU has developed LJMU Research Online for users to access the research output of the University more effectively. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LJMU Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain.The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of the record. Please see the repository URL above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription. 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. 1.IntroductionAs 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 also 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. It was also 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 (e.g. Headland, 1987;Hutterer, 1988;Bailey et al., 1989;Townsend 1990;Bailey and Headland 1991;Dentan, 1991).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 ...

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“…It is not present in the earlier Holocene at Pa'Buda, or at Pa'Dalih or Bario until the later Holocene. The appearance of Eugeissona in the highlands during the late Holocene contrasts with the position in the Borneo lowlands, where Eugeissona appears to be present from the earliest Holocene, suggesting that this species may have been imported into the Kelabit Highlands (Hunt and Premathilake, 2012). This theory at present remains purely speculative as evidence is limited.…”

Section: Sagomentioning

confidence: 93%

“…What has been suggested to be very early Holocene management of vegetation involving massive burning, several sago species including the non-native Metroxylon and very abundant phytoliths of wild rice (phytolith data-unpub.) was recorded from a deep borehole at Loagan Bunut in the lowlands of Sarawak, from ~11,200 BP (Barker and Janowski, 2011;Hunt and Premathilake, 2012). The development of an early arboriculture may be indicated; but this is as yet an isolated point which requires corroboration from other locations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The cultural antiquity of rainforests: Human–plant associations during the mid-late Holocene in the interior highlands of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo

Jones

Barton

Hunt

et al. 2016

Quaternary International

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Rainforests are often described as the world's last virgin landscapes; however hunter-gatherers may have been modifying these environments for over 50,000 years. Despite this, the antiquity of early tropical forest exploitation by hunter-gathers and the transition to farming are still poorly understood. Today globalization drives deforestation of rainforests at an unprecedented rate. The forest, the lives of its present-day inhabitants, and the archaeological evidence for their history are unlikely to survive for much longer in their present form. The 'Cultured Rainforest Project', an interdisciplinary project involving anthropologists, archaeologists and palaeoecologists, was set up in 2007 to investigate the long-term and present-day interactions between people and the rainforest in the Kelabit Highlands of central Borneo, so as to better understand past and present agricultural and hunter-gatherer lifestyles and landscapes. This paper examines the environmental evidence used to investigate initial signs of plant exploitation and the transition to agriculture, as well as to understand the wider significance of past plants in a changing cultural landscape. Results have shown that two pronounced cultural waves of human-plant interactions took place in the Kelabit Highlands during the late Holocene; although tentative marks may be present on the landscape ca.7000-6000 years ago. The first pronounced wave of human-plant interaction begins from at least 3000 cal. BP. It seems to correspond with the appearance of stone mounds and open-air sites recorded in the archaeological record. The sago palm Eugeissona plays an important role during this period. A second wave of cultural activity, particularly in the last 450 years, is recorded in the southern Kelabit Highlands and is marked by rice becoming important. This may be linked to the construction of a wide range of different megaliths and earthworks, due to its inferred association with wealth and status in prehistoric and historic periods. It is perhaps also linked to a rise in trade between the coastal regions and highlands.

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Early Holocene vegetation, human activity and climate from Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo

Cited by 34 publications

References 44 publications

New Evidence of Human Activities During the Holocene in the Lowland Forests of the Northern Congo Basin

New Evidence of Human Activities During the Holocene in the Lowland Forests of the Northern Congo Basin

The ‘cultured rainforests’ of Borneo

The cultural antiquity of rainforests: Human–plant associations during the mid-late Holocene in the interior highlands of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo

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