Synopses & Reviews
Specialized forager-traders have lived alongside and in exchange relationships with agriculturalists for many thousands of years in South and Southeast Asia. Here is a series of representative case-studies that pertain to a current archaeological debate. The issue concerns the extent to which historical foraging populations are to be understood as specialized adaptations to a complex economically diverse environment, rather than as throw-backs to a Paleolithic way of life.
Review
"An excellent overview of the prehistory of South and Southeast Asia and the long history of contact between foragers and agriculturalists in these areas...the general themes of long-term histories and changing adaptations in this volume are very relevant from a global perspective including North american Prehistory." Canadian Journal of Archaeology
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. [242]-275) and index.
Synopsis
In both South and Southeast Asia, many upland groups make a living through various combinations of gathering and hunting, producing not only subsistence goods but commodities destined for regional and even world markets. These forager-traders have complex and variable histories, defying attempts to categorise them as either ancient relics or recent by-products of colonialism. Forager-Traders in South and Southeast Asia provides a unique attempt to address the relationships between forager-traders and the surrounding political, economic and social worlds of South and Southeast Asia, through a series of detailed comparative case-studies.
Synopsis
Unique re-assessment of forager-trader groups within the complex historical worlds of South and Southeast Asia.
Table of Contents
Historicizing adaptation, adapting to history: forager-traders in South and Southeast Asia /Kathleen D. Morrison --Part I. South Asia: --Introduction /Kathleen D. Morrison --Hunting and gathering strategies in prehistoric India: a biocultural perspective on trade and subsistence /John R. Lukacs --Harappans and hunters: economic interaction and specialization in prehistoric India /Gregory L. Possehl --Gender and social organization in the reliefs of the Nilgiri Hills /Allen Zagarell --Pepper in the hills: upland-lowland exchange and the intensification of the spice trade /Kathleen D. Morrison --Part II. Southeast Asia: --Introduction /Laura L. Junker --Hunters and traders in northern Australia /Sandra Bowdler --Foragers, farmers, and traders in the Malayan Peninsula: origins of cultural and biological diversity /Alan Fix --Economic specialization and inter-ethnic trade between foragers and farmers in the prehispanic Philippines /Laura L. Junker