The Origins of Agriculture: New Data, New Ideas
2011; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 52; Issue: S4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1086/660154
ISSN1537-5382
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies
ResumoNext article FreeThe Origins of Agriculture: New Data, New Ideas Wenner-Gren Symposium Supplement 4Leslie C. AielloLeslie C. Aiello Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThe Origins of Agriculture: New Data, New Ideas resulted from a Wenner-Gren-sponsored symposium held at the Hacienda Temozon, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, March 6–13, 2009 (fig. 1). The symposium was organized by T. Douglas Price (University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Aberdeen) and Ofer Bar-Yosef (Harvard University).Figure 1. Participants in the symposium “The Origins of Agriculture: New Data, New Ideas.” Front row from left: Laurie Obbink (Wenner-Gren staff), Carolyn Freiwald (monitor), Leslie Aiello, Fiona Marshall, Ofer Bar-Yosef, Gyoung-Ah Lee, Ehud Weiss, Anna Belfer-Cohen. Middle row from left: Tim Denham, Peter Bellwood, Melinda A. Zeder, Dolores R. Piperno, Greger Larson, Richard H. Meadow, Jean-Denis Vigne, Mehmet Özdoğan, Peter Rowley-Conwy. Back row from left: David Joel Cohen, Zhao Zhijun (“Jimmy”), Dorian Q Fuller, Bruce D. Smith, Gary W. Crawford, T. Douglas Price, Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel, A. Nigel Goring-Morris.View Large ImageDownload PowerPointThe major aim of the symposium was to better understand the origins of agriculture in light of new fieldwork, new sites, new analytical techniques, and more radiocarbon dates. The global nature of agricultural origins was a key theme, and a major focus of the discussions was on East Asia as well as lesser-known regions such as Papua New Guinea, Africa, and eastern North America, alongside more traditional areas such as the Near East and Mesoamerica. The papers presented in this supplementary issue are designed to provide the latest information on the antiquity of agriculture covering at least 10 different centers of domestication.The organizers, Price and Bar-Yosef, note in their introduction that emerging data point to an unexpected synchronicity in the timing of the first domesticates around the end of the Pleistocene. They also note that, contrary to earlier thought, the environments in which agriculture originated were not marginal and that agricultural experimentation took place in areas of concentrations of populations and resources. Each major area may also have included multiple loci for domestication. These were major areas of agreement in a meeting that was characterized by lively debate over the variety of hypotheses proposed for agricultural origins and whether global or more area-specific explanations were most appropriate. As in any good meeting, there were more questions than answers, but this is the sign of a dynamic field. The degree of collegiality and collaboration among the diverse symposium participants and the speed at which new data are accumulating are good signs that our understanding of this important period in human adaptation will continue to evolve rapidly.The Wenner-Gren Foundation has had a long-standing interest in the origins of agriculture and domestication. One of the earliest meetings organized by the Foundation in July 1960 led to the seminal publication Courses toward Urban Life: Archaeological Considerations of Some Cultural Alternates (Braidwood and Willey 1962). Other influential meetings included the Origins of African Plant Domestication (Harlan, De Wet, and Stemler 1972) and Where the Wild Things Are Now (Mullin and Cassidy 2007), which invited anthropologists from all subfields to rethink the concept of domestication in anthropology. Information on these meetings and others can be found on our Web site at http://wennergren.org/history. Most recently, agricultural origins were explored in a special issue of Current Anthropology titled Rethinking the Origins of Agriculture introduced by Mark Cohen (Cohen 2009). The current supplementary issue continues the discussions and debates explored in this earlier contribution but is perhaps more data rich and geographically diverse. Together these two CA issues provide an excellent contemporary overview of the state of research in this exciting area of inquiry.The Wenner-Gren Foundation is always looking for innovative new directions in the field for future Foundation-sponsored and organized symposia and eventual CA publication. We encourage anthropologists to contact us with their ideas for future meetings. Information about the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Symposium program can be found on the Foundation’s Web site (http://wennergren.org/programs/international-symposia).References CitedBraidwood, Robert John, and Gordon Randolph Willey, eds. 1962. Courses toward urban life: archaeological considerations of some cultural alternates. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, no. 32 (Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research). Chicago: Aldine.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarCohen, Mark Nathan. 2009. Introduction: rethinking the origins of agriculture. Current Anthropology 50:591–595.First citation in articleLinkGoogle ScholarHarlan, Jack R., Jan M. J. De Wet, and Ann B. L. Stemler, eds. 1976. Origins of African plant domestication. World Anthropology Series. The Hague: Mouton.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarMullin, Molly, and Rebecca Cassidy, eds. 2007. Where the wild things are now. Wenner-Gren International Symposium Series. Oxford: Berg.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarNotesLeslie C. Aiello is President of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (470 Park Avenue South, 8th Floor North, New York, New York 10016, U.S.A.). Next article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number S4October 2011The Origins of Agriculture: New Data, New Ideas Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/660154 Views: 1070Total views on this site Citations: 7Citations are reported from Crossref © 2011 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Andreas Angourakis, Jonas Alcaina-Mateos, Marco Madella, Debora Zurro, Raven Garvey Human-Plant Coevolution: A modelling framework for theory-building on the origins of agriculture, PLOS ONE 17, no.99 (Sep 2022): e0260904.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260904Virginia Ahedo, Débora Zurro, Jorge Caro, José Manuel Galán, Ulysses Paulino Albuquerque Let’s go fishing: A quantitative analysis of subsistence choices with a special focus on mixed economies among small-scale societies, PLOS ONE 16, no.88 (Aug 2021): e0254539.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254539Mirte Bosse A Genomics Perspective on Pig Domestication, (Jul 2019).https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.82646Gülşah Merve Kılınç, Dilek Koptekin, Çiğdem Atakuman, Arev Pelin Sümer, Handan Melike Dönertaş, Reyhan Yaka, Cemal Can Bilgin, Ali Metin Büyükkarakaya, Douglas Baird, Ezgi Altınışık, Pavel Flegontov, Anders Götherström, İnci Togan, Mehmet Somel Archaeogenomic analysis of the first steps of Neolithization in Anatolia and the Aegean, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 284, no.18671867 (Nov 2017): 20172064.https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.2064G. 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Fuller Current perspectives and the future of domestication studies, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no.1717 (Apr 2014): 6139–6146.https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1323964111Çiğdem Atakuman Architectural Discourse and Social Transformation During the Early Neolithic of Southeast Anatolia, Journal of World Prehistory 27, no.11 (Mar 2014): 1–42.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-014-9070-4
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