CANCELLED - SEMINAR: Archaeology Public Seminar

Unfortunately this event has been cancelled.



-----------------

Seeds, fruits, nuts, bamboo and other plant resources are preserved surprisingly well in tropical cave and rockshelter sediments across Sahul, providing a sound base for investigating ancient subsistence practice and humanenvironment changes. Macrofossil investigations at Kosipe, northern New Guinea (Watinglo, Taora, Lachitu, Dongan, Seraba, Gomogom), southern New Guinea (Emo, Poromoi Tamu, Epe cave) and the Bismarck Archipelago (Kamgot) will be used to illustrate emerging patterns of plant resource use over the last 50,000 years. This body of evidence allows us to review the potential of the method and address some problems that continue to dog macrofossil analysis. Identification: Analysis inevitably relies on anatomical investigation of specimens, with a reliance on morphological criteria severely limiting the potential of the method to produce data. This imposes severe technical constraints on generating new data sets and makes macrofossil analysis one of the most difficult of all fossil studies. Quantification: samples remain small in most cases limiting the potential to develop the method. In part this is due to the failure of archaeologists to apply correct recovery procedures as a standard part of excavation practice. Expanding both the spatial extent and richness of the existing dataset requires environmental field recovery to be brought in from the margins as “the specialists business” – as one must assume it is if recent practical textbooks on archaeological method are to be believed – to become a core field technique. Archaeobotany in Sahul, and the Asia‐Pacific tropical zone in general, has staggering potential to contribute to several key issues of global archaeological significance as well as local archaeological narratives which can only be realized if the sub‐discipline is embraced by the wider discipline at large.