Palynology of late-Holocene agricultural features at Kuk Swamp, Papua New Guinea

The Holocene sequence of buried agricultural earthworks at Kuk Swamp in the highlands of Papua New Guinea is of global theoretical interest to both archaeologists and palaeoecologists. The discovery of what seems to represent an independent hearth of agricultural emergence and intensification within the highland valleys of Papua New Guinea, which is argued to be of equal antiquity to that of anywhere else in the world (Golson and Hughes, 1980), has, in part, fuelled the questioning of the applicability within the tropics of theoretical frameworks pertaining to the origins of agriculture derived from work on sites associated with temperate zone subsistence systems. This questioning derives from: the interpretation that this hearth of agriculture does not appear to have lead to exponentially expanding populations prone to a pressure to disperse in search of more land (Harris, 2002), but, rather, archaeological and palaeoecological examinations of the site lend to an interpretation of periodic intensification leading to environmental degradation which fuelled technological innovation thus spurring continued degradation within relative spatial confinement.
Master's thesis. Shawn O'Donnell (u4606935); ARCH 8031; M. Arch.Sci. 2009