This book is one of a series of more than 20 volumes resulting from the World Archaeological Congress, September 1986, attempting to bring together not only archaeologists and anthropologists from many parts of the world, as well as academics from contingent disciplines, but also non-academics from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. This volume develops a new approach to plant exploitation and early agriculture in a worldwide comparative context. It modifies the conceptual dichotomy between "hunter-gatherers" and "farmers", viewing human exploitation of plant resources as a global evolutionary process which incorporated the beginnings of cultivation and crop domestication. The studies throughout the book come from a worldwide range of geographical contexts, from the Andes to China and from Australia to the Upper Mid-West of North America. This work is of interest to anthropologists, archaeologists, botanists and geographers. Originally published 1989.

Table of Contents:
Foreword P.J. Ucko Preface. Introduction Part 1: The Evolution of Plant Exploitation: Concepts and Processes 1. An Evolutionary Continuum of People-plant Interaction D.R. Harris 2. Darwinism and its Role in the Explanation of Domestication D. Rindos 3. Domestication and Domiculture in Northern Australia: A Social Perspective A.K. Chase 4. The Domestication of Environment D.E. Yen Part 2: Plant Exploitation in Non-agrarian Contexts: The Ethnographic Witness 5. Wild-grass Seed Harvesting in the Sahara and Sub-Sahara of Africa J.R. Harlan 6. Australian Aboriginal Seed Grinding and its Archaeological Record: A Case Study from the Western Desert S. Cane 7. Plant Foods of the Gidjingali: Ethnographic and Archaeological Perspectives from Northern Australia on Tuber and Seed Exploitation R. Jones and B. Meehan 8. Plant Usage and Management in Southwest Australian Aboriginal Societies S.J. Hallamm 9. Ethnoecological Observations on Wild and Cultivated Rice and Yams in Northeastern Thailand, J.C. White 10. An Example of Intensive Plant Husbandry: The Kumeyaay of Southern California F.C. Shipek 11. Plant-food Processing: Implications for Dietary Quality A.B. Stahl Part 3: Plant Exploitation in Per-agrarian Contexts: The Archaeological Evidence 12. Plant Exploitation at Grotta dell'Uzzo, Sicily: New Evidence for the Transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic Subsistence in Southern Europe L. Constantini 13. Late Palaeolithic Plant Foods from Wadi Kubbaniya in Upper Egypt: Dietary Diversity, Infant Weaning and Seasonality in a Riverine Environment G.C. Hillman 14. Plant-food Economy During the Epipalaeolithic Period at Tell Abu Hureyra, Syria: Dietary Diversity, Seasonality and Modes of Exploitation G.C. Hillman et al 15. Mesolithic Exploitation of Wild Plants in Sri Lanka: Achaeobotanical Study at the Cave Site of Beli-Lena M.D. Kajale 16. New Evidence on Plant Exploitation and Environment During the Hoabinhian (Late Stone Age) from Ban Kao Caves, Thailand K. Pyramarn 17. The Taming of the Rain Forests: A Model for Late Pleistocene Forest Exploitation in New Guinea L. Groube 18. Seed Gathering in Inland Australia: Current Evidence from Seed-grinders on the Antiquity of the Ethnohistorical Pattern of Exploitation M.A. Smith 19. Adaptation of Prehistoric Hunter-gatherers to the High Andes: The Changing Role of Plant Resources D.M. Pearsall Part 4: Agrarian Plant Exploitation: The Domestication and Diffusion of Crops and Crop Assemblages 20. The Tropical African Cereals J.R. Harlan 21. Factors Responsible for the Ennoblement of African Yams: Inferences from Experiments in Yam Domestication V.E. Chikwendu and C.E.A. Okezie 22. Domestication of the Southwest Asian Neolithic Crop Assemblage of Cereals, Pulses and Flax: The Evidence from Living Plants D. Zohary 23. Origin and Domestication of the Southwest Asian Grain Legumes G. Ladizinsky 24. Cryptic Anatomical Characters as Evidence of Early Cultivation in the Grain Legumes (Pulses) A. Butler 25. Domestication and the Spread of the Cultivated Rices T.T. Chang 26. Crops of the Pacific: New Evidence from the Chemical Analysis of Organic Residues in Pottery H.E. Hill & J. Evans 27. Cytological and Genetical Evidence on the Domestication and Diffusion of Crops within the Americas B. Pickersgill 28. Maize: Domestication, Racial Evolution, and Spread G. Wilkes 29. Andean Maize: Its Origins and Domestication D. Bonavia & A. Grobman 30. Domestication of Cucurbitaceae: Cucurbita and Lagenaria C.B. Heiser, Jr. 31. The Domestication of Roots and Tubers in the American Tropics J.G. Hawkes 32. A Chemical-ecological Model of Root and Tuber Domestication in the Andes T. Johns Part 5: Agrarian Plant Exploitation: The Evolution of Agricultural Systems 33. From Foraging to Food Production in North-eastern Venezuela and the Caribbean M. Sanoja 34. Non-affluent Foragers: Resource Availability, Seasonal Shortages and the Emergence of Agriculture in Panamanian Tropical Forests D.R. Piperno 35. Early Plant Cultivation in the Eastern Woodlands of North America P.J. Watson 36. Agricultural Intensification and Ridged-field Cultivation in the Prehistoric Upper Midwest of North America J.P. Gallagher 37. The Spread of Agriculture in Western Europe: Indo-European and (Non-)Pre-Indo-European Linguistic Evidence T.L. Markey 38. Agricultural Evolution North of the Black Sea from the Neolithic to the Iron Age Z.V. Yanushevich 39. The Transition from Foraging to Farming in Southwest Asia: Present Problems and Future Directions A.M.T. Moore 40. Early Farming Communities in the Jordan Valley O. Bar-Yosef & M.E. Kislev 41. Prehistoric Agriculture in China An Zhimin 42. Coastal Adaptation, Sedentism, and Domestivation: A Model for Socio-economic Intensification in Prehistoric Southeast Asia C. Higham & B. Maloney 43. The Transition from Stone to Steel in the Prehistoric Swidden Agricultural Technology of the Kantu’ of Kalimantan, Indonesia M.R. Dove 44. The Origins and Development of New Guinea Agriculture J. Golson 45. Gardens in the South: Diversity and Change in Prehistoric Maori Agriculture S. Bulmer