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Envisaging Early Agriculture in the Highlands of New Guinea: Landscapes, Plants and
Practices
Author(s): Tim Denham
Source: World Archaeology, Vol. 37, No. 2, Garden Agriculture (Jun., 2005), pp. 290-306
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Envisaging early agriculture in the
Highlands of New Guinea: landscapes,
plants and practices
Tim Denham
Abstract
Although the antiquity and nature of the earliest agriculture in the Highlands of New Guinea are
debatable, several key facets of those practices can be elicited. Here, ethnographic, archaeological
and palaeoecological information are used to envisage the earliest gardening practices. Gardening
represents the spatial co-occurrence of specific, constituent practices, many of which were conducted
individually or in combination across the landscape. Differentially articulating, historically
contingent practices produced, and continue to yield, mosaics of habitats and land use across the
landscape, as well as mosaics comprising differing degrees of domestication for exploited plants. The
adoption of a perspective focused on specific practices, rather than traditional classifications, erodes
dichotomies of agriculture/hunting and gathering, wild/domesticated and forest/garden. Instead, the
impacts of people on plants and the landscape are seen to be temporally and spatially discontinuous,
polyvalent and multi-layered.
Keywords
New Guinea Highlands; early agriculture; vegetative propagation; degrees of domestication;

practices; landscapes.
Introduction
Multi-disciplinary research indicates agriculture was practised in the Highlands (above

1200m altitude) of New Guinea by at least 6950-6440 cal. BP (Denham 2003a, 2003b,
2004; Denham et al. 2003, 2004a; cf. Golson 1977, 1991; Golson and Hughes 1980;
Denham et al. 2004b). Although the archaeological and palaeoecological evidence of
mounded cultivation on the wetland margin at Kuk Swamp (1560m altitude) at this time
is readily interpreted, our understanding of earlier agricultural practices is limited. In
this paper, I explore the likely nature of the earliest agricultural practices in the
Highlands.
World Archaeology Vol. 37(2): 290-306 Garden Agriculture

!3 Routledge
^ Taylor & Francis Group
© 2005 Taylor & Francis Ltd ISSN 0043-8243 print/ 1470- 1375 online
DOI: 10.1080/00438240500095447
Envisaging early agriculture in the Highlands of New Guinea 291
Some notes on terminology
In New Guinea, distinctions between 'gardens' and 'fields' and between 'agriculture' and
'horticulture' are neither readily made nor relevant (refer to Leach (1999) for an
alternative view). Gardens are the plots in which people cultivate plants for food, whether
single or multi-cropped and whether single-planted/long fallow (swidden cultivation) or
successively planted/short fallow (intensive cultivation) (see Bourke 2001). Some gardens
are located within settlements (i.e. house gardens), whereas others are more dispersed (e.g.
swidden plots). In the New Guinean context, gardens are essentially equivalent to fields;
they are tracts or plots of land used for cultivation.
The terms agriculture and horticulture are similarly difficult to distinguish and have
overlapping meanings (Golson 1997a). Agriculture refers to the cultivation of plants in
prepared ground, and horticulture refers to the cultivation of plants in gardens. For
traditional New Guinean practices, the terms are effectively synonymous.
From garden to landscape
Ethnographic accounts depict highly variable subsistence practices across the island of
New Guinea. In general terms, these include hunting, gathering of invertebrates, fishing
(largely confined to the lowlands), rearing of domesticated animals and the exploitation of
plants. These practices occur in diverse environmental and social contexts, and most
people are reliant on various forms of plant exploitation. The exploitation of plants for
food, which is the focus of this paper, includes variable dependence on the gathering of
wild plants, the collection of tree crops (often called 'arboriculture') and the cultivation of
mostly vegetatively propagated root crops and vegetables ('agriculture'). Staples, practices
and intensity of cultivation, which is often measured in terms of frequency of use, labour
inputs and technology, vary greatly from place to place (Brookfield and Hart 1971: 94-
124; Powell 1976; Bourke 2001).
In the lowlands, there is generally a greater emphasis on tree crops supplemented by
garden cultivation, hunting, gathering and marine resources. Groups who are heavily
reliant on sago (Metroxylon sagu) have been classified as hunter-gatherers (Roscoe
2002), whereas most are clearly dependent on plant cultivation (Serpenti 1965) and
some are more difficult to classify (Dwyer and Minnegal 1991; Terrell 2002; Specht
2003).
In the Highlands and Highland fringes, people are reliant to a greater degree on the
cultivation of starch-rich staples and vegetables; their diets are supplemented by the
periodic or seasonal exploitation of arboreal resources, where available. Cultivation
practices vary greatly in type and intensity, and include drainage of wetlands for
cultivation (e.g. Ballard 2001), semi-permanent, raised-bed cultivation on valley slopes
(e.g., Waddell 1972) and shifting cultivation in rain forests (e.g. Clarke 1971). Even in the
Highlands, where the most intensive agricultural practices occur (Brookfield and Brown
1963; Powell et al. 1975), many people use a variety of strategies, including hunting and
gathering, as well as extensive and intensive modes of cultivation in plots across a range of
environments (e.g. Bowers 1968; Waddell 1972; Ballard 1995). For example, people in the
292 Tim Denham
Highlands today may cultivate artificially drained wetland margins intensively, while
maintaining house gardens and dispersed mixed gardens on valley slopes, maint
claims over fruit and nut-bearing trees and bird of paradise display trees and exe
rights to hunt and gather in tracts of forest.
In attempting to account for the nature and diversity of subsistence practices in
Guinea and elsewhere, concepts of cultivated and domesticated landscapes have
proposed to transcend traditional terminology, such as 'hunting and gathering'
'agriculture' (Terrell et al. 2003; Kennedy and Clarke 2004; cf. Yen 1989). Th
attempts, like those that invoke intermediate concepts, such as wild-plant
production (Harris 1989) and low-level food production (Smith 2001), often rem
theoretically confined by the traditional categories they seek to overcome (Denh
press). Nevertheless, landscape-based approaches are valuable because they lead us
from a focus on practices within gardens, plots and fields and towards understanding
strategies and range of practices people undertake to obtain food across the land
The rigid boundary between garden and forest begins to dissolve, and we begin t
gradients of intervention, of varying type and intensity, across a managed landscape (
Latinis 2000; Terrell et al. 2003).
Translating diversity in the present into the past
As with contemporary practices, early subsistence across New Guinea prob

transcended traditional divisions between agriculture/hunting and gathering, w
domesticated and forest/garden. Primary forest and gardens represent opposite e
a resource exploitation continuum within a landscape. People engaged in a varie
practices, utilized a range of faunal and plant resources and impacted on the lands
numerous ways. The resultant landscape was a mosaic of modified and utilized habitats
which gardens represent an archaeologically visible and relatively intensive manifestat
of co-occurring, constituent practices.
The ubiquity and visibility of individual, constituent practices may vary enorm
For example, consider the differential chronological and spatial extents and visibi
practices such as hunting, fishing, foraging for grubs and insects, gathering plan
plant parts, ring-barking, clearing vegetation, burning vegetation, transporting plant
plant parts, demarcating plots, digging ditches, constructing fences, tillin
constructing raised beds, planting (vegetative and sexual-based) and so on (after T
et al. 2003: 351-9). From this perspective, there is less of a fixation on defining subsist
rigidly in terms of traditional dichotomies, such as agriculture/hunter-gatherer
apparently inclusive categories mask large degrees of definitional and prac
uncertainty. Instead, we see clines of intervention and mosaics of practices and
differential co-occurrence mapped onto the landscape. These mosaics can be ma
according to various criteria, including intensity of cultivation, staple crop and vegeta
assemblage (after Hanson et al. 2001). A focus on specific practices and the
occurrence enables diverse, polyvalent and multi-layered, but necessarily fragm
(given the types of evidence at hand), understandings of past subsistence.
Early practices: questions of perspective and visibility
Groube (1989) proposed that people were reliant on plants and were intentionally
modifying environments to increase productivity following initial colonization of New
Guinea by at least 40,000 years ago. A landscape-based, practice-oriented approach
provokes us to envisage how people engaged in a range of exploitative practices of varying
intensity in diverse habitats across the Highlands, and to envisage how these practices
changed through time. Here, the intensity of a specific practice refers in a general way to
the frequency and degree of disturbance to the biota and soils. The archaeological and
palaeoecological visibility of different plant exploitation strategies, however, varies greatly
across space and through time.
At the outset, it should be noted that evidence of plant use from occupation sites in the
Highlands is limited. Macrobotanical research has been conducted and published in detail
for only one genus (Pandanus spp.; Bulmer 1966; Donoghue 1988), which is still gathered
from managed and wild stands today. Stone tool and faunal assemblages do not provide
clear signatures of an agricultural package in Highland New Guinea contemporary with,
or prior to, the earliest archaeological evidence of cultivation on wetland margins
(Denham 2003a). Consequently, interpretations of early plant exploitation practices in the
Highlands are reliant on indirect, or proxy, palaeoecological records for dryland and
wetland environments and direct archaeological evidence for wetlands.
Lower-intensity practices
The exploitation of forest resources, such as hunting, foraging, modification of habitats by

ring-barking, tending of favoured plants, localized burning and limited vegetation
clearance and soil preparation, may leave no diagnostic trace in archaeological and
palaeoecological records. Perhaps only weak signals can be inferred when the cumulative
effects of these practices over millennia become apparent. For example, gradual increases
in the relative proportions of useful plants within palaeoecological assemblages may be
indicative of prolonged low-intensity intervention in habitats to promote the growth of
favoured species, such as pandans (Pandanus spp.) in the Highlands and sago in the
lowlands. Even then, the causes of these increases are not always readily identifiable. For
example, elevated Pandanus spp. pollen frequencies in early Holocene contexts at Kuk
may represent the successional development of swamp forest in a human-modified
environment and may not be deliberate (Denham et al. 2004a).
In the absence of archaeobotanical research at occupation sites, the archaeological
visibility of low intensity resource exploitation associated with the tending, deliberate
targeting and consumption of food plant resources is often claimed from the supposed
deliberate movement of species outside their natural geographic range. Such arguments
have been proposed to account for the presence of a range of starch-rich crop plants,
which are thought to be of ultimate lowland origin, in the Highlands (e.g. Yen 1995).
Musa banana (M. acuminata spp. banksii) phytoliths and taro (Colocasia esculenta) starch
granules at Kuk Swamp in early Holocene contexts may indicate deliberate human
targeting and movement of these plants (Denham et al. 2003, 2004a). Furthermore, it can
be speculated that vegetative propagation was the favoured means of reproduction for
294 Tim Denham
these plants at intermontane altitudes because they may have been beyond their n
range for sexual reproduction. However, such speculation requires further investi
because only limited research has been undertaken on the natural distribution of
plants in New Guinea and on the effects of altitude and other environmental fact
their mode of reproduction.
The palaeoecological visibility of low-intensity practices is similarly open to que
The reading of anthropic indicators in pollen diagrams in New Guinea requ
consideration of climatic and volcanic factors that may differentially sensitize en
ments to human-induced disturbances (Haberle 1994, 2003). The environmental im
of similar practices may vary greatly across space and through time in response to cli
and volcanic perturbations, as witnessed during the 1997 El Nino-induced drought
Highlands of New Guinea (Allen 2000). Due to problems of differentiating human
climatic-induced contributions, there is limited scope for eliciting and distinguishing
nature of lower-intensity practices solely from palaeoecological records for the Pleisto
or early Holocene.
Higher-intensity practices
In the Highlands, practices with higher degrees of intervention in the managem

biological and soil resources include the construction and cultivation of gardens
horticultural plots. Whether part of intensive wetland drainage systems and rais
cultivation or a swidden horticultural plot used for only a year, such practices ent
clearance of vegetation, delineation of a plot, soil preparation and planting (see Po
al. 1975; Powell 1976). These practices are constituents of agriculture across New
today.
The clearest means to identify early agriculture in any context is to unearth direct
evidence of former cultivation practices. Archaeological remains of soil preparation within
former plots, cultivation and planting features (e.g. stake and post holes, mounds, pits),
drainage features (e.g. micro-topographic drainage such as runnels and large-scale ditch
networks), agricultural and plant-processing artefacts (e.g. mostly wooden digging tools
and some stone artefacts) and associated plant remains can provide evidence of early
agriculture. Indeed, archaeological finds enable often ambiguous archaeobotanical and
palaeoecological records to be directly related to past cultivation practices (Denham
2003a; Denham et al. 2004a).
Archaeological and palaeoecological investigations at wetland sites in the Highlands of
New Guinea over the last forty years enable a land use chronology to be established from
the present back to the early Holocene. These discoveries indicate extensive wetland
drainage over the last 1200 years using rectilinear ditch networks that are directly
analogous to recent practices. The earliest ditch networks, dated to c. 4350^000 cal. BP at
Kuk (Denham et al. 2003), are broadly contemporaneous with the oldest wooden digging
implement, dated to c. 4570-4150 cal. BP (ANU 2282) at Tambul in the Upper Kaugel
valley (Golson 1997b).
Evidence of earlier agricultural practices is limited to the Upper Wahgi valley and is
suggestive of mounded cultivation along the margins of wetlands (Denham 2003b; Table
1). The earliest evidence of mounded cultivation is contemporaneous with widespread and
persistent disturbance of the forest in the Upper Wahgi valley (Denham et al. 2004a).
Early Holocene (Phase 1) archaeological remains at Kuk indicate a range of constituent
practices, including staking of plants (stake and post holes), micro-topographic drainage
(runnels), digging (pits) and the processing of starch-rich plants including Colocasia taro
(stone artefacts with residues). These remains are not so clearly read as agriculture and
may represent an alternative form of plant exploitation, although debate continues
(Denham 2004; Denham et al. 2004b).
During the Holocene, rate of change analysis has been successfully applied to
differentiate anthropic and climatic contributions to palaeoecological records and has
identified the emergence of agricultural landscapes in the Highlands (Haberle 2003).
Relatively consistent and cumulative anthropic disturbances, interpreted to represent the
development of agricultural landscapes, are identifiable from c. 7800 cal. BP in the Baliem
Valley (Haberle et al. 1991) and from c. 7000-6500 cal. BP in the Upper Wahgi Valley
(Denham et al. 2003, 2004a). Outside these two valleys, however, there is no clear picture
of emergent, continuous and consistently expanding agricultural practices from the late
Pleistocene to mid-Holocene (for reviews, see Haberle 1994; Denham 2003a: 68-78).
Indeed, palaeoecological records suggest episodic, non-directional and spatially variable
disturbance until the mid-Holocene. Only by 5000^000 cal. BP had 'considerable areas of
forest been cleared throughout the highlands' (Powell 1982: 224) and these were
considered to be 'by far the most striking recent evidence of early agriculture, speaking on
a pan-tropical and even world scale' (Flenley 1979: 122). However, the effects of anthropic
disturbance since the mid-Holocene, which are usually interpreted in terms of agriculture,
are spatially variable within the Highlands and some sites do not exhibit significant
disturbance until c. 300 years ago (Hope et al. 1988).
The brief review of the visibility and nature of past plant exploitation in the Highlands
of New Guinea is intended to illuminate the spatially variable and discontinuous
archaeological evidence of early agricultural practices and palaeoecological evidence of
their effects. However, and irrespective of the exact age and nature of the earliest
agriculture, two constituent practices that are likely to have been important in the past,
but which have low archaeological and palaeoecological visibility, are a reliance on
vegetative propagation and the inter-planting of 'wild' and 'cultivated' plants in garden
plots.
Vegetative propagation
Plants have the capacity to reproduce either sexually or vegetatively. People have
harnessed these reproductive processes in numerous ways for various modes of plant
exploitation. In some parts of the world, people have focused on the sexual reproduction
of plants, i.e. through the planting of seed. In New Guinea, a major characteristic of plant
exploitation, particularly for agriculture, is vegetative propagation (e.g. Yen 1985).
Vegetative propagation entails the removal of a plant part, its transportation and
subsequent planting (e.g. Hather 1996). Although often characterized as a technique used
for the reproduction of starch-rich root crops, such as taro and yams, in New Guinea it is
also characteristic of how people have harnessed other types of food plant.
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298 Tim Denham
Table 2 Archaeobotanical table listing potential food plants documented from Late Pleistoce
mid-Holocene contexts at Kuk (adapted from Denham et al. 2003: table S3; Denham et al. 2
table 2 online). Only potential food plants are considered, although other uses may have b
important in the past (cf. Powell 1976).
Exploited Edible Archaeobotanical Earliest

Species I genus1 form2 part(s)3 evidence4 record
Abelmoschus sp.6 c 1, sh s pre-Pl
Acalypha sp. w, t 1 s, p pre-Pl
Castanopsis sp. w, t n w, p? pre-Pl
Cerastium sp. w p s pre-Pl
Coleus sp. w 1 s pre-Pl
Ficus cf. copiosa6 c, w f , 1 s pre-Pl
Ficus spp. c, w 1, f w pre-Pl
Garcinia sp. w f, 1, b w pre-Pl
Hydrocotyle sp. w 1? s pre-Pl
Lycopodium spp. w sh p pre-Pl
Maesa sp. w f s, w pre-Pl
Musaceae c, w f , c ph, st pre-Pl
Oenanthe javanica c, w 1, sh p pre-Pl
Pandanus antaresensis w d p pre-Pl
Pandanus brosimos c, w d p pre-Pl
Pandanus spp. c, w d s, p pre-Pl
Parsonsia sp. w n p pre-Pl
Phragmites karka w 1, r, sh ph pre-Pl
Pouzolzia hirta w 1, st s pre-Pl
Rubus moluccanus w f s pre-Pl
Rubus rosifolius w f s pre-Pl
cf. Setaria palmifolia c, w s ph pre-Pl
Solanum nigrum c, w 1, sh s pre-Pl
Syzygium sp. w f w pre-Pl
cf. Zingiberaceae c, w r, 1, sh ph pre-Pl
Colocasia esculenta c c, 1 st PI
Elaeocarpaceae w n p PI
Ipomoea sp. w sh p PI
Phragmites sp. w st ph PI
Typha sp. w st p PI
Wahlenbergia sp. w p s, p PI
Eumusa section bananas c, w f , c ph PI?, pre-P2
Ingentimusa section bananas w f, c? ph PI?, pre-P2
Solanum sp. c, w f, 1, sh, t s pre-P2
Commelina sp.6 c, w 1, sh s P2
Drymaria cordata6 w 1? s P2
Floscopa sp.6 c, w 1, sh s P2
Viola arcuata w 1? s P2
Notes
1 List of edible species at Kuk based on ethnographically documented use of plants in New Guinea (M. Bourke
n.d., pers. comm. 2002; French 1986; Haberle 1995; Hope pers. comm. 2002; Powell 1976: 108-12; Powell and
Harrison 1982: 57-86; Powell et al. 1975: 15-39). Edible species have been reported from other possible early and
mid-Holocene archaeological sites in the Highlands (see notes 7-9 opposite).
2 Exploited form: c = cultivated, w = wild (used as supplementary food), t = transplanted.
3 Edible part(s): c = corm, d = drupe, f = fruit, g = gourd, 1 = leaf, n = nut, p = plant, r = rhizome, s = seed,
In the Highlands of New Guinea, vegetative propagation has been traditionally used to
plant and cultivate a wide range of different edible plant types including trees (Pandanus
spp.), bananas (Musa spp.), green vegetables (Commelina sp., Oenanthe javanica, Rungia
klossii), grasses (Saccharum edule, Saccharum officinarum, Setaria palmifolia) and root
crops (Colocasia esculenta, Dioscorea spp.) (after Powell et al. 1975). Although many of
these plants also produce seed and can reproduce sexually like many other food plants,
people often employ vegetative methods for cultivation.
Some of the most important crop plants, many of which are vegetatively propagated
and grown in New Guinea gardens today, are present in late Pleistocene and early
Holocene contexts at Kuk Swamp (see Table 2). The presence of these plants in such
ancient deposits, and their occurrence in stratigraphic units as well as archaeological
contexts, suggests that many were widely distributed in the landscape and would have been
utilized initially from wild sources, as many still are today (Powell 1976: 129-33). As the
usefulness of plants became apparent, not only for food but also for medicine,
ornamentation, ritual and other purposes (see Powell 1976), people began increasingly
to manage selected plants, varieties and species, and to intervene in their reproduction.
Irrespective of the reasons why vegetative propagation was initially practised, it has
endured to become the dominant form of reproduction harnessed by Highland farmers
today and contributes to the distinctive character of New Guinean agriculture.
Gradients, mosaics and degrees of domestication
If New Guineans have been altering their environments to enhance plant production from
initial colonization, it would be anticipated that plants even within forest environments
will have adapted, albeit in a limited way, to the selective pressures exerted upon them. In
contrast, plants that have been targeted and transplanted for a long time, as is thought to
have occurred for some of the major starch staples, such as various species of Musa
sh = shoot, st = stem, t = tuber.

4 Evidence: p = pollen (by Simon Haberle), ph = phytolith (by Carol Lentfer), s = seed (by Jocelyn Powell and
Laurie Lucking), st = starch (by Richard Fullagar, Judith Field and Michael Therin), w = wood (by Jocelyn
Powell and Laurie Lucking). Only those techniques relevant for the earliest recorded occurrence are listed.
5 Earliest record: Pleistocene contexts (pre-Pl); Phase 1 contexts (PI); possible Phase 1 association, or
immediately post-dating Phase 1 (PI?, pre-P2); contexts post-dating Phase 1 and pre-dating Phase 2 (pre-P2); and,
Phase 2 contexts (P2).
6 Identification to genus or species level should be considered provisional because it is based on a single seed.
7 The identification of Australimusa phytoliths from a Phase 2 context at Kuk (Wilson 1985: table 3) is excluded
because it was based on a single sample and no Australimusa phytolith morphotypes were documented from
Phase 1-3 contexts at Kuk during recent research (Denham et al. 2003: 192).
8 Gourd from a mid-Holocene context dating to 5665-5325 cal. bp at Warrawau (ANU 288 and 2086; Golson
2002: 74) was originally reported as Lagenaria siceraria (Powell 1970a: 144-5) and Lagenaria cf. siceraria (Powell
1970b: 199). Golson (2002: 73-5) raises the possibility that the gourd may be Benincasa hispida following the
identification of this species from a late Holocene context at Kana (Matthews 2003). Given the uncertain
macrobotanical identifications conducted on gourd remains collected at Warrawau in 1966 and 1977, which could
not be re-located in archival materials, the identification of the gourd species at that site is considered unknown.
9 Saccharum officinarum reported at 5200 cal. bp from Yuku (Bulmer 1975: 31) is provisional because the basis for
the identification is unknown (Yen 1998: 168).
300 Tim Denham
bananas, sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum), yams (Dioscorea spp.) and taro (Coloca
esculenta), are likely to have endured greater selective pressure and to have undergo
greater 'degree of domestication' (after Caballero 2004).
Domestication is not a static end-state of a unilinear process, but is an ongoing pro
of anthropic-induced transformation to plant genotype and phenotype. Degrees o
domestication exist between the extremes of rarely utilized 'wild' plants in largel
unmanaged environments and intensively managed 'cultivated' plants in intensive
managed landscapes. These degrees of domestication vary among different species
plant, as well as among subspecies and varieties of the same species. Consequently
mosaic of different practices mapped across the landscape through time, essentia
reflecting degrees of intervention, has differential effects on the degrees of domesticat
for exploited plants.
Arboricultural practices in New Guinea often entail the tending and encouragemen
useful nut- and fruit-bearing trees, as well as deliberate planting (e.g. Yen 1990). Howeve
morphogenetic changes inferred to represent the domestication of intensively used
bearing trees from the late Pleistocene or early Holocene, such as Pandanus spp. in
Highlands (Haberle 1995) and Canarium spp. in the lowlands (Yen 1990), have yet to
fully elucidated from similarly aged archaeobotanical assemblages (Donoghue 1988 a
contra Yen 1996, respectively).
Various types of agricultural practices in the Highlands of New Guinea include
planting of mixed vegetable gardens and single, starch-rich staple crop gardens.
considerable periods of the past, green leafy vegetables and herbs are likely to h
been propagated from 'wild' sources and to have included self-sown plants, as
sometimes occurs today. These wild sources may have included plants growing in the
vicinity, procured from the 'bush', and garden escapees. Other plants, particularly
starch-rich staples, are likely to have been planted from more highly conserved,
'cultivated' stock. Through time, the cumulative effects of human selection on plants
and plant parts will have been highly variable; some plants will have undergone only
slight transformation from wild types, whereas other plants became so heavily selected
and hybridized that multiple species, subspecies and varieties were created, e.g. for
Musa bananas (De Langhe and de Maret 1999; Lebot 1999) and Saccharum sugarcane
(Daniels and Daniels 1993). These species-specific effects vary from place to place, as
well as through time, in response to the types of practices within which they are, and
have been, enmeshed. Consequently, there are gradients, or more accurately mosaics, of
varying degrees of domestication for different species, subspecies and varieties of plant
grown within individual gardens, as well as for plants under different types of
exploitation regime across New Guinea.
Envisaging early gardens in the Highlands: a scenario
Although the reasons why gardens emerged in New Guinea are open to speculation,
several key characteristics of the earliest agricultural practices can be envisaged based
on present and past practices. The earliest gardens were likely to have been small
areas of specially prepared ground, actively planted for only a short time, and
entailed the vegetative propagation and inter-cropping of plants from wild and heavily
tended sources. Plants within these early gardens include starch-rich plants, e.g.
Colocasia taro, Musa bananas and Setaria palmifolia, as well as a range of leafy
vegetables.
Early gardening, or agriculture, represents the spatial co-occurrence of constituent
practices that were occurring extensively across the landscape in varying combinations and
intensities. Archaeological and palaeoecological evidence at Kuk, as well as other sites in
the Highlands, suggests that many constituent practices associated with the earliest
gardening date to at least the early Holocene and include:
1 . Deliberate disturbance of montane forests using fire (from the Pleistocene)

2. Disturbance and clearance of montane forest to produce a mosaic of habitats (from
the early Holocene)
3. Possible staking of plants (from the early Holocene)
4. Digging, possibly for planting and harvesting (from the early Holocene)
5. Modification of surfaces to aid drainage (from the early Holocene)
6. Targeted procurement and processing for consumption of starch-rich plants,
including Colocasia taro (from the early Holocene)
7. Potential transplantation of targeted plants from the lowlands into the Highlands,
e.g. Eumusa bananas and Colocasia taro (after Yen 1995; cf. Haberle 1993: 299-
306) (from the early Holocene)
These constituent practices all occurred within, and in the vicinity of, a spatially limited
area of higher ground adjacent to a palaeochannel on the wetland margin at Kuk
approximately 10,000 years ago (Denham et al. 2004a).
At present, the archaeological and palaeoecological evidence is insufficient to state
that agriculture, i.e. cultivation within a garden, was occurring 10,000 years ago. Three
key lines of evidence are lacking. First, the extent of soil preparation is unknown,
although relict aggregates consistent with limited soil formation indicate the ground
was dry enough for cultivation. Second, features and artefacts do not necessarily
indicate planting, although they are consistent with staking, digging and processing of
plants. Third, evidence for the use of plants is limited, although many important
traditional food plants, which are often inter-cropped and vegetatively propagated
today, were present in the Kuk vicinity from the Pleistocene or early Holocene. Thus,
the early Holocene evidence from the Highlands provides an impression of the practices
that are likely to have been constituent for the earliest agriculture, and which preceded
mounded cultivation on wetland margins in the Upper Wahgi Valley from c. 7000-6500
years ago.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Marijke van der Veen for the invitation to contribute to this volume and
to an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments. The ideas presented here, although my
own, have grown out of an interpretation of Jocelyn Powell's, Doug Yen's, Jack Golson's
302 Tim Denham
and Simon Haberle's investigations of early plant exploitation in the Highlands of

Guinea. I thank Jack Golson for permission to cite Jocelyn Powell's and Laurie Luck
unpublished macrobotanical research.
Department of Archaeology,
Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia,
Tim.Denham@arts.monash.edu.au
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306 Tim Denham
Biographical Notes
Tim Denham is an Honorary Research Associate, School of Geography and Environ

mental Science, Monash University. His recently completed doctoral thesis focuse
early and mid-Holocene plant exploitation at Kuk Swamp in the Highlands of Papua N
Guinea. He first undertook fieldwork in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea in 1990
has undertaken archaeological projects across the Pacific since 1991. He is current
continuing his investigations of early agricultural and arboricultural practices in N
Guinea and has initiated an environmental historical study of the McLaren Vale, So
Australia.

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Envisaging Early Agriculture in the Highlands of New Guinea: Landscapes, Plants and

New Guinea Highlands; early agriculture; vegetative propagation; degrees of domestication;

Multi-disciplinary research indicates agriculture was practised in the Highlands (above

World Archaeology Vol. 37(2): 290-306 Garden Agriculture

Some notes on terminology

From garden to landscape

Translating diversity in the present into the past

As with contemporary practices, early subsistence across New Guinea prob

Early practices: questions of perspective and visibility

The exploitation of forest resources, such as hunting, foraging, modification of habitats by

In the Highlands, practices with higher degrees of intervention in the managem

? I* III fill! 4 ill

Exploited Edible Archaeobotanical Earliest

Gradients, mosaics and degrees of domestication

sh = shoot, st = stem, t = tuber.

Envisaging early gardens in the Highlands: a scenario

1 . Deliberate disturbance of montane forests using fire (from the Pleistocene)

and Simon Haberle's investigations of early plant exploitation in the Highlands of

Tim Denham is an Honorary Research Associate, School of Geography and Environ

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