The ‘cultured rainforests’ of Borneo

Graeme Barker; Chris Hunt; Huw Barton; Chris Gosdon; Sam Jones; Lindsay Lloyd-Smith; Lucy Farr; Shawn O'Donnell

doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2016.08.018

The ‘cultured rainforests’ of Borneo

Graeme Barker, Chris Hunt (Collaborator), Huw Barton (Collaborator), Chris Gosdon (Collaborator), Sam Jones (Collaborator), Lindsay Lloyd-Smith (Collaborator), Lucy Farr (Collaborator), Shawn O'Donnell (Collaborator)

Archaeology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

23 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Borneo has a 50,000-year record of Homo sapiens' interactions with rainforest on the coastal lowlands assembled especially by the interdisciplinary investigation of the archaeology and palaeoecology of the Niah Caves on the coastal plain of Sarawak (Barker et al., 2007; Barker, 2013). More recent work by many of the same team in the interior of Borneo, in the Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak, has combined those approaches with ethnography and anthropology to investigate recent and present-day, as well as past, human-rainforest interactions. In combination, the two projects indicate that the present-day rainforests of Borneo are the product of a deep ecological history related to both natural factors such as climate change and cultural factors such as how different groups of people chose to extract their livelihoods from the forest, including in ways that do not have simple analogies with the subsistence activities of present-day rainforest foragers and farmers in Borneo.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	44-61
Number of pages	18
Journal	Quaternary International
Volume	448
Early online date	15 Sept 2016
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2016.08.018
Publication status	Published - 20 Aug 2017

Bibliographical note

The authors would like to thank the State Planning Unit of the Chief Minister's Department of Sarawak for the permit to undertake the Niah Caves and Kelabit Highlands fieldwork, and Sarawak Museum for its sponsorship and active support of both projects. The principal funding for the Niah Caves Project was provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Board (APN10872) and its successor the Arts and Humanities Research Council (APN12333, APN16175), and for the Cultured Rainforest Project by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (E5105741), with additional support from the Association of Southeast Asianists UK, the British Academy, the British Academy's Committee for Southeast Asian Studies, and the Natural Environment Research Council (Radiocarbon Facility); their support is gratefully acknowledged.

Keywords

Biomass burning
Niah caves
Kelabit Highlands
vegeculture rice agriculture

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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Cite this

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abstract = "Borneo has a 50,000-year record of Homo sapiens' interactions with rainforest on the coastal lowlands assembled especially by the interdisciplinary investigation of the archaeology and palaeoecology of the Niah Caves on the coastal plain of Sarawak (Barker et al., 2007; Barker, 2013). More recent work by many of the same team in the interior of Borneo, in the Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak, has combined those approaches with ethnography and anthropology to investigate recent and present-day, as well as past, human-rainforest interactions. In combination, the two projects indicate that the present-day rainforests of Borneo are the product of a deep ecological history related to both natural factors such as climate change and cultural factors such as how different groups of people chose to extract their livelihoods from the forest, including in ways that do not have simple analogies with the subsistence activities of present-day rainforest foragers and farmers in Borneo.",

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The ‘cultured rainforests’ of Borneo

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

UN SDGs

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Cite this