Historical Tropical Forest Reliance amongst the Wanniyalaeto (Vedda) of Sri Lanka: an Isotopic Perspective.
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Authors
Roberts, Patrick
Gillingwater, Thomas H
Lahr, Marta Mirazon
Lee-Thorp, Julia
MacCallum, Malcolm
Petraglia, Michael
Wedage, Oshan
Heenbanda, Uruwaruge
Wainnya-Laeto, Uruwaruge
Publication Date
2018Journal Title
Hum Ecol Interdiscip J
ISSN
0300-7839
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Volume
46
Issue
3
Pages
435-444
Language
eng
Type
Article
Physical Medium
Print-Electronic
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Roberts, P., Gillingwater, T. H., Lahr, M. M., Lee-Thorp, J., MacCallum, M., Petraglia, M., Wedage, O., et al. (2018). Historical Tropical Forest Reliance amongst the Wanniyalaeto (Vedda) of Sri Lanka: an Isotopic Perspective.. Hum Ecol Interdiscip J, 46 (3), 435-444. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-018-9997-7
Abstract
Headland and Bailey (1991) argued in Human Ecology that tropical forests could not support long-term human foraging in the absence of agriculture. Part of their thesis was based on the fact that supposedly isolated 'forest' foragers, such as the Wanniyalaeto (or Vedda) peoples of Sri Lanka, could be demonstrated to be enmeshed within historical trade networks and rely on crops as part of their overall subsistence. Yet, in the same volume and in the years that followed scholars have presented ethnographic and archaeological evidence, including from Sri Lanka, that counter this proposition, demonstrating the occupation and exploitation of tropical rainforest environments back to 38,000 years ago (ka) in this part of the world. However, archaeological and ethnohistorical research has yet to quantify the overall reliance of human foragers on tropical forest resources through time. Here, we report stable carbon and oxygen isotope data from historical Wanniyalaeto individuals from Sri Lanka, in full collaboration with the present-day members of this group, that suggest that while a number of individuals made use of agricultural resources in the recent past, others subsisted primarily on tropical forest resources as late as the 1800s.
Keywords
Hunter-gatherers, Indigenous peoples, Sri Lanka, Stable light isotopes, The Wanniyalaeto, Tropical rainforest
Sponsorship
Max Planck Society
Natural Environmental Research Council
Boise Fund, University of Oxford
European Research Council
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-018-9997-7
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/280021
Rights
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Licence URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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