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Ancient crops provide first archaeological signature of the westward Austronesian expansion.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Lucas, Leilani 
Helm, Richard 
Horton, Mark 
Shipton, Ceri 

Abstract

The Austronesian settlement of the remote island of Madagascar remains one of the great puzzles of Indo-Pacific prehistory. Although linguistic, ethnographic, and genetic evidence points clearly to a colonization of Madagascar by Austronesian language-speaking people from Island Southeast Asia, decades of archaeological research have failed to locate evidence for a Southeast Asian signature in the island's early material record. Here, we present new archaeobotanical data that show that Southeast Asian settlers brought Asian crops with them when they settled in Africa. These crops provide the first, to our knowledge, reliable archaeological window into the Southeast Asian colonization of Madagascar. They additionally suggest that initial Southeast Asian settlement in Africa was not limited to Madagascar, but also extended to the Comoros. Archaeobotanical data may support a model of indirect Austronesian colonization of Madagascar from the Comoros and/or elsewhere in eastern Africa.

Description

Keywords

Madagascar, archaeobotany, dispersal, language, rice, Archaeology, Asia, Southeastern, Crops, Agricultural, Humans, Madagascar

Journal Title

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0027-8424
1091-6490

Volume Title

113

Publisher

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Rights

Publisher's own licence