Irrigated Taro (Colocasia Esculenta) in the Indo-Pacific: Biological, Social and Historical Perspectives

Abstract

Irrigated Taro (Colocasia esculenta) in the Indo-Pacific: Biological, Social and Historical Perspectives Edited by Matthew Spriggs, David Addison and Peter J. Matthews Senri Ethnological Studies 78. National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, 2012. ISSN 0387-6004; ISBN 978-4-901906-93-7 C3039. Free copies may be requested for educational and research purposes (hensyu@idc.minpaku.ac.jp) Taro irrigation is one of the oldest and perhaps the most widespread of the traditional agricultural practices of Oceania. Senri Ethnological Studies 78 brings together a range of perspectives and geographical case studies on this ancient agronomy across Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The volume is the product of a special session on irrigated held during the 19th congress of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association. Archaeological studies and views are well represented, but other biological, ethnobotanical and anthropological (including historical) studies are reported. In the cross-disciplinary and geographical coverage of research on Asian and Oceanic wet cultivation, the collection is unprecedented. It will be of interest to archaeologists as well as ethnobotanists, social anthropologists, and Pacific historians, geographers and plant scientists. Three historical chapters introduce the volume. Spriggs considers early documentary accounts of irrigation in Oceania. He also reviews the speculative interpretations of scholars who considered wetland constructions as evidence of diffusion, perhaps most notably W.H R. Rivers who argued that production was spread by an early 'megalithic' culture. Spriggs is candid enough to recognize disturbing parallels in more recent debates as to whether pondfield irrigation was distributed by Austronesian speakers or invented independently at multiple locations (p. 12). These debates are referenced, but not resolved, by other authors in this volume. Blench reviews linguistic evidence for the Indo-Pacific origins of taro. While much of Blench's discussion is of necessity speculative, some stimulating suggestions are highlighted, such as the possible transfer of names to paddy rice as argued by Ferlus. This section concludes with the translation of a 16th century AD Chinese Book of Taro on the preparation of wild and cultivated forms. The remaining sections of the volume are organized geographically. The Eastern Pacific section is introduced by the posthumous publication of Robert Bollt's essay on the taro wars of the Austral Islands. The details of historical politics and warfare in this chapter may be of less interest to the botanist, but they make fascinating anthropological reading. The discussion of Rapa's novel fortified hilltops on an island where production was economically central is especially enlightening, as is the suggestion that the lone dry Vitaria chiefdom of Rurutu turned to predatory expansion across fertile, wet valley systems and chiefdoms. The last interpretation acknowledges Kirch's 1994 study of economic and sociopolitical tensions between 'wet' and 'dry' Oceanic agronomies. McCoy and Graves also explore some of the factors that might elucidate expansionary behavior in a chapter on the limitations of surplus production from a small Hawai'i Island valley system. Earle presents the other side of Oceanic irrigation in a chapter that emphasizes the contribution of irrigation systems to the emergence of a state-level political economy in the Hawaiian group. …

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