Ancient Crops Provide First Archaeological Signature of the Westward Austronesian Expansion
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Ancient crops provide first archaeological signature of the westward Austronesian expansion Alison Crowthera,1, Leilani Lucasb, Richard Helmc, Mark Hortond, Ceri Shiptone,f, Henry T. Wrightg,h, Sarah Walshawi, Matthew Pawlowiczj, Chantal Radimilahyk, Katerina Doukal, Llorenç Picornell-Gelabertm, Dorian Q. Fuller (傅稻镰)b, and Nicole L. Boivinn,o aSchool of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia; bInstitute of Archaeology, University College London, London WC1H 0PY, United Kingdom; cCanterbury Archaeological Trust, Canterbury CT1 2LU, United Kingdom; dDepartment of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UU, United Kingdom; eBritish Institute in Eastern Africa, Nairobi 00100, Kenya; fMcDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, United Kingdom; gMuseum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1079; hThe Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM 87501; iDepartment of History, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada; jAnthropology Program, School of World Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284-2021; kInstitute des Civilisations–Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie, L’Université d’Antananarivo, Antananarivo BP 564, Madagascar; lResearch Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom; mDepartment of Historical Sciences and Theory of Art, University of the Balearic Islands, 07122 Palma, Spain; nSchool of Archaeology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 2PG, United Kingdom; and oDepartment of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, D-07743 Jena, Germany Edited by Matthew J. T. Spriggs, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia and accepted by the Editorial Board April 1, 2016 (receivedfor review November 17, 2015) The Austronesian settlement of the remote island of Madagascar One line of evidence that has been largely overlooked in remains one of the great puzzles of Indo-Pacific prehistory. Although archaeological investigations of Madagascar and, indeed, east- linguistic, ethnographic, and genetic evidence points clearly to a ern Africa more broadly is ancient plants. However, it is esti- colonization of Madagascar by Austronesian language-speaking peo- mated that some 10% of Madagascar’sflorawasintroduced ple from Island Southeast Asia, decades of archaeological research from elsewhere (10), and plant introductions include a sig- have failed to locate evidence for a Southeast Asian signature in the nificant number of staple crops, spices, and arable weeds of island’s early material record. Here, we present new archaeobotan- Asian origin (11). Historically or currently important crops on ical data that show that Southeast Asian settlers brought Asian crops Madagascar, like banana (Musa spp.), yam (Dioscorea alata), with them when they settled in Africa. These crops provide the first, taro (Colocasia esculenta), and coconut (Cocos nucifera), are to our knowledge, reliable archaeological window into the South- Southeast Asian cultivars (12, 13). Asian rice (Oryza sativa), east Asian colonization of Madagascar. They additionally suggest which was domesticated separately in East and South Asia but is that initial Southeast Asian settlement in Africa was not limited to the basis of traditional agriculture across much of Madagascar Madagascar, but also extended to the Comoros. Archaeobotanical today, was also widely grown in Southeast Asia by the first data may support a model of indirect Austronesian colonization of millennium CE (14–16). Other Asian crops, like mung bean Madagascar from the Comoros and/or elsewhere in eastern Africa. (Vigna radiata)andAsiancotton(Gossypium arboreum), are also cultivated on Madagascar. The fact that early crop introductions to archaeobotany | dispersal | Madagascar | language | rice Madagascar may have arrived with Austronesian settlers seems particularly feasible given that Austronesian expansion into the he island of Madagascar, situated in the southwestern corner Pacific was linked to the spread of a similar suite of cultivars (17). Tof the Indian Ocean, is located some 500 km east of conti- nental Africa and 6,000 km from Southeast Asia. The inhabitants of Significance the island, nonetheless, speak a language, Malagasy, that is part of the Austronesian language family. Austronesian languages, which The prehistoric settlement of Madagascar by people from dis- also include, for example, Hawaiian, Maori, Samoan, and Malay, tant Southeast Asia has long captured both scholarly and public are otherwise unique to Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Inde- imagination, but on the ground evidence for this colonization pendent lines of molecular genetic and cultural evidence support has eluded archaeologists for decades. Our study provides the the proposal that this linguistic anomaly reflects a colonization of first, to our knowledge, archaeological evidence for an early – Madagascar by Austronesian-speaking peoples (1 3). This migra- Southeast Asian presence in Madagascar and reveals that this tion, which is estimated on linguistic grounds to have taken place in settlement extended to the Comoros. Our findings point to a the first millennium CE (approximately the seventh to eighth cen- complex Malagasy settlement history and open new research “ turies according to ref. 4), has been described as the single most avenues for linguists, geneticists, and archaeologists to further astonishing fact of human geography for the entire world” (5). study the timing and process of this population movement. The Austronesian colonization of Madagascar is also one of the They also provide insight into early processes of Indian Ocean major outstanding mysteries of human history. Not only is it not biological exchange and in particular, Madagascar’s floral in- attested to in any written sources, it is also archaeologically elusive. troductions, which account for one-tenth of its current vascular Although archaeological research has identified human settlements plant species diversity. in Madagascar that date to the first millennium CE, it has not been able to link these to Southeast Asia. Indeed, decades of survey and Author contributions: A.C., R.H., M.H., H.T.W., C.R., D.Q.F., and N.L.B. designed research; excavations across the island have so far failed to provide any A.C., L.L., R.H., M.H., C.S., H.T.W., S.W., M.P., C.R., K.D., L.P.-G., D.Q.F., and N.L.B. per- substantive evidence for an early Austronesian signature (6, 7). formed research; A.C., S.W., M.P., K.D., L.P.-G., D.Q.F., and N.L.B. analyzed data; and A.C., Accordingly—and particularly in light of archaeological and pa- D.Q.F., and N.L.B. wrote the paper. leoecological findings suggesting that Madagascar may have been The authors declare no conflict of interest. occupied by hunter–gatherers, most likely from Africa, by the first This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. M.J.T.S. is a guest editor invited by the Editorial or second millennium BCE (8, 9)—the timing and nature of the Board. Austronesian settlement of the island and the relationship between Freely available online through the PNAS open access option. Austronesian and African colonizations [both of which are sug- 1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: [email protected]. gested to have contributed to the genetic ancestry of contemporary This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10. ANTHROPOLOGY Malagasy populations (2, 3)] remain unclear. 1073/pnas.1522714113/-/DCSupplemental. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1522714113 PNAS | June 14, 2016 | vol. 113 | no. 24 | 6635–6640 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 To directly explore early cultivated plants on Madagascar Results and Discussion and their potential to inform on its colonization history, we Contrasting Regional Archaeobotanical Patterns. Our analysis revealed collected new archaeobotanical data from the island as well as the presence of crops of two main origins—African and Asian— contemporaneous sites on the African mainland coast (Kenya on eastern African sites. African crops consisted of millets, pulses, and Tanzania) and nearshore islands (Pemba, Zanzibar, and and fruits domesticated on the continent: sorghum (Sorghum bi- Mafia) and the Comoros. These data were collected from 18 color), pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), finger millet (Eleusine sites in total, dating between approximately 650 and 1200 calibrated coracana), cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), and baobab (Adansonia years (cal) CE (Fig. 1 and Table S1). The archaeobotanical datasets digitata) (Fig. 2). Asian crops included Asian rice, mung bean, and derive primarily from recent excavations at 16 sites, during which cotton (Fig. 2). Data on coconut was only systematically collected systematic sampling for charred macrobotanical remains at high for the sites of Tumbe and Kimimba on Pemba, and this species stratigraphic resolution was conducted (Materials and Methods). is, therefore, excluded from the site comparisons presented below They are supplemented by existing records from one of the sites (these results are shown in Table S2). Other Asian domesticates, (Sima) as well as data from previous excavations at two other sites like banana, yam, and taro, that generally do not produce seeds in the Comoros (18, 19). The combined dataset includes 2,443 were not investigated as part of this study. identified crop remains recovered from >7,430 L sediment across A clear pattern emerged in