Global Ecology in Historical Perspective: Monsoon Asia and Beyond 9811965560, 9789811965562

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Global Ecology in Historical Perspective

Kazunobu Ikeya · William Balée Editors

Global Ecology in Historical Perspective Monsoon Asia and Beyond

Editors Kazunobu Ikeya National Museum of Ethnology Suita, Osaka, Japan

William Balée Tulane University New Orleans, LA, USA

ISBN 978-981-19-6556-2 ISBN 978-981-19-6557-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Preface

This book primarily examines human–animal and human–plant interactions in monsoon Asian forests (Southeast Asia and Japan) and inland waters (China). The relationship between plants, animals, and humans in Asia is quite unique from a global perspective. For example, “satoyama” in Japan means ecotone area, or the boundary between a village and a forest. There, as the number of inhabitants has declined, bears, wild boars, and other animals increasingly ravage crops, sometimes attacking humans as well. By showing the regional nature of human–animal and human–plant interactions in Asia, this book provides for the first time a framework for understanding the world’s animal and plant–human relationships. It is assumed that the relationships between humans and animals and plants have been diverse for millennia, including hunting, taming, semi-domestication, and full domestication. At the same time, for regions outside of Asia, the extent to which these diverse relationships were adapted and how diversity was formed is explained from the perspective of historical ecology. Therefore, comparative cases from Central Asia and the Americas (whales in the Arctic, sea turtles in the Caribbean, and plants in the Amazon) are also featured in this volume. Readers can expect to derive perspectives on the coexistence of human–animal and plant–animal relationships in the near future. The conservation of rare species, diverse habitats, and biodiversity is a central theme in considering the relationship between modern civilization and the global environment. In post-industrial Japan, one focus has been the protection of iconic animals such as storks, crested ibis, dugongs, and sea turtles, while at the same time damage to crops and humans by deer, wild boars, monkeys, bears, and other common animals has become an important social issue. How can the world’s 8.0 billion-plus people live in harmony with other species? We would like to get some hints on how to solve the problems we are facing. This book collects research papers that capture the dynamics of human–animal and human–plant relationships from anthropology and adjacent disciplines. The individual papers were presented at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan, on March 19–21, 2018 under the international symposium entitled “Human Relationships with Animals and Plants: Perspectives of Historical Ecology.” The papers v

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are based on those reported at that international conference, with additions and corrections. In this symposium, we were concerned primarily with Asia, a large region of the world where local, in-depth studies of human relationships with animals, plants, and environment are often lacking and/or not widely disseminated in English-language publications. In each case, the more we look, the more we can see that the grounds on which local economies, cultures, and societies have been based have also been changing, in the past and present. Under these circumstances, how is it possible to generalize about human relationships with nature, and draw any conclusions about what may happen in the future? Our approach is to make comparisons across time and space using important case studies. The contributors to this volume are experts in very diverse disciplines, time periods, and geographical areas, but are all concerned with the implications of historical-ecological research for the future of humanity and the natural—or not-so-natural—world on which we depend. The grounds are changing, and we must seek new ways of living, and new ways of looking at humans, animals, and plants. In April 2017, the National Museum of Ethnology launched a 6-year special research project to study the challenges facing contemporary civilization. The project is called “Contemporary Civilization and the Future of Humanity: Environment, Culture and Humans.” This international conference was held in the first year of the project. In the past few decades, changes such as globalization and global warming have become threats to the future of our plane, and since 2017 those threats have only increased. At the same time, these changes are also changing the relationships between people and animals, and between people and plants. In particular, these keystone relationships in monsoon Asia provide unique facts from a global perspective. This book aims to remedy the current status of these relationships, which have not been well documented. We hope that the book provides readers with an insight into the importance of human–nature relationship in the world, as well as exploring the unique dynamics of the relationship between creatures and people in monsoon Asia. Osaka, Japan

Kazunobu Ikeya

Acknowledgements

The international symposium on which this volume is based was funded by the grant from the National Museum of Ethnology’s Special Research Project “Contemporary Civilization and the Future of Humanity: Environment, Culture and Humans” (2017–2022). Financial support for editing was also provided by JSPS Kakenhi No. 17H04614 (2017–2020) and JSPS Kakenhi No. 19H05735(2019–2023). We also express sincere gratitude to Ms. Junko Miyazaki for her great help in preparing and organizing the symposium, and subsequent editing of the book.

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Nature and Culture in Globalized World Modern human beings, Homo sapiens, were born in Africa about 300,000 years ago. After emigrating outward from Africa about 100,000 years ago, they dispersed throughout continental Eurasian (Bolivin et al. eds. 2017). Since that exodus and dispersal, they have expanded their living areas throughout the Americas and islands of Oceania. Along the way, they have adapted to various environments such as arctic regions and islands by accommodating and domesticating other creatures, plants, and animals, for use as food and other resources. Thereafter, human beings built cities and developed civilizations, but humanity has been unable to survive at any time without reliance on other creatures. At present, more than eight billion people live throughout the world. The important issue has arisen of how we can coexist with other species. As a timely and salient example, in our globalized modern world, one cannot ignore the difficulties posed by zoonotic diseases. For example, the new coronavirus disease, which spreads throughout the world during February–March 2020, is said to have originated in a seafood market in Wuhan, China. Reportedly, small animals such as pangolins, which are creatures often used in traditional Chinese medicine, transmitted the virus to humans (Cyranoski 2020). Subsequently, the virus spreads from Wuhan City to every extent in China. Along with the movement of people in our modern world, it spreads as a matter of course throughout the world, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the new coronavirus disease a pandemic, calling into question how humans can coexist hereinafter not only with the coronavirus itself but also with wildlife, the source of the virus. Mutual interactions among humans, animals, and plants must be considered by integrating ethnological, historical, and archaeological perspectives. Integration will enable us to suggest methods for sustaining nature, culture, and civilization in a good balance. Conservation of rare species, diverse habitats, and biodiversity in general is a central theme for considering relations between modern civilization and the global

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Fig. 1 A settlement and Satoyama (second forest) in the rural area of Japan. Bamboo forest extends behind the house

environment. Preserving iconic animals such as the stork, ibis, dugong, and sea turtle has been emphasized post-industrial Japan, whereas damage to crops and humans by commonly encountered animals such as deer, wild boars, monkeys, and bears has come to pose important social problems (Knight 2003; Ikeya ed. 2010). This book aims to consider the present conditions and the history of utilization, extinction, and preservation of plants and animals by humans, from prehistoric to modern ages. Historical-ecological approaches (integrating archaeology, historical research, environmental and natural sciences, and cultural anthropology) will be used to address issues surrounding the relation between modern civilization and environment. For example, forest landscapes in the Amazon have recently come to be regarded as a cultural product to a large extent (Balée, 2006). Whether this view can be generalized to other forest regions of the world will be examined by examination of the contrasting tropical and temperate landscapes of the Amazon and Japan (Fig. 1). Satoyama is a Japanese term applied to the border zone or area between mountain foothills and arable flat land (Tekeuchi et al. 2003). Interactions among human society, animals, and plants will be considered in terms of their global, continental, and regional aspects. Each book chapter will examine the history of human effects on specific environments in the world, with examples from the arctic area (Alaska), archipelagoes and oceans (Caribbean Sea), forests (Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Brazil), and inland waters (China). This book of contributed chapters covers current conditions and the long past of utilization, extinction, and preservation of plants and animals by humans while adopting a scope that encompasses prehistory to the present, using a self-consciously

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historical perspective throughout. Most of the authors employ approaches which are amenable to historical approaches adopted for studies of cultural anthropology, archaeology, historical research, and environmental and natural sciences. We adopt this central theoretical program of historical ecology to address issues surrounding the relations between human civilizations and natural environments.

Relations Between Humans and Other Creatures: Researchers’ Perspectives Historical-Ecology Approach Numerous well-known studies of historical ecology of the Anglosphere have included the introduction of research trends by William Balée (2006). In this book, global trends in “historical-ecology” research, including those of Japanese regions, will be reviewed. Research examining aspects of Africa, Oceania, and northeastern Asia has advanced. By introducing the modern circumstances prevailing in Japan, the question of whether a new horizon can be created in this field through input of research conducted in Japanese-speaking regions will be examined. Historical ecology internalizes core postulates related to qualitative types of human-mediated disturbance of natural environments and their effects on species diversity, among other parameters. A central term used in historical ecology to situate human behavior and agency in the environment is the landscape, as derived from historical geography, instead of the ecosystem, which is a term borrowed from systems ecology (Balée 2006:75). For example, many forest landscapes in the Amazon and in other parts of the Neotropics (e.g., Balée and Erickson 2006; Levis et al. 2018, 2019) and even Paleotropics (e.g., Fairhead and Leach 1996) have in the past 25 years come to be regarded as cultural products, i.e., as a result not of preexisting environmental conditions, but of human activity. Whether this view can be generalized to other forested regions of the world, particularly to temperate zones, will be examined by comparison of the contrasting tropical and temperate landscapes of the Amazon and Japan of Monsoon Asia. Numerous studies of historical ecology have investigated aspects of the Americas (both tropical and not), Europe (Crumley 1994), and Africa (Fairhead and Leach 2012). We would add an Asianist dimension to this body of work, in addition to new chapters elucidating diverse subjects that are not necessarily Asian. We specifically seek to expand coverage by historical-ecological and ethnobiological approaches to Monsoon Asia, which is generally the region affected by the trade winds of the Western Pacific, South China Sea, and eastern reaches of the Indian Ocean. Monsoon Asia coincides with the coastlines and interiors, islands, and larger land masses where

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rice cultivation either in irrigation systems or generalized swidden gardening can be found as an important feature of local societies and food production. Another goal of the work presented in this volume is to bring historical-ecological work to scholarly Japanese audiences, for whom the emphasis is on environment and culture. The history of environmental anthropology and ethnobiology in Japan is reviewed herein. By introducing the prevailing circumstances in Japan, whether a new horizon can be created in this field through the input of research in the Japanesespeaking regions will be examined. In Monsoon Asia, even where the relations between people and biota (both plants and animals) are distinct from those of other world ethnographic regions, we analyze these relations from the same perspective and research framework. In this sense, the book includes several chapters specifically devoted to Monsoon Asia along with a select sample of work addressing the Americas and Africa. Finally, human history and civilization are examined from a global standpoint based on the mutual relations among nature, culture, and civilization. The phenomena related to the theme of this book will be discussed in the field, covering the immediate surroundings and the entire globe.

“Historical-Ecology” Research Among Japanese-Speaking Scholars How are these terms different from the term historical ecology, which is used in English-speaking regions? In Japanese-speaking regions, terms such as ecological history (Umesao 2013), an ecological view of history (Umesao 2013), environmental history, and eco-history have been used particularly as concepts of historical ecology. Human history and civilization in Japan are discussed herein from a historical-ecology perspective. Japanese studies of historical ecology are classifiable into the following three themes. First, human history and civilization or human history and culture are discussed from a historical-ecology perspective in Japan. Tadao Umesao (2013) pointed out that, in relation to the Eurasian continent, Japan, located far eastward, and Western Europe, situated far westward, had a common developmental stage in modernization from the viewpoint of the ecological history of civilization (Fig. 2). Komei Sasaki (1982) demonstrated that a common culture, particularly a shifting cultivation as a cultural complex, exists in broad-leaved evergreen forest zones, extending from Japan to Bhutan through Yunnan Province in southern China, from the standpoint of ecological history in culture. These authors developed deep historical views of culture and civilization on continental scales and throughout dry and wet ecological zones of Eurasia. Nevertheless, these views are often criticized because of their ambiguous time bases. Although these views retain their salience, they require testing and continued examination through further research in archaeology, history, and other disciplines. In his own synthesis of all these disciplines, Yamamoto (2014) has described the dynamic history of agricultural societies in the Andean Highlands.

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Fig. 2 Zones of modernization on the Eurasian Continent (Umesao 2013)

The Andean studies included comparison with highland ecology and civilizations in Himalaya and Tibet, the status of agriculture, stock-raising and hunting, and modern transformations in farming villages and ecotourism (Yamamoto ed. 2019). Second are historical studies of animal and plant domestication. A collection of papers related to the domestication of plants and animals in the history of humankind, as edited by Yamamoto (2009), brought together research work that had been conducted in ethnobiology, archaeology, agriculture, and ethnology. The domestication of rice, corn, potatoes, swine, and fowl was discussed. The volume represents a landmark for historical-ecological research in Japan. In his own synthesis of all these disciplines, Yamamoto (2014) described the dynamic history of agricultural societies in the Andean Highlands. Peter Matthews (2014) specifically examined the distribution, ecology, and uses of wild taro populations to test theories related to domestication and dispersal of the crop (Chapter “Historical Changes in Human Relationships with Whales: Historical Ecology of Iñupiat and Bowhead Whales in Alaska, USA”). The last are studies of prehistoric human movements and their environmental adaptation. In ecological anthropology, relations between nature and culture have been studied in relatively closed or local ecosystems. Hitoshi Watanabe reconstructed the subsistence activities among the Ainu before World War II (Watanabe 1973), and Takashi Irimoto published work on the economic changes of the Ainu living along the Saru River in Hokkaido for the past 200 years (Irimoto 1988). Working in Oceania, Michiko Intoh has integrated studies of archaeology, ecology, and environmental history to explain the movements and adaptations necessary for human life in Oceania (Fitzpatrick and Intoh 2009). Furthermore, although working in Oceania, and widely in Southeast Asia, Ikeya (2002) has worked mainly with Kalahari hunter-gatherers, integrated social, historical, and ecological observations, and has published three collections of papers (Ikeya et al. 2009, 2017; Ikeya ed. 2017) elucidating the relations between hunter-gatherers and their neighbors, from prehistory to the present. As described above, most studies of historical ecology in Japan have been conducted under three themes: environmental and cultural history or environmental

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Fig. 3 Framework of human–animal and human–plant interactions

civilization history, animal and plant domestication history, and human movements and their environmental adaptation.

Three Stages to Comprehend Human–Animal and Human– Plant Interactions Human–animal and human–plant interactions are examined by the setting of three stages. Stage 1 is “contemporary human–animal and human–plant interactions in Asia.” Ethnological, zoological, and botanical studies are included mainly (Part II and Part III) in that stage. Here, interactions are studied by limiting the period to short terms, i.e., several dozen of years. Stage 2 includes “comparative perspectives in historical ecology.” Archaeology and ethno-history are mainly included (Part IV). In this stage, study is conducted by examining long-term interactions, i.e., those developing over several hundreds or thousands of years. Lastly, stage 3 is “modern society with its nature, culture and civilization.” Here, ethnology and other multidisciplinary research fields are related (Fig. 3).

Monsoon Asia and Other Areas: From Ecosystem to Civilization System Human relations with animals and plants in Asia are unique worldwide. Wild animals assume a cultural importance throughout Asia (Knight 2004:1). Elephants, tigers, monkeys, birds, and snakes are among the creatures in proverbs, myths, legends, religion, and art. Characteristics of those relations, especially in Monsoon Asia, can be understood from earlier studies.

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Human–Animal: People–Wildlife Coexistence and People– Wildlife Conflict We shall study human–animal relations worldwide by dividing them into two cases according to whether the animal is useful or harmful for humans. Wildlife can be harmful as well as useful. Hunting is used as a form of pest control among rural societies, including fox-hunters and wild boar-hunters (Knight 2004:56). As examples demonstrating useful animals, people can use animal meat or milk as food (Donovan 2004:90–91). They also use fur or hides for wearing and rhinoceros horn and bear gallbladder as traditional Chinese medicines (Donovan 2004). They even appreciate stuffed animals for ornamental purposes (Peace 2005). By contrast, animals can be harmful: elephants and large feline animals attack people in Africa and in India. Crops and livestock are damaged by wildlife. In Monsoon Asia, people have used more diverse animals including whales and dolphins than in other areas (refer to Kalland 2002). Taking an example of bovines, various species have been domesticated, including buffalo, mithan, gayal (refer to Chapter “Gayal–Human Relationships in the Forests of Bangladesh”), saola, and yak. Various wild boars and pigs including bearded pig, buru babirusa, and pygmy hogs live in the area. Regarding birds, wild chickens and cormorants (river cormorants and sea cormorants; refer to Chapter “Adaptive Strategies of Cormorant Fishers in Response to Decreased Fishing Area: A Case Study of Poyang Lake, Jiangxi Province, China”) have been domesticated, but swallows are used as well as wild birds for enjoyment of their songs. Moreover, Japanese have lived with Japanese monkeys that inhabit northern areas. Other mammals including monkeys, deer, and bears are studied (Chapters “Changing Mountain Landscapes in Japan: Wild Bear–Human Interactions in the Short Term” and “Undoing Monkey Attraction to the Village: A Food-and-Threat Response to Wildlife Crop-Raiding in Rural Japan”). They were used as medicine in Chinese culture, namely, monkey heads, deer horns, and bear gallbladders. As described above, both wildlife and domesticated creatures have been used for various purposes. The interactions between humans and animals can be regarded according to the three stages presented above. First, at present, nomadic pig herding is practiced in the Bengal Delta of Bangladesh (Ikeya 2014). The practice requires knowledge of pig food during moving and skills to manage pig herds. Furthermore, human–pig interactions can be considered in historical ecology for the long term. When, where, and how did wild boars become bred into domesticated pigs? That is a theme to be addressed when one considers wild boar domestication (Chapter “Rearing Wild Boar in Okinawa: Thinking About Their Domestication”). The same question can be asked for taro. When, where, and how did humans succeed in domesticating taro (Chapter “Taro (Colocasia esculenta) in Asia and the Pacific: Models for Domestication as a Food and Fodder Crop”)? A third issue is the relation between nomadic pig herding and modern society. We can assess the sustainable use of resources through pig herding in the Bengal Delta (Ikeya 2014).

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Human–Plant: People–Plant Coexistence and People–Plant Conflict We shall also study human–plant relations in the world by identifying two cases according to whether a plant is useful or harmful for humans. As examples of the former case, people have used wild plants, vegetables, mushrooms, and nuts for food (Ikeya 2003). Trees and bark have been used as construction materials. The sap of lacquer trees has long been used for decoration (Chapter “Comparison of Landscape Transformations in the Japanese Archipelago and the Brazilian Amazon”). As an important example of the latter case, because of deforestation, carbon dioxide is not being adequately taken from the atmosphere, thereby exacerbating global warming. In Monsoon Asia, people have used various plants more than in any other area. In Japan, various plants have been used for food depending on the season. Japanese people have long collected edible wild plants in spring, and have enjoyed mushrooms and nuts in autumn (Ikeya 2003). Edible wild plants include the fiddlehead fern (zenmai), bracken (warabi), ostrich fern (kogomi), and giant butterbur (fuki). Mushrooms include matsutake, maitake, shiitake, nameko, and cloud ear (kikurage); nuts include chestnuts, horse chestnuts, and walnuts. In addition, plants are often used for decoration in Japan. Cherry trees have been singled out for particular enjoyment of their flowers. Hanami, which are parties under cherry blossoms in early spring, are quite popular throughout Japan (Fig. 4). To Japanese people, the term Satoyama conjures up images of idyllic rural landscapes of fields and woodlands (Takeuchi et al. 2003). Satoyama in Japan means an ecotone area, i.e., a border area between a village and a forest, usually in mountains near the villages. There, as the number of rural residents decreases, crop raiding by animals including bears and boars is increasing. Sometimes people are attacked too. Forest landscapes in the Amazon are regarded as a cultural product. Whether this view can be generalized to other forest regions of the world will be examined by comparing Satoyama and other secondary forests in the world. Human–plant relations can be examined by adopting the three stages described previously while taking the particular example of zenmai. In Japan, people collect zenmai. It is necessary to know the ecology of zenmai and collect them by devoting attention to their growth (Chapter “Bamboo Culture in Monsoon Asia: From a Case of the Hmong Farmer in Northern Thailand”). Particular skill must be devoted to control groups of zenmai. Whether zenmai can coexist with urban life is questionable. Second, human relations with zenmai can be considered over a long term. When, where, and how did people start domestication of zenmai? Thirdly, the relation between zenmai collection and modern society will be studied. In the Tohoku region, whether zenmai collection for commercial purposes is sustainable or not will be questioned. Furthermore, deforestation is a cause of global warming.

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Fig. 4 Human–cherry interaction at Osaka, Japan. The scene is known as Hanami

Structure of This Book Contributors to this book have examined human–animal and human–plant interactions in Asian forests (Southeast Asia, southern Asia, and Japan) and inland water areas (China). For comparison, examples of North and South America (Arctic region, Caribbean Sea, Amazon) and tropical Africa (forests in the Congo Basin) are also presented (Fig. 5). This book comprises four parts.

Fig. 5 The study areas in this book

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Four theoretical frameworks of human–animal and human–plant interactions in Part I. That is, approaches from historical ecology (Chapters “Comparison of Landscape Transformations in the Japanese Archipelago and the Brazilian Amazon” and ““Back to the Trees!”: Historical Ecology in Amazonia”), ethno-ecology (Chapter “Trends for Ethnoecology in the French-Speaking Tropics and Beyond: Origins and Evolution”), and historical geography (Chapter “Changing Mountain Landscapes in Japan: Wild Bear–Human Interactions in the Short Term”) introduced. We can understand that unique studies on human–animal and human–plant relationships have been independently developed. Part II shows contemporary ethnozoology over time in Monsoon Asia. In this part, various examples of human–animal interaction in present Asia are introduced; human relationship with monkeys, boars in Japan, cormorants in China, and gayals in Bangladesh. Each example shows different degree of relationship. Monkeys are regarded as harmful and expelled, boars are tamed, cormorants’ breeding is entirely controlled as a domestic fowl, and gayals are partially controlled. By studying these examples, regional characteristics of human–animal relationship in Asia will be understood. Part III shows contemporary ethnobotany over time in Monsoon Asia. Four examples of human–plant interaction in contemporary Asia are addressed in this part: bamboo forest in Thailand, sago palm in Indonesia, and taro in Asia and in the Pacific Ocean area. Each example has different degree of relationship. Bamboo is partially controlled and sago palm is semi-domesticated. Taro has various relationships from gathering to domestication by humans. By studying these examples, regional characteristics of human–plant relationship in Asia will be understood. Part IV is about global ethnobiology over time on water and land, in which examples of human–animal and human–plant interaction outside Asia are introduced. We will examine if the relationships between creatures and humans in Asia could also be adapted to the relationships in the America and/or in Africa. Three examples are shown here. First, example of human relationship with Bowhead whales in Alaska and then example with Sea turtles in Nicaragua are explained. They are examples which show history of human relationship with wild animals in the Arctic region and Tropics. Next, historical relationship between humans and natural landscape in Amazonia is explained. The long history of human control, and utilization and semidomestication of forest products will be addressed. Lastly, agricultural history in the Tropic is described. Utilization of natural resources in plain and floodplain area from the past to the present will be understood. As described above, the purpose of this book is, by understanding the current state of relationships between humans and other living things (animals and plants) from ethnological and ethnobiological perspective, to clarify the continuity and transformation of their relationships in short and long term through historical ecology. In particular, this book focuses on practices in Monsoon Asia, dealing with countermeasures against damages caused by wildlife, methods for domesticating wildlife, how to interact with semi-wild livestock and cormorant. It mainly introduces how to interact with living things from human side, including collecting and processing of wild plants and the process of commercial production and domestication of them.

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At the same time, it addresses commercial utilization of natural resources (animals and plants), utilization and protection of animal resources such as whales and sea turtles, and maintenance of biodiversity and forest management in areas other than Monsoon Asia. By presenting local culture of Monsoon Asia, which has not been known well so far, this book will help readers to understand how diverse and unique cultural relationships have been developed between humans and other living things in Monsoon Asia from prehistory to the present day. It will also be clarified that locality of culture with living things still exists even in the modernizing civilization.

Suita, Japan New Orleans, USA

Kazunobu Ikeya [email protected] William Balée [email protected]

References Balée W (2006) The research program of historical ecology. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 35: 75–98 Balée W. and C. L. Erickson eds. (2006) Time and complexity in historical ecology: studies in the neotropical lowlands. Columbia University Press Bolivin et al. eds. (2017) Human dispersal and species movement: from prehistory to the present. Cambridge University Press Crumley CL (1994) Historical ecology: cultural knowledge and changing landscapes. School of American Research Press Cyranoski D (2020) Did pangolins spread the China coronavirus to people? News 07 Feb. 2020 Nature. doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00364-2 Donovan DG (2004) Cultural underpinnings of the wildlife trade in Southeast Asia. Knight J. ed. 2004 Wildlife in Asia: Cultural Perspectives. RoutledgeCurzon. pp 88–111 Fairhead L (2012) Misreading the African landscape: society and ecology in a forest– savanna mosaic. Cambridge University Press Fitzpatrick S, Intoh M (2009) Introduction: archaeology and historical ecology in the pacific basin. In, S.M. Fitzpatrick and M. Intoh eds. Archaeology and Historical Ecology in the Pacific Basin. Pacific Science 63(4):463–464 Ikeya K (2003) Social monograph among the wild plant gatherers: resource use and territoriality. Tohoku University Press. (in Japanese) Ikeya K (2014) Biodiversity, native domestic animals, and livelihood in monsoon Asia: pig pastoralism in the bengal delta of Bangladesh. In K. Okamoto and Y. Ishikawa (eds), Traditional Wisdom and Modern Knowledge for the Earth’s Future, International Perspectives in Geography 1, 51–77, Springer Japan Ikeya K (ed.) (2010) Wildlife and People in the Japanese Archipelago. Sekaisisou-sha (in Japanese) Ikeya K (ed.) (2017) Global History from the perspective of Hunter-Gatherers: Co-existence of Nature, Neighborhood, and Civilization. The University of Tokyo Press. (in Japanese) Ikeya K, Hitchcock B (eds.) (2016) Hunter–Gatherers and their Neighbors in Asia, Africa, and South America. Senri Ethnological Studies 94, National Museum of Ethnology Irimoto (1988) Cultural and Anthropological Analysis of Historical Materials concerning Ainu in Saru River Basin c:1300–1867. Bulletin of the Institute for the Study of North Eurasian Cultures 19:1-96, Hokkaido University. (in Japanese)

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Kalland A (2002) Japanese perceptions of whales and dolphins Knight J (2003) Waiting for wolves in Japan: an anthropological study of people–wildlife relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press Knight J (2004) Introduction. Knight J. ed. 2004 Wildlife in Asia: Cultural Perspectives. Routledge Curzon. pp 1–12 Knight J. (ed.) (2005) Animals in person: cultural perspectives on human-animal intimacies. Berg Matthews PJ (2014) On the trail of taro an exploration of natural and cultural history. Senri Ethnological Studies 88, National Museum of Ethnology Peace A (2005) Loving leviathan: the discourse of whale-watching in australian ecotourism. Knight J. ed. 2005 animals in person: cultural perspectives on human-animal intimacies. Berg. 191–210 Sasaki K (1982) Mode of evergreen forest culture: from Bhutan and Yunnan to Japan. NHK Publishing Inc. (in Japanese) Takeuchi K et al. (2003) Satoyama: The traditional rural landscape of Japan. Springer Umesao T (2013) Japanese civilization in the modern world: an introduction to the comparative study of civilizations. Bonn: Bier’sche Verlagsanstalt Watanabe H (1973) The Ainu Ecosystem: Environment and Group Structure (American Ethnological Society Monograph : No. 54) University of Washington press Yamamoto N (2014) Farming Cultures in the Central Andes. Senri Ethnological Report 117 (in Japanese) Yamamoto N (ed.) (2009) Ethnobiological Studies on the Domestication of Plants and Animals. Senri Ethnological Report 84 (in Japanese) Yamamoto N (ed.) (2019) The world of tropical highlands, Nakanishiya Shuppan (in Japanese)

Contents

Theoretical Frameworks: Comparative Approaches in Historical Perspective Comparison of Landscape Transformations in the Japanese Archipelago and the Brazilian Amazon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William Balée

3

Trends for Ethnoecology in the French-Speaking Tropics and Beyond: Origins and Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Serge Bahuchet and Mathilde Bognon

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“Back to the Trees!”: Historical Ecology in Amazonia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stéphen Rostain Changing Mountain Landscapes in Japan: Wild Bear–Human Interactions in the Short Term . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kazunobu Ikeya

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Ethnozoology Over Time in Monsoon Asia Undoing Monkey Attraction to the Village: A Food-and-Threat Response to Wildlife Crop-Raiding in Rural Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Knight

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Rearing Wild Boar in Okinawa: Thinking About Their Domestication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Yaetsu Kurosawa Adaptive Strategies of Cormorant Fishers in Response to Decreased Fishing Area: A Case Study of Poyang Lake, Jiangxi Province, China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Shuhei Uda

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Gayal–Human Relationships in the Forests of Bangladesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 M. O. Faruque, M. F. Rahaman, A. Omar, Mohammad Kamrul Islam, J. L. Han, T. Torji, K. Ikeya, and T. Amano Ethnobotany Over Time in Monsoon Asia Bamboo Culture in Monsoon Asia: From a Case of the Hmong Farmer in Northern Thailand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Shinsuke Nakai Use and Knowledge of Sago Palms in Borneo: A Case of the Penan Hunter-Gatherers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Miyako Koizumi Taro (Colocasia esculenta) in Asia and the Pacific: Models for Domestication as a Food and Fodder Crop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Peter J. Matthews Indigenous History and Global Ethnobiology on Water and Land Historical Changes in Human Relationships with Whales: Historical Ecology of Iñupiat and Bowhead Whales in Alaska, USA . . . . 209 Nobuhiro Kishigami Historical Ecology of Sea Turtle Fishing by the Indigenous Lowland Peoples of Eastern Nicaragua: A 40-Year Record . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 Hitoshi Takagi Sweet Cassava, Bananas and Plantains in the Peruvian Amazon: Shipibo Cultivation Methods on the Floodplains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Mariko Ohashi The Constructed Biodiversity, Forest Management and Use of Fire in Ancient Amazon: An Archaeological Testimony on the Last 14,000 Years of Indigenous History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 Laura P. Furquim, Eduardo G. Neves, Myrtle P. Shock, and Jennifer Watling Relations Between People, Water, and Domestic Animals in an Ancient Oasis City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Hirofumi Teramura Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

Contributors

T. Amano Faculty of Animal Health Technology, Yamazaki Gakuen University, Hachiouji, Tokyo, Japan Serge Bahuchet Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France William Balée Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA Mathilde Bognon Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France M. O. Faruque Department of Animal Breeding and Genetics, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh, Bangladesh Laura P. Furquim Laboratory of Tropical Archaeology, Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil J. L. Han Institute of Animal Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Haidian, Beijing, PR China Kazunobu Ikeya National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan Mohammad Kamrul Islam Department of Livestock Services, Upazila Livestock Officer, Bhairab, Bangladesh Nobuhiro Kishigami National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan John Knight Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK Miyako Koizumi Kyoto, Japan Yaetsu Kurosawa Tokyo University of Agriculture, Tokyo, Japan Peter J. Matthews National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan Shinsuke Nakai Saga University, Saga, Japan Eduardo G. Neves Laboratory of Tropical Archaeology, Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

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Mariko Ohashi Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan A. Omar Department of Animal Breeding and Genetics, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh, Bangladesh M. F. Rahaman Department of Animal Breeding and Genetics, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh, Bangladesh Stéphen Rostain National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris, France Myrtle P. Shock Archaeology Department, Institute for the Science of Society, Federal University of Western Pará, Santarém, Brazil Hitoshi Takagi Ocean Nexus Program at Washington University, Seattle, Washington, USA Hirofumi Teramura National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan T. Torji International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Khumaltar, Lalitpur, Kathmandu, Nepal Shuhei Uda National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan Jennifer Watling Laboratory of Tropical Archaeology, Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Laboratory of Microarchaeology, Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Theoretical Frameworks: Comparative Approaches in Historical Perspective

Comparison of Landscape Transformations in the Japanese Archipelago and the Brazilian Amazon William Balée

1 Introduction Japanese society qua Japanese begins with the archaeological culture called Yayoi. Yayoi is based on intensive agriculture, specifically irrigated rice paddy agriculture. It coincides with the ranked societies of the Kansai region that eventually gave rise to the Kofun Period in the early centuries of the first millennium AD and finally the ancient state (Mizoguchi 2017), which led to the establishment of the longest reigning imperial dynasty in history. Amazonian societies are not as monolithic, partly because they are continental, as opposed to insular, and also because ongoing developments were completely interrupted by the European conquest of the Americas. If they ever developed states, such states seem never to be clearly definable by ethnographic analogy or by comparison with other archaeological states in the world, because from the little known about the peoples’ social and political organization, states have not been seen or documented—where there was writing—and they have not existed at all since 1492, or more specifically 1541–42, when Francisco de Orellana navigated the length of the Amazon River from west to east initially in search of spices. The peoples were largely wiped out by disease after that, and hardly any of this is recorded during the rest of the sixteenth century. In contrast, early Chinese writers in the Book of Songs wrote of chiefly successions of the Middle Kofun Period (ca. fourth century AD) in the Kansai area (Mizoguchi 2017, 590), before Japanese calligraphers are recording history themselves. Writing arrived in Japan before the end of the first millennium with haiku poetry, but Amazonia would be written about only by outsiders, and there is really only a trickle of documents between Orellana’s visit and the start of the seventeenth century. History for Amazonia is embedded archaeologically and to some extent in what one can ascertain about social organization and landscape realities via historical linguistics. W. Balée (B) Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70119, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 K. Ikeya and W. Balée (eds.), Global Ecology in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9_1

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As to settlement hierarchies, whereas early Japanese urban centers like Nara and Kyoto took the form of dense concentrations of wooden and bamboo structures, surrounded by countryside, Amazonian prehistoric agglomerations might have been zones of low density urbanism (Prümers et al. 2022) or garden cities (Heckenberger et al. 2003, 2008), with rings of urban concentration surrounded by forests that were in turn girdled by human settlements in a concentric form. No cities in Asia or Europe nor any other urban concentrations in the Americas (such as the Valley of Mexico, the Bolivian Altiplano, the Desert Coast, and the Cuzco region) exhibit similar forms, though each has peculiarities not found in any of the other cases. It can be argued nevertheless that some kind of ranking at the least can be detected in the urban and quasi-urban centers of Santarém in the Lower Amazon and surroundings, the Upper Xingu catchment, Marajó Island at mouths of the Amazon River and the surrounding deltaic plain, and the Central Amazon near the conjunction of the Solimões and Negro rivers, Brazilian Amazon. These would have had to be accompanied by mobilized and regulated labor in order to build and maintain the earthworks, such as occupation mounds, causeways, reservoirs, and intensively cultivated fields of terra mulata1) that represent the physical signature of ancient complex societies. The antiquity of complex society may be as old in Amazonia as in Japan, incidentally, but its prehistory lasts much longer because of the tardiness of written records. Whereas Japanese haiku poetry dates from the tenth century (close in time to the establishment of an imperial line), outright literary representations of Amazonia—which can be sourced for evidence of complexity—can indeed be found only after Orellana. Rather than search for evidence of socioeconomic stratification—a clear affirmative in the Japanese case, and perhaps a question mark in the Amazonian one— perhaps a more fruitful line of comparison, if one is looking for cultural convergences, is to examine whether hierarchy permeates the physical (archaeological) remains and indeed whether it can be detected in the most imposing of all such possible vestiges of the past, namely, the landscape itself. That is the more encompassing level of empirical, material reality that could be subjected to the same method of historical ecology in order to be rendered intelligibly and logically as being similar or not.

2 Defining Hierarchy At the outset, one is obliged to admit that “hierarchy” is an arbitrary term used to denote aesthetic or spiritual elaboration of objects, both mental and material, above and beyond any functionality or utility the objects might possess. As such, the concept as used here is embedded in cultural industries (Hirsch 2000), but it is more than that. Every culture has hierarchy, as with the general-purpose classifications of animals and plants. A mental hierarchy is seen for example in the worldwide existence of folk taxonomies that classify plants and animals in five or more ranks, specifically, in nested hierarchies (Berlin 1992; Brown 1984; cf. Ingold 2014; Howell 1985). Although “hegemony” is one of Raymond Williams’s (1983, 144–145) “keywords”, perhaps because of its association with nineteenth century colonial society, and has

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a clear meaning in political terms, hierarchy can be extended outside the societal realm, whereas hegemony cannot, and can refer to differential aesthetic or spiritual properties of material objects and forms, which can be living or not. “Hegemony” denotes only living, specifically human or anthropocentric (as with the hegemony of male silverbacks in gorilla families or alpha females in howler monkey troops) phenomena. Hierarchy in the material world for my purpose here references the added labor affixed to objects for the accomplishment of non-utilitarian yet canonical ends. Hierarchy of production of commodities—this seen as contributing to the Platonic sense of “the good” as fashioned by humans—can be seen where standardization of a form has become institutionalized and rule-governed. It needs to be studied carefully because it is found not only in complex societies, but also in egalitarian ones. An empirical approach is needed, along the lines of Franz Boas’ historical particularism—the idea that one cannot assess cultural similarities and differences until cultures are thoroughly documented from their known beginnings to the present– , to detect it; ethnographers were long ago reminded that “Boas raised field work to an entirely new level by demanding that the ethnographer’s technique must equal that of a student of Chinese, Greek, or Islamic civilization” (Lowie 1937, 132). A commitment to empiricism and removal of stage-theory blindfolds about social stratification and its stepwise development are a precondition for understanding the meaning of hierarchy. Hierarchy may or may not require hegemonic (or stratified) social organization on a permanent basis to manifest itself, though it probably is cyclically or temporarily the case because massive amounts of labor cannot be organized without leadership and even centralization of some kind. Hocart observed of Fiji in 1936 that “there is no government, in our sense of the word …,” but governing occurs if needed, and as such, the “machinery of government” precedes its realization (Hocart 1970, 31). But the modus operandi of the governing organization need not be clothed in imperial or elite authority. Hierarchy can exist, in other words, independent of persons. When medieval kings of England died, there was no interregnum—as there are today in many monarchies—since “there is a king all the time, the dead king … He reigns, but does not govern …,” until his successor is crowned (Hocart 1970, 135). The hierarchical format might have originated in a fiction of egalitarianism, while being in reality hierarchical itself. This standardized kind of hierarchy can precede genuine stratification of society itself; standardization from the point of view of modernist architecture is, moreover, an “immediate prerequisite” of civilization (Gropius 1936, 241). Hierarchy can be seen in seemingly mundane objects (like bowls and baskets) and it can exist on the genuinely vast plane of landscapes, including the architecture one can find thereupon. The Chumash of the Santa Barbara, California, area, who were the first aboriginal Californian society known to Europeans (in 1542–43) had rank, not stratification, in the definition of social status, yet some of their commodities (or cultural industries) evinced hierarchy, especially basketry (Kroeber 1925, 561). Perhaps for that reason, the Spaniards considered the Chumash to be “superior” to other Californian peoples (Kroeber 1925, 550). Basketry throughout aboriginal California could be elaborate and was sought by European curio collectors; in particular,

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baskets made by coiling (as opposed to twining), wherein spiral warp rods were woven together with elastic weft material, were sometimes interwoven with feathers and used as gifts or ceremonial baskets, as with the Northern Pomo of Mendocino County (Welch 2013, 152). The Chumash stand out even among other Californian groups probably because of thread count in their basketry weaving. Thread count is an indicator of a notion of usage or viewing by a critical audience that transcends utilitarianism. The thread count of “showpiece” Chumash baskets (Kroeber 1925, 501) ranged between 225 and 360 stitches per square inch (35–56 cm2 ) (Timbrook 2014). Apart from the design, artwork, and raw materials manipulated in making the basket, the thread count alone testifies to a concept of hierarchy—it is an abstract conceptual division of things that lies above and beyond the utility of the object as representing a class of mundane, utilitarian wickerwork. It could be at the societal position that hierarchy is mostly comprehended empirically among groups who are either ranked or stratified into classes or castes. Aboriginal Californian societies including the Chumash are known as having been complex, ranked societies (even though they were technically hunter-gatherers), and are often written about together with Northwest Coast societies for that reason; and here, the Ainu of Hokkaido are probably similar (Hudson 2017). Among the Chumash, “rank was carefully regulated”, and chiefs not only commanded respect but also practiced polygyny (Kroeber 1925, 556). That is not incongruent with hierarchical engineering, architectural, or other manifestations of human agency in the transformation of objects, be these domestic or landscape-scale objects.

3 Agentive Transformations of Things Hierarchy in an object indicates its susceptibility to nuance and design, and design at its most extreme end involves transformation. The object transcends its base, original, material form and becomes something else, a standardized cultural industry. Landscape transformation is the historical-ecological replacement of ecological succession, for it includes human agency in the successional seres that a landform undergoes. “Landscape”, in English and other Indo-European languages, is translatable as satoyama in Japanese. In particular, satoyama as the intersection of village and forest bespeaks the agency of culture in reordering the landscape. The landscape (and related -scapes such as seascapes and riverscapes) are key concepts in historical ecology and are mutually translatable into Japanese, with potentially similar applications. In such manner, the circular patterns, sometimes concentric circles, of Gê villages in Central Brazil (introduced evidently by Arawakan-speaking peoples by about AD 1000–Heckenberger et al. 2003, 2008) logically defy their earlier, culturalecological classification as “marginals” (Lévi-Strauss 1969, 9). Advanced technology and engineering with hierarchical design features can facilitate complexity of society regardless of initial socioeconomic conditions. Hierarchy is attained by integration of different functions and elaborations of aesthetic detail when one is discussing objects, whether animate or inanimate. The

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Fig. 1 Nagahama Bonsai Exhibit, January 2017. Photo William Balée

functions of a living plant that is not necessarily domesticated as a species, and that is subjected to long-term, standardized pruning for its ability to produce beautiful flowers, as in bonsai, combines biology with art. The names of bonsai plants in addition suggest that the art is more than bringing beauty to fruition; it is otaku (knowledge of some specialty) that seeks to link different parts of the material world into an aesthetic union. It is not a craft nor is it an art alone. It is synesthetic, and quite deliberately so. One can note this phenomenon, for example, in names of individual specimens that were on display at the January 2017 bonsai exhibit in Nagahama, such as “Color of Sound” and “Flower in the Wind” (Fig. 1). The “small garden for looking” (tsuboniwa), but not strolling, represents a continuing expansion of the meticulous attention paid to the hierarchy of culture and nature and the synesthesia associated with this sequence (Fig. 2). Standardization applies to it; indeed, the design principle underlying the tsuboniwa is that it is to be maintained into perpetuity. Its maintenance is dependent on secondary landscape transformation type II (see Sect. 5), which keeps it holding fast to tradition, just as Japanese lacquer artists of the twentieth century sought to do by trying to replicate tradition, not to create new forms (NMMA 1982). The looking garden in Japan in its origin is an example of primary landscape transformation type II, as a complete transformation maximizing plenitude, and arresting it—in real or imagined fashion—for aesthetic, spiritual, and traditionalist purposes. This kind of transformation is dependent on a concept of hierarchy, one that transcends the culture/nature dichotomy. Hierarchy is seen in a variety of objects that are masked as to their symbolic meaning. If in modern communication the medium is the message (McLuhan 1994), in traditional Japanese “prestations” (e.g., obligations to a landlord), the packaging could be the gift. Standardization of transformed functionality is seen in packaging. Traditional Japanese packaging might contain utilitarian items like food, sweets, incense, dried fruit (Oka 1967, 15), but the packaging involves three-dimensional art and beyond that may include calligraphy, painting, and other enhancing features that transform the package as container into something hierarchically more important.

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Fig. 2 Japanese garden (Tsuruoka). Photo Kazunobu Ikeya

The transformation of utilitarian objects by what are seen as mundane crafts but which are by design synesthetic art—Japanese packaging, Chumash basketry—have analogues in historical ecology, namely in landscape transformation. One can ascertain hierarchy in the sense appropriate to historical ecology where one can observe qualitative differences of human agency in the environment. In terms of sheer monumentality, the geoglyphs or ditched enclosures of Acre (Pärssinen et al. 2020; Watling et al. 2018; Saunaloma and Schaan 2012)—in some cases up to 35 000 m2 in size, with the longest sides of rectangles measuring ca. 200 m—are comparable to the tumuli of the Kinki region in Japan. The functions are different—the geoglyphs were probably built for living ceremonial purposes, whereas the tumuli are mortuary monuments. But the time frame is similar (first millennium AD; Schaan et al. 2012; Mizoguchi 2017), and both landscapes are associated with agricultural (or Formative, in the Amazonianist terminology) peoples. More important, these gigantic earthworks in both cases had long-term effects on the environment, changing the previous species composition and perhaps even enhancing its diversity (Balée et al. 2014; Watling et al. 2018). Finally, one can point to the complete transformation of utilitarian objects that, for the purpose of illustrating the standardization of hierarchy in objects in both Amazonia and Japan, can be adduced. Traditional Japanese lacquerware is exhibited in the outward form of writing boxes, writing-paper boxes, bento boxes, incense containers, trays for clothing, cosmetics boxes, tea ceremony water jars, containers for sweets, writing stands, cabinets, and small tables. In Japanese, lacquer is called urushi and the process of lacquering is ky¯ushitsu (NMMA 1982, 296). Lacquerware

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is found among the hunting-and-gathering Jomon archaeological culture thousands of years ago, and presumably the lacquer tree, which originates in mainland Asia, had diffused to Japan also (Matsumoto et al. 2017), but special lacquering techniques as seen in Edo-period Japan are not present. The modern hunter-gatherers of Hokkaido, the Ainu, did not make lacquerware but did import it—labeling it as “treasure”—from imperial Japan in exchange for food, oil, animal hides, and feathers (Ohnuki-Tierney 1976, 317). Special lacquering techniques of early modern Japan include metal foil inlay, makie (‘sprinkled picture’), ikaeji (gold sprinkled thickly into lacquer), and mother-of-pearl inlay (Schweizer 2016). The woods used in lacquer bowls (the “core materials”—Clarke and Merlin 2013, 146) in Japan are typically soft. Elsewhere in Asia, the core material can be hemp fiber, bamboo, rattan, or wood (Clarke and Merlin 2013, 146). These materials become saturated by the repeated layers of lacquer attached to them such that they can no longer be said to be composed of the material of the receptacle, but rather have now become lacquerware because the repeated coatings of lacquer saturate or, rather, transform the wood of the original object. Burials of pre-Shang Chinese nobility as early as the sixth century BCE required that lacquerware be placed in tombs (Clarke and Merlin 2013, 146). It is of course the lacquer that constitutes the hierarchical matter in lacquerware, not the original core material of the object that gave it its form; the lacquer is more valued than what it adorns (Benedict 1974, 290). Perhaps the most remarkable use of lacquer in early modern Japan, as an illustration of its use to represent hierarchy, was in lacquered architecture, which was used as a “material expression of power and wealth” (Schweizer 2016, 147), by powerful daimyo of early modern Japan. The successor to Lord Toyotomi Hideyoshi in late sixteenth century Osaka had decorated his castle with: glossy, black lacquer on its exterior … the eave tiles were decorated with gold leaf-gilded motifs … huge ornamental tiles in the shapes of chrysanthemums and covered with gold leaf were affixed to the gable pediments. … lacquer was used predominantly on highly raised positions of the buildings making the material one of the most visible features of the castle (Schweizer 2016, 147–149).

Lacquerware was also used as tribute and prestations in prehispanic Mexico (Fig. 3, L), in particular the Tarascan Empire west of what is today Mexico City, in the state of Michoacán, though the source was not the lacquer tree (Toxicodendron vernicifluum), but principally viscous scale insects (genus Coccus, family Coccidae; Acuña Castrellón 2012), and as with Japanese lacquer, various mineral pigments were used in coloring. The original material of Mexican lacquer bowls was exocarp of Crescentia sp. in (family Bignoniaceae), referred to as the soporte, or support material (Acuña Castrellón 2012, 74–75). The Amazonian Ka’apor use the exocarp of calabash (Crescentia cujete L.) for making bowls (Fig. 3, R) but do not adorn it with lacquer. Lacquerware was one of several standardized objects in a hierarchy of value made by artisans in the capital of the Tarascan Empire: Skilled craftsmen made superlative pottery, cotton cloth was woven, mats were of tule reeds, and artisans worked gold, silver, copper, precious stones, lacquer, and feathers into ornaments and decorative objects (Foster 1967, 22).

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Fig. 3 Left: Prehispanic lacquered calabash bowl (photo: Acuña Castrellón 2012, 59). Right: Ka’apor painted calabash (Photo William Balée)

In contrast, Ka’apor calabash bowls may be painted (as in Fig. 3, R), but these are not meant to last indefinitely, unlike Tarascan and Japanese lacquer. The wood of the exocarp of Crescentia species is light and soft like the woods used in Japanese lacquer bowls. The Tarascans, similarly to Japanese lacquer artisans, transformed the bowl from a calabash-like vessel into something else—lacquerware. In this sense, Japanese and Tarascan lacquerware is to primary landscape transformation as painted Ka’apor calabash bowls are to secondary landscape transformation.

4 Non-agentive Transformations Whale hunting is a late technological development in human history (Kishigami 2020, this volume; Savelle 2005), and whereas social organizations needed to be at a “certain level” of complexity (Savelle 2005, 54) for it to occur, it was not done by stratified groups per se. Whale hunting can be considered as a hierarchical rank above hunting of diverse land animals because it requires qualitatively more complex technology and comes about late in the archaeological record. Another transformation in the hierarchy of animals as objects has occurred in consigning the whale to the rank of protected species (Kishigami 2020, this volume), as with of course many charismatic megafauna also threatened with extirpation in various places in the globe. The State as defined by received wisdom developed rapidly in the New World, if one considers the time frame to date from first occupation, since it is only a couple of thousand years behind State development in Mesopotamia and elsewhere in the Old World, though modern humans were there for tens of thousands of years earlier (e.g., Dillehay 2000, 9). If the “central problem of anthropology” is, as Lévi-Strauss asserted (1963, 99), the transition from nature to culture, that of historical ecology is replacement of ecosystem by landscape. And it should be

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pointed out that societal stratification—where hegemony is relevant as a keyword, in fact—is only one exemplification of hierarchy. To understand landscape effects of human agency, one has to look to hierarchies based on something other than political hegemony, such as aesthetic and spiritual rankings that may obligate otherwise egalitarian societies to perform acts involving coordination of multiple individuals’ labor. Artwork for aesthetic or spiritual purposes done on a functional utilitarian object is not prima facie evidence of hierarchy, however. The function can still be the principal design, with artwork as a peripheral feature. With regard to culinary art, the Japanese are to Asia as the French are to Europe, and presentation of the finest sashimi and other traditional foods (as with foie gras in France) is taken beyond gustatory functionality. It is like the etiquette of the tsuboniwa—it is prepared for viewing by a critical viewing audience first before it is deconstructed into its constituent elements, with touching (or eating) it permissible only after it has been fully appreciated by the sense of sight. Like Chumash presentation baskets, food is either only utilitarian or both utilitarian and aesthetically presented; that is a feature of hierarchy and standardization. The individual foods themselves rise and fall in rank, not by their consumption index (as in diet breadth rankings in optimal foraging theory), but according to their status and perhaps the difficulty of their capture or their rarity. Tuna became a highly valued fish in Japanese cuisine only after World War II, when freezer technology enabled it to be caught and marketed. By the 1970s, there were 125 Japanese “trawler factories” plying the world’s oceans, with Japan at the apex of the world fish market (Bestor 2004, 120). In early modern Japan (roughly 1570–1870; Totman 1995, xi), specifically in 1744–1748, tuna was perceived as eating fish of the commoners, and referred to disparagingly as an “exceedingly low class food”, in contrast to red sea bream, which was preferred by the higher classes; in medieval Japan, carp, a freshwater fish of very low value today, was an important food fish (Sakurai 2017, 680). By way of comparison, in Amazonia, the açaí berry (from the semi-domesticated palm Euterpe oleracea Mart.) has gone from being a principal, inexpensive gathered food of indigenous and peasant peoples to becoming a world class luxury food or superfood touted for its health benefits, such as its high antioxidant properties, as well as for its taste and contribution to various high-end fruit and dessert concoctions (e.g., Brondizio 2008). If one affiliates hierarchy with social status, one can agree with Hertz (1973, 3) that “every social hierarchy claims to be found on the nature of things”; that claim is, of course, rooted in perceptions of ranks of varieties of animate and inanimate objects. In some cases, salience about or familiarity with an object lends to that object’s group cogitation an attribute of elitism, as with the widespread perceived superiority of the right hand over the left hand (Hertz 1973, orig. 1909). For Durkheim (1995, orig. 1912), natural differences such as right versus left became hierarchical only because they were embraced as such by a collectivity, becoming as it were cultural artifacts enhanced by spiritual signification (as in India and elsewhere). None of that was transformed by human activity, but rather, given in the real world.

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Such givens can also apply to arguably pristine landforms seen as sacred vis-à-vis those where sacrifice and other rituals are forbidden (Bradley 2000). Much of the impetus for a focus on hierarchy in human thought that is at once independent, in some cases at least of stratification in society, derives from the concept of ideational hierarchy as prior to societal hierarchy. Dumont (1970, 19) considered the “necessity of hierarchy” not necessarily to precede societal distinctions based on unequal access to power; hierarchy is not inherent to “expression in social form per se …” (Parkin 2003, 42). The idea of hierarchy is expressible, however, in art, architecture, and landscape with or without social stratification. Some specialists on Indian caste argue that the concept of hierarchy precedes caste and can be comprehended without it (e.g., Barnes 1985; Barnes and de Coppet 1985). In India, caste is an intricate subject, and it has changed from pre-modern through colonial and post-colonial times (Bayly 1999; Quigley 1993), so one needs to be specific about whatever ethnographic present is referenced. Basically the idea, dating from the Rig Veda, written about 1000 BC, is that the varn.a (named societal ranks) are specifically the categories of priest (br¯ahaman.a), warrior (r¯ajana, later ks.atriya), merchant (vai´sya), and worker (´su¯ dra) (Quigley 1993, 6), which are not inborn to individuals but rather simply ideational categories. The birth groups, and why caste is essentially an ascribed status, are called j¯ati, which are the local (endogamous) marriage units of the country, denoted by thousands of titles (Bayly 1999, 8). The varn.a are not specific to individuals but are generalized categories that exist independently of people; they are ideational objects, like folk genera and contrast sets in ethnobiology (Berlin 1992). Japan also had a category like varn.a, called bushido. This dates from roughly the seventh century AD (Benedict 1974, 57). It consists of warriors (samurai), merchants, commoners, and untouchables, but there were no “jati-like birth-groups” (Bayly 1999, 28), meaning that hierarchy precedes hegemony based on ascribed status. These examples of hierarchy in the sense used here are non-agentive in the sense that people do not actually generate the hierarchies; as with ethnobiological forms in general purpose classification, sociopolitical discontinuities and inequalities are merely perceived and rationalized in terms of preexisting perceptions of differences in nature. The transition from nature to culture is the area of concern in both anthropology and historical ecology. A traditional aspect of transition in modernist culture-evolutionary schemes concerns writing. Writing and other related record-keeping devices are, however, only one systemic facet of a hierarchical society’s passage into what is usually taken as civilization (Geach and Black 1980, 70); complexity can be accomplished in other ways, perhaps more decisively in the form of material objects with some canonical standardization underwriting them. Traditional Chumash basketry, Tarascan lacquerware, and Japanese lacquerware instantiate that kind of standardization.

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5 Standardization and Primary Landscape Transformations Transformations of materials into culturally functional items can be relatively more or less standardized, and at the same time more or less agentive. Landscape transformation can be understood in terms of the effect on species turnover or change in four scenarios: there are two main kinds of landscape transformation—primary and secondary—which are further subdivided into types I and II each (Fig. 4). In Amazonia, primary landscape transformation (PLT) entails substrate changes in the form of causeways, mounds, and even reversal of river courses to effectuate ease of transportation (Raffles 2002) and to accumulate stocks of edible aquatic fauna (Erickson 2000, 2008; Schaan 2008). These compare to irrigated rice paddy cultivation in Japan. In addition, prehistoric earthworks in Bolivian Amazonia and in the Amazon Estuary had the effect of changing the course of streams and rivulets to enable permanent occupation mounds (Denevan 1966) and to supply potable water, without which the local landscape would have been uninhabitable in all seasons (Erickson 2000, 2008; Schaan 2008). PLT can be understood in two senses: type I and type II. PLT I diminishes local species richness. It can be the result of military ordinance, development (as in building of roads, expansion of paved surfaces such as parking lots), and building of permanent structures, all of which require a minimum of plant cover. It can also be seen in monocultures, such as of soybeans, cotton, and sugarcane in the Mississippi River Delta; the soybean expanses in Brazilian Amazonia; rice paddy fields; and monospecific stands of cultivated trees, as with lacquer forests planted to restore a cultural industry, in Iwate Prefecture, for example (Fig. 5). The Morioka clan planted lacquer trees in Edo times in Iwate, and of the ten places currently producing lacquer in Japan, the Joboji township lacquer forest (near Ninohe city) is noted for having the top sap production in the country (Yumiko Ito, oral communication, 18 January 2017). So while PLT type I does not augment diversity, it can, under certain circumstances, be considered enhancing in other ways; it is not always categorically destructive of preexisting landscapes, though sometimes it clearly is that. It is also agentive and standardized and always has design principles underlying it. PLT II is where the Trajectory of Species Numbers

Magnitude of Species Turnover Complete (+)

Partial (-)

Primary Landscape Transformation I

Secondary Landscape Transformation I

Primary Landscape Transformation II

Secondary Landscape Transformation II

Decrease (-) Increase (+)

Fig. 4 Matrix of landscape transformation

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Fig. 5 Primary landscape transformation type I (PLT I). Lacquer forest (Toxicodendron vernicifluum (Stokes) F. Barkley), Iwate Prefecture, Japan. Note scars from sap extraction. Photo William Balée

numbers of species present in a given landscape increase because of human intervention, as in landesque capital of Southeast Asia, the Central Andes, and Mesoamerica (Häkansson and Widgren 2014)2). Secondary landscape transformation (SLT) in contrast does not result in massive substrate transformation, but has been seen in numerous old fallow (anthropogenic or cultural) forests of Amazonia (Balée 1989, 1993, 1994; Politis 2001, 2007; Rival 2002, 2016; Zent and Zent 2004), in contrast to high forests that have not been so transformed. It can be seen in extensive agricultural systems, as with Ka’apor swidden agriculture (Fig. 6). In Southeast Asia it is seen in hill country; for example, in the 1930s, the Lamet people of the upper Mekong River (in what is now Cambodia) practiced swidden cultivation (Fig. 4), which was then called evidence of being a “primitive farming culture” or “primitive agriculture”

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Fig. 6 Swidden agriculture, eastern Amazonia, 1985. It may occur in anthropogenic forests (which are the result of PLT II) of the region. It is an example of SLT II (see text). Photo William Balée

(Izikowitz 1951, 13), but in reality can be involved in maintaining the effects of PLT II. In such cases, swidden horticulture is an example of SLT II. It involves a partial, not a complete, turnover of species on a given substrate. Swidden horticulture can also involve secondary landscape transformation on sites of earlier PLT type II.

6 Conclusion Comparison of landscape transformations can be facilitated by recognizing the qualitatively different kinds of transformations that exist. I argue that these can be understood in terms of a box matrix, with two rows and two columns, in which one row is increase in species and the other is decrease, and one column is major turnover of species and the other is partial turnover. These landscape transformation types can be called primary landscape transformation (PLT) types I and II and secondary landscape transformation (SLT) types I and II. Hierarchy can be understood in terms of the scale of changes imposed, and it can be seen in objects of manipulation, including nominally utilitarian baskets and bowls transformed and standardized into ceremonial gifts or “treasures” (in Ainu terms), as well as immense landforms such as anthropogenic forests, paddy rice terraces and fields, and urban settings with monumental architecture. In the standardization of forms used in the preparation of objects for critical assessment by a high-status audience, hierarchy can be seen even if the societies where such objects are prepared are best deemed to be non-hierarchical or unstratified. In other words, hierarchy can be detected in societies regardless of

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whether the distinctions in these have a basis in caste or class. Recognition of standardization and hierarchy can better aid in the assessment of human impacts on landscapes and waterscapes.

Notes 1. Terra mulata are fertile, grayish-brown soils on the Belterra Plateau near Santarém that probably served as garden soils for indigenous, complex society (Sombroek 1966, 175). These soils, which are a type of anthrosol, seem to have been deliberately manufactured in native settlements and then taken as compost to fields nearby for the purpose of semi-intensive cultivation (Denevan 2004, 2006). 2. Landesque capital refers to archaeological landscapes still in use for crop production (e.g., Arroyo-Kalin 2016)

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Brondizio ES (2008) The Amazonian caboclo and the açaí palm: forest farmers in the global market. Bronx: New York Botanical Garden. Brown CH (1984) Language and living things. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ Clarke RC, Merlin MD (2013) Cannabis: evolution and ethnobotany. University of California Press, Los Angeles Denevan WM (1966) The aboriginal cultural geography of the llanos de mojos of bolivia. IberoAmericana 48. University of California Press, Berkeley Denevan WM (2004) Semi-intensive Pre-European cultivation and the origins of Anthropogenic Dark Earths in Amazonia. In: Glaser B, Woods WI (eds) Amazonian dark earths: explorations in space and time. Springer, Berlin, pp 135–143 Denevan WM (2006) Pre-European forest cultivation in Amazonia. In: Balée W, Erickson CL (eds) Time and Complexity in historical ecology: studies in the neotropical lowlands. Columbia University Press, New York, pp 153–163 Dillehay TD (2000) The settlement of the Americas: a new prehistory. Basic Books, New York Dumont L (1970) (orig. Fr. 1966) Homo hierarchicus: an essay on the caste system (Trans by Sainsbury M). University of Chicago Press, London Durkheim E (1995) (orig. Fr. 1912) The elementary forms of religious life (Trans by Fields KE). The Free Press, New York Erickson CL (2000) An artificial landscape-scale fishery in the Bolivian Amazon. Nature 408:190– 193 Erickson CL (2008) Amazonia: the historical ecology of a domesticated landscape. In: Silverman H, Isbell WH (eds) Handbook of South American archaeology. Springer, New York, pp 157–183 Foster GM (1967) Tzintzuntzan: Mexican peasants in a changing world. Little, Brown, Boston Geach P, Black M (eds) (1980) (orig. 1952) Translations from the philosophical writings of gottlob frege, 3rd edn. Basil Blackwell, Oxford Gropius W (1936) (orig. Ger. 1928) The new architecture and the Bauhaus (Trans by Shand PM). Museum of Modern Art, New York Häkansson NT, Widgren M (eds) (2014) Landesque capital. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek Heckenberger MJ, Kuikuro JA, Kuikuro UT, Russell JC, Schmidt M, Fausto C, Franchetto C, Franchetto B (2003) Amazonia 1492: pristine forest or cultural parkland? Science 301:1710–1713 Heckenberger MJ, Russell JC, Fausto C, Toney JR, Schmidt MJ, Pereira E, Franchetto B, Kuikuro A (2008) A pre-columbian urbanism, anthropogenic landscapes and the future of the Amazon. Science 321:1214–1217 Hertz R (1973) (orig. Fr. 1909) Right and left (Trans by Needham R, Needham C). University of Chicago Press, Chicago Hirsch PM (2000) Cultural industries revisited. Organ Sci 11(3):356–361 Hocart AM de (1970) (orig. 1936) Kings and councillors: an essay in the comparative anatomy of human society. Needham R (ed). University of Chicago Press, Chicago Howell S (1985) Equality and hierarchy in Chewong classification. In: Barnes RH, de Coppet D, Parkin RJ (eds) Contexts and levels: anthropological essays on hierarchy. JASO occasional papers no. 4. JASO (Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford), Oxford, pp 167–180 Hudson MJ (2017) The historical ecology of colonialism and violence in Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands, AD 1200–1900. In: Habu J, Lape PV, Olsen JW (eds) Handbook of east and southeast Asian archaeology. Springer, New York, pp 695–706 Ingold T (2014) Introduction. In: Janowski M, Ingold T (eds) Imagining landscapes: past, present and future. Ashgate, Burlington, VT, pp 1–18 Izikowitz KG (1951) Lamet: hill peasants in french Indochina. Göteoborg Etnologiska Studier 17. Etnografiska Museeti, Gothenburg Kishigami N (2020) Historical ecology of bowhead whales and humans in Alaska. This volume. Kroeber AL (1925) Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 78. Government Printing Office, Washington Lévi-Strauss C (1963) (orig. Fr. 1962) Totemism (Trans by Needham R). Beacon Press, Boston

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Trends for Ethnoecology in the French-Speaking Tropics and Beyond: Origins and Evolution Serge Bahuchet and Mathilde Bognon

1 Introduction In France, ethnoecology emerged during the middle of the twentieth century as a result of the work of some remarkable personalities at the French National Museum of Natural History (Muséum National D’histoire Naturelle, henceforth the Museum). The encounters between these researchers and the students they trained allowed the development of a specific trend in French research, at the interface between the natural sciences and the humanities. In this chapter, I introduce the great players who have built the field of ethnoecology as we now practise it and describe the interactions that resulted in interdisciplinary and collective research projects. In particular, I focus on the tropical world. I then approach the way the contemporary transformations of the tropical world are influencing our investigations and changing the directions of our practices. This chapter comes with a large bibliography that reflects our research, which is particularly important because the publications are mainly in French, often in limitedaccess journals, and are therefore poorly known outside the Francophone world in our field. The roots of French ethnoecology lie in ethnobotany, the term coined by Harshberger (1896) to describe a field of research that began at the Museum at the end of the nineteenth century with the exploration of Africa; that materialised in the intertropical world; and that is now being applied in ecosystems throughout the contemporary world. A record can be found in Bahuchet and Lizet (2003) and in Bahuchet (2012).

S. Bahuchet (B) · M. Bognon Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 K. Ikeya and W. Balée (eds.), Global Ecology in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9_2

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2 Sources, Origins, and Inspiration of French Ethnoecology 2.1 The Initiators 2.1.1

Auguste Chevalier (1873–1956), Precursor of Ethnobotany

At the end of the nineteenth century, a 23-year-old botanist named Auguste Chevalier decided to explore the botany of the new French colonies in Africa, which were just beginning to be surveyed. First, he travelled to Niger (1893–1894), then to the outer limits of Chad (1903–1904), Guinea (1904), and Côte d’Ivoire (1906). While he was collecting the previously unknown flora of these countries, he became deeply interested in the plants that were being used by the natives (Chevalier 1934), their agriculture (Chevalier 1925a, 1940a, b; Chevalier and Sacleux 1940), what they ate, and the plants that were economically interesting. He studied the plants’ environments, which was then called phytogeography and had not yet become ecology (Chevalier 1924, 1925b, 1938, 1945). Subsequently, he was appointed director of the new laboratory of colonial plant resources (in 1911), and then professor at the Museum and director of its colonial agronomy laboratory, in which position he remained for the rest of his life (Chevalier 1930). In this laboratory, Chevalier gathered immense collections that he shared with the phanerogamy (i.e., botany) laboratory. In 1921, he created an important journal, the Revue de Botanique Appliquée (Journal of Applied Botany),1 which published countless articles about useful plants and traditional agriculture; the journal archives include 33 large volumes and several thousand pages. Note that the colonial agronomy laboratory was created outside the Museum’s phanerogamy laboratory, which did not have a policy of taking useful plants into consideration. Its field of research partially covers the economic botany of the Anglophone world, but strongly emphasized cultivated plants and agriculture.

2.1.2

Roland Portères (1906–1974), the Founder of Ethnobotany in France

Roland Portères, agronomist and director of the agricultural service in Afrique Occidentale Française (French West Africa), followed Chevalier in 1948 as a professor of tropical agronomy. Portères worked on cultivated cereals in Africa and their origins (Portères 1958–59, 1976), agricultural systems and their evolution (Portères 1948, 1950, 1972), and non-intuitively obvious aspects of certain crops, such as hedges (Portères 1965b). In 1956, he turned the Revue de Botanique Appliquée founded by Chevalier—which had died with him—into the ambitious Journal d’Agronomie Tropicale et de Botanique Appliquée (Journal of Tropical Agronomy and Applied Botany), which featured ground-breaking articles about the relationships between human societies and the worlds of plants, agriculture, and the natural environment. Because he was aware of the technical changes (specialisation in applied sciences, and especially in agronomy), geopolitical changes (independence of former colonies),

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and scientific changes (the evolution of the social sciences, and especially anthropology), he took the advice of his friend André-Georges Haudricourt, who was also an agronomist and a former fellow student of the Chevalier laboratory (Haudricourt 1956; Haudricourt and Hédin 1943), and changed his laboratory in 1963 to an “ethnobotany laboratory”. This represented a major scientific and epistemological leap, through which the new programme was deliberately included in the human sciences and no longer in botany (Portères 1961, 1965a, 1965b). Portères knew how to recruit new researchers who were eager to pursue this new direction to extend the field to ethnozoology and traditional agriculture. He also organised his laboratory to create a documentation centre and a team associated with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France’s National Centre for Scientific Research) and to advise humanities researchers about their field research in ethnobotany. With the Université de Paris: Descartes (University of Paris V), he organised an ethnobotany and ethnozoology certificate program that welcomed many students (Portères et al. 1969–70).

2.1.3

Researchers of the Ethnobotany Laboratory

The team that Roland Portères gradually built allowed him to practise ethnobotany as a social science, and then to widen its scientific scope beyond the world of plants to include animals and agricultural practices. In doing so, he broadened the geographic extent outside Africa to include Latin America and Oceania. Hubert Gillet (1924–2009), an agronomist and biologist, joined the laboratory in 1948; he was an explorer of the Sahara and a naturalist, and travelled throughout the entire region from 1953. He specialised in the ecosystem’s herbaceous layer, both as a botanist and as a phytogeographer, and focused particularly on the relationships between herbivorous mammals and plants for both domesticated and wild animals. This led him to become involved in habitat conservation and husbandry through astute studies of livestock pastureland in the Sahel and Sahara regions. Gillet developed a true form of ethnobotanical ecology through his research on fauna (Gillet 1961). In 1956, Portères recruited Claudine Friedberg (1933–2018) to take advantage of her double training as a botanist and an ethnologist; she was the first ethnologist to join this laboratory, which had formerly been exclusively composed of botanists and agronomists. With her addition, the lab became a true ethnobotany laboratory in 1963. Her first fieldwork focused on Latin America through her study of Peruvian archaeological vegetal remains, followed by research on Peruvian hallucinogenic and medicinal plants (Friedberg 1965, 1975). Thereafter, she worked in Indonesia, first in Bali and then in Timor, where she developed a completely new approach to ethnobotany. Friedberg was also involved in teaching, insisting on the necessity of interdisciplinarity in the humanities, and contributed in the 2000s to collective research about the French Cévennes landscapes (Friedberg et al. 2000). With her dual training, Friedberg developed an integrative research approach through which she studied the interactions between societies and the natural objects (beginning with plants) they

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surround themselves with or that surround them. To lead this research approach, she defined the key concepts and built an integrated methodology based on a rigorous determination of the relevant plants, which involved the collection of many botanical samples. But she also rigorously transcribed the vernacular terminology of the people whose culture she studied; this reveals the influence of Haudricourt’s teachings (described in Sect. 2.1.2). In consequence, the Museum’s ethnobotanical collections include a giant herbarium with more than 4000 specimens, all because Friedberg’s research was based on tangible materials: plants. Through her original approach with ethnologists, forged in the field, and with a subtle and very personal synthesis of the teachings of André-Georges Haudricourt, André Leroi-Gourhan, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, Friedberg modernised classic ethnobotany by integrating linguistics, especially for the study of vernacular taxonomies, and by emphasising the necessity to include representations, rituals, and social structures in any study. She pushed Portères’s original statement to the extreme, regarding ethnobotany as an essential part of ethnology, and made this approach concrete by appointing a research team she created and ran in 1986 to achieve this goal: nature appropriation and socialisation, which replaced the former documentation and research in ethnobotany and ethnozoology team. Her major contribution was a new conception of research on vernacular taxonomy, as opposed to the universalist approach theorised by American ethnobiologists (Friedberg 1974a, 1986, 1991, 1999; cf., e.g. Berlin et al. 1974). She insisted on the importance of the differences between plant and animal identification systems, nomenclature systems, and representation systems that reported how “the entire natural world is organised within a given culture” (Friedberg 1968: 309). These are all principles which she later developed, highlighting the fact that what was at stake were the mental mechanisms of a culture’s members that are “apparently contradictory but work in complementarity here: differentiation and rapprochement” (Friedberg 1974a: 319). She also noted the possibility of a disjunction between nomenclature, identification, and classification, the multiplication of reference systems within one single society, and the important fact that several species can belong to several taxonomic groups, rather than fitting only within a sort of hierarchical dichotomous tree (see Bahuchet 2018). Raymond Pujol (born in 1928), was an agricultural engineer and entomologist who led a research station in Central Africa and studied crop pests (especially of kola and coffee) before he joined Portères’s laboratory in 1966. There, he was in charge of developing an ethnozoology section. He worked to develop the field of ethnozoology by conducting research in the Central African Republic on forest societies, for which hunting, fishing, and gathering activities are important. Working in collaboration with linguists, he endeavoured to collect the zoological knowledge of several previously unknown societies, such as the Mbati, Ngbaka, and Banda peoples. This required zoological recognition of designated species as well as the collection of local knowledge and practices. He opened new avenues of research on edible insects, a field which is becoming important today. Pujol adapted research techniques that originated in ethnobotany for use in the study of animals (Pujol 1969–70, 1971, 1985).

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As a passionate and fascinating fieldworker, Pujol was an exciting teacher who influenced many students, though he did not publish much himself (Bahuchet and Pujol 1975; Chevallier et al. 1988; Pujol and Carbone 1990). By connecting different types of ethnobiological knowledge, especially folk nomenclatures, and their relationships to actual species, Pujol (1975) came up with the promising concept of an ethnoecosystem, which has yet to be fully explored. As a complete naturalist—a zoologist as much as a botanist—he also proved (by way of example) that research in ethnoscience is not limited to the tropics, because he led many field studies in the rural environments of France (Lecuyer and Pujol 1975; Pujol 1969, 1976, 1980). One cannot overlook the major role that Pujol played in the creation of collecting ethnobiological materials, tirelessly collecting tools and objects related to fauna and flora both in Africa and in France. Jacques Barrau (1925–1997), an agricultural engineer, started his career in 1947 in Oceania at the head of the agricultural department of New Caledonia (GuilleEscuret and Coiffier 1997; Hoare 2000; Peeters 2000). There, he described the native agriculture as well as the colonial constraints imposed on the natives. He quickly quit this official service and spent several months travelling alone throughout the Pacific islands, discovering the tropical world and its traditional societies. Then, he was hired by the Commission du Pacifique Sud (South Pacific Commission), a position that allowed him to travel everywhere, including in New Guinea. In 1956, Portères welcomed him to the laboratory at the Museum, where he wrote his thesis about food plants in Oceania on the basis of his trips throughout the Pacific (Barrau 1962). There, he met Haudricourt, who introduced him to ethnobotany. He returned to New Caledonia as the head of agriculture within the Commission du Pacifique Sud, where he stayed until 1964. It was a decisive time, because he met and worked with American botanists and ethnobotanists who were focusing on Oceania. In 1965, Harold Conklin invited him to become an ethnobiology professor at Yale University. Conklin was the initiator of a “total” ethnobotany, which represented the study of a society through its vegetation (Conklin 1954a). During his stay in the USA, Barrau learned how ecology, evolution, and ethnoscience were practised by American anthropologists. In 1966, he was hired at the Museum as the deputy director of the ethnobotany and ethnozoology laboratory. He brought these disciplines back from the USA and taught them starting in 1971, including at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (French School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences), in his seminar on “ecology and the humanities”, which he led with Maurice Godelier (Godelier 1974, 1984). This seminar influenced an entire generation of ethnologists (Barrau 1984). It is also how he introduced Conklin’s ethnoecology to France (Conklin 1954b), as well as Steward’s cultural ecology (Steward 1955, 1968), ethnoscience (Sturtevant 1964), and the ecological approach used in anthropology (Helm 1961–1962). In his thesis on food plants, Barrau explained that he saw them as “witnesses of the past”, but also as new resources, and considered plants to be “tools” by which human societies were inserted into ecosystems. From the beginning of his career, he dedicated a lot of his work to the analysis of horticultural systems, introducing an innovative ecological theoretical framework, especially by translating the distinction

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between a generalised ecosystem and a specialised ecosystem so that it applied to an agricultural environment (Barrau 1958, 1961, 1965, 1970). This is how he introduced, at the Museum and in the French anthropological field, how ecology applied to the humanities on the one hand, and how traditional agriculture was studied in ethnobotany on the other hand (Barrau 1971). From this perspective, Barrau should be considered the initiator of ethnoecology in France (even though his personal work is not specifically dedicated to this field) because of his relentless exploration of the importance of “natural history” as a tool to understand human societies (Barrau 1974, 1990). Barrau considered his approach to be that of a “naturalist” who decoded the ideologies and the interpretation of types of perceptions of the environment (Barrau 1977). This came to be considered complementary to Lévi-Strauss’s structural anthropology (Lévi-Strauss 1962), followed by Descola’s post-structuralism (Descola 2005). It’s important to note that Barrau also conducted ethnobotanical surveys in the Central African Republic, Martinique (Barrau 1978a, b; Barrau and Montbrun 1978), and France (see below). Another noteworthy aspect of his research involved his ethnoecological reflections about food and foodways, which involve the cultural, sociological, and economic practices related to food production and consumption (Barrau 1979, 1983, 1987). As this overview shows, all of these tropicalists also did fieldwork in France. Their students would do so as well. Ethnoecology was no longer a tropical science; it had become a universally applicable science. After 2002, the Museum’s administrative status changed, and the historic laboratory was dissolved, like all the Museum’s laboratories, and was integrated into new research structures. In 2019, research in ethnoecology moved to the newly created “eco-anthropology” laboratory.2 This laboratory is carrying on previous teaching activities (at the master’s and doctorate levels) by maintaining and enriching the already rich ethnobiology collections initiated by Auguste Chevalier, Roland Portères, and Raymond Pujol, which now include about 100 000 ethnobotanical specimens and 4000 ethnographic objects associated with the relationships between human societies and biodiversity (cf. Bahuchet et al. 2018). The Journal d’Agronomie Tropicale et de Botanique Appliquée started publication again in 2012 in a renewed and more modern form through the issue of the Revue d’Ethnoécologie, which is accessible for free online.3

2.2 Around the Museum’s Ethnobotany Laboratory Portères was a welcoming personality who, in the 1970s, incorporated researchers involved in the study of the interactions between human societies and the natural environment into his laboratory by offering space for scholarly receptions and by encouraging meetings, creating a learned society, and creating institutional alliances with other organisations such as the Museum, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Office de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique Outre-mer (the Office

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for Overseas Scientific and Technical Research), which has become the Institut de la Recherche Pour la Développement (the Development Research Centre), and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (the School of Advanced Research in the Social Sciences4 ); this also allowed publication of the Journal d’Agronomie Tropicale et de Botanique Appliquée (Bahuchet 2012). These researchers, influenced by the approach encouraged at the ethnobotany laboratory, would come to make important contributions to French ethnoecology.

2.2.1

André-Georges Haudricourt (1911–1996), the Interdisciplinarian

The fundamental initiator of interdisciplinarity was André-Georges Haudricourt, a unique and unclassifiable personality. He was an agronomist and also one of the very first students of Marcel Mauss, the founder of ethnology in France. Because Haudricourt was interested in the origin of cultivated plants, as well as in agrarian techniques and languages, Mauss pushed him in this direction by sending him in 1934–35 to the USSR to work in the laboratory of Nicolaï Vavilov, who was dedicated to the study of the origin of cultivated plants. When he came back, Haudricourt worked temporarily in the laboratory of Chevalier, who put him in charge of translating Vavilov’s work into French for the Revue de Botanique Appliquée (Haudricourt 1936a). Haudricourt was also interested in the study of languages, for which he used a logical method to infer the rules of phonetic evolution and sound articulation. He became one of the most innovative and influential linguists of his time, especially concerning Asian languages. His way of thinking transcended disciplines. His scientific personality was illustrated remarkably by his very first three articles: in 1936, “On the origin of modern plough systems” (Haudricourt 1936b), in 1939 “Of the origin of some cereals” (Haudricourt 1939a), and “A few principles of historic phonology” (Haudricourt 1939b), which represent three fields he continued to develop throughout his life. His influence is considerable, especially through two pioneering works: Man and Cultivated Plants (Haudricourt and Hédin 1943), which is close to being the origin of ethnobotany in France,5 and Man and Ploughs Around the World (Haudricourt and Jean-Bruhnes Delamarre 1955), which truly established the principles of a comparative and diachronic (evolutionary) analysis of techniques. Haudricourt, through his multidisciplinary training, was capable of dazzling comparisons, including bold hypotheses about the relationships between societies and nature, which left a lasting mark on his successors (Haudricourt 1962, 1964, 1968). Several of his most important articles were gathered in Haudricourt (1987), and his intellectual and scientific will was published in Les Pieds Sur Terre (“Man’s Footprint on the Earth”), a book of interviews with Pascal Dibie (Haudricourt and Dibie 1987). For more about the contribution of Haudricourt to ethnosciences and ethnoecology, see Barrau (1973), Condominas (1997), and then Bahuchet (2011). The friendships between Portères, Haudricourt, and Georges Condominas, an eminent ethnologist from Vietnam (Condominas 1974, 1983) and founder in 1962 of the Centre de Documentation et de Recherche Sur l’Asie du Sud-est et le Monde Insulindien (“Centre for Documentation and Research on Southeast Asia and the

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Insulindian World”, a very important social sciences laboratory, with Haudricourt and Lucien Bernot [Bernot 1967]). The goal was to encourage research in Asian ethnobotany by hosting researchers at the Museum’s laboratory and publishing their work (Condominas and Haudricourt 1952; Dournes 1968; Vidal and Lemoine 1970; Martin 1971, 1974, 1997). Marie Martin (1975) also wrote an important critical report of the book of Berlin et al. (1974) about ethnobotany of the Mayan-speaking Tzeltal people, in which she developed by contrast the French ethnobotany programme. Among the works triggered by Haudricourt, Barrau, and Condominas, we must finally name the ethnobiology amount that ethnolinguist Nicole Revel dedicated to the natural history of the Palawan peoples in the Philippines (Revel 1990).

2.2.2

Jacqueline M. C. Thomas and Ethnolinguistics

A linguist and student of Haudricourt, Jacqueline Thomas (born in 1930) started her research in Central Africa in 1956–57, in a region that was at the time completely unexplored in terms of linguistics. Faithful to the teaching of her mentor, she incorporated ethnobotany in her research (Thomas 1959, 1960a, b). With Haudricourt and Portères, she created in 1965 the Société d’Ethnozoologie et d’Ethnobotanique (the Ethnozoology and Ethnobotany Society), a learned society that organised, up until the 1980s, seminars and meetings in the French ethnological field, leading to exchanges of experiences and work and encouraging reflection on methodology; this society contributed to multidisciplinary research on the influence of ethnobotany in the Museum. It published a series of detailed investigations intended for ethnologists and linguists about cultivated plants, wild plants, and hoofed animals. Thomas later developed a large programme to describe Central African languages and cultures, and created a multidisciplinary laboratory, the Langues et Civilisations à Tradition Orale lab (Languages and Civilisations With Oral Traditions), which sent researchers and students first to central Africa (the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Congo) and then to Oceania around Haudricourt’s students. With linguist Luc Bouquiaux (1934–2019), she formalised investigation techniques to achieve complete descriptions of a society through its language by rigorously describing the phonology and grammar, establishing a lexicon of words and phrases, and collecting tales and proverbs, as well as specialised vocabularies (Bouquiaux and Thomas 1976). This great book includes specific questionnaires that have subsequently been applied by generations of field researchers. She herself published major works on the Central African Republic’s Ngbaka language (Thomas 1963a, b, 1970; Arom and Thomas 1974) and then organised collective research with the Aka Pygmies (see Sect. 3.2). Through her work and teaching, both formal and informal, she contributed greatly to spreading Haudricourt’s work and imposing the use of linguistic tools on ethnoecological research, which is now an integral part of the modern approach.

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3 Tropical Projects 3.1 Indonesia (Timor) Her marriage to ethnologist Louis Berthe led Claudine Friedberg to Indonesia. Berthe (1927–1968) was then conducting ethnographic work with the Bunaq, in the Indonesian part of Timor. In 1966, Friedberg started her work with the Bunaq to approach the classification of plants in this non-Austronesian-language community. To do so, she collected all the plants in this environment, collected all the related know-how, both botanical and ecological, and observed all the practices involving plants. The result was an impressive quantity of publications about plants, agriculture, space, cooking and the Bunaq society in general (Friedberg 1971a, b, 1973, 1974a, b, 1989, 1990, 2014). The synthesis of all these works became the subject of her voluminous national thesis, which she defended in 1982 (Friedberg 1982). Friedberg modernised classical ethnobotany by incorporating linguistics, especially for the study of vernacular taxonomy and the necessity to account for a people’s representations, rituals, and social structures. She carried on Conklin’s work (Conklin 1954a) and thus founded a “complete” and truly anthropological ethnobotany. More recently, the studies in Timor were taken over by the “local heritage” team (Institut de la Recherche Pour la Développement—National Museum), in the context of major territorial transformations and heavy infrastructure development. The team has endeavoured to evaluate the effects of this development and to collect the identity heritage of the territory (Crespi 2018; Galipaud et al. 2014; Guillaud et al. 2017).

3.2 Central Africa The collaboration between the Museum’s ethnobotany and ethnozoology laboratory and the oral traditions, languages, and civilisations laboratory of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, created by Jacqueline Thomas, was part of the development of an ethnolinguistic method and theory inspired by Haudricourt’s teaching, that consisted of collecting and describing an entire oral language, including the associated traditional knowledge (Bouquiaux and Thomas 1976). To do so, it was necessary to take advantage of the contributions of ethnoscience experts. The project took place in the Central African Republic, a region that had not yet been described in terms of its cultural diversity and that covers a diversity of landscapes and ecosystems, from the dry Sahel region in the north to the dense and humid forests of the south. Several young ethnolinguists were each in charge of studying a language, especially in the forest region. Pujol began to gather ethnozoological knowledge from slash-and-burn farmers in the Mbati and Ngkaba communities. In 1972, he trusted me, then a young student, with an ethnozoological study of the Aka huntergatherers (Pygmies) associated with these two agricultural societies (Bahuchet 1972, 1978, 1979, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992a, 2014a; Bahuchet and Guillaume 1982). It

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was the starting point of a large “anthropology of an ecosystem” programme that mobilised several disciplines, including ethnoecology, ethnolinguistics, ethnomusicology, social anthropology, and ethnomedicine. In addition to many articles, this programme generated several monographs, some of them drawn from PhD theses (Arom 1987, Bahuchet 1985; Cloarec-Heiss and Thomas 1978; Delobeau 1989; Guillaume 2001; Motte 1980). The researchers, under the leadership of Thomas, decided to share their data in the form of a large Aka language dictionary that connected names with one another. The result was the voluminous Encyclopaedia of the Aka Pygmies in 16 volumes and covering more than 5000 pages, of which the last volume was published in 2018, 37 years after the beginning of the programme (Thomas et al. 1981–2018). The fact that this collective research was conducted in a multicultural social environment led us to consider the comparison among the different societies, hunter-gatherers, and farmers of several linguistic families. This led on the one hand to questions about the economic and cultural interactions and exchanges between the two groups (huntergatherers and farmers), but more widely to historical population questions owing to the linguistic similarities and differences (Bahuchet and Thomas 1986). Another step has been to question the similarities or differences among the Pygmy groups living in different regions of central Africa, especially between the Aka of the Central African Republic and of the Congo, the Bantu language, the Baka language from south-east Cameroon, and the Ubangi language. For this work, ethnoecology has been of major importance because it has let us compare, as specifically as possible, the knowledge about and uses of plants and animals. This has led us to propose a hypothesis about the common cultural and linguistic foundation of the ancestors of both Pygmy groups (Bahuchet 1989, 1992b, 1993). The research question expanded to include comparisons with other Pygmy groups of the Congolese basin through the use of human genetics (Verdu 2008, 2012, 2014) and cultural elements such as music (Le Bomin and Mbot 2011) on the one hand, and creating monographs for studies located in Cameroon and Gabon on the other hand, to address the question of sociocultural changes in the context of modern development and logging (Duda 2017; Duda et al. 2018; Epelboin 2012; Gallois 2016; Gallois and Duda 2016; Hardin et al. 2010; Journal des Africanistes 2012; Leclerc 2001, 2012; Robillard 2010, 2012; Soengas 2009, 2010, 2012). Our ethnoecological research spread to the Gabonese lagoon and sea fisher communities (Sabinot 2008). We have carried on this collective research on the populations of a single forest ecosystem, taking food as a central axis and comparing three types of societies in southern Cameroon: Kola hunter-gatherer Pygmies, Mvae farmers, and Yasa inshore fishers. Our goal has been to grasp the relative roles of ecological constraints and sociocultural choices (Bahuchet 1996). To present this programme, it’s necessary to learn of Igor de Garine (1931–2018), a food anthropologist who was also a close friend of Haudricourt, with whom he collaborated, and a friend of Portères, who welcomed him into his laboratory. Africanist ethnologist Igor de Garine, who specialized in populations of the Central Sahel (Chad, Cameroon; de Garine 1964), quickly realised that food practices (i.e., foodways) offered a preferred way for anthropologists to penetrate the

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complexity of a society (de Garine 1962). In 1966, he created a Food and Agriculture Organization research group in Rome that focused on food habits, which led him to many regions around the world. He understood that food-related phenomena offered an intermediary between the biological approach (nutrition) and the social behavioural approach (anthropology; de Garine 1972, 1979, 1990, 1994). This led him to create the concept of food anthropology, which is multidisciplinary and which, with help from ecologist and primatologist Claude-Marcel Hladik (Hladik et al. 1993), he developed to provide field survey tools and gathered a work group to take these tools to the field, opting for a comparative approach (Hladik et al. 1990). His goal was to choose a region with low ecological differences but in which different societies lived and could be compared in terms of their language and economic ways. He studied three societies in north-east Cameroon: the Masa, the Musey, and the Tupuri (de Garine 1978, 1993, 1996, 2005). They began in the forest of south Cameroon and then expanded to the savannah and mountain ecosystems of central Cameroon (Froment et al. 1996; Hladik et al. 1996). De Garine was a tireless champion of the multidisciplinary approach to the study of human societies, requiring both bio-nutritional studies and socioethnographic research (de Garine 2004; de Garine and Harrison 1988). He created a truly important international movement around food anthropology as president of the International Commission on the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition, which is a commission of the World Anthropological Union.6 Food lies at the intersection of the human body, the living environment, and society, and is therefore pivotal for the comprehension of human societies. Thanks to de Garine, we now conceive of food as the fundamental mediator of relationships between human societies and their living environment, and the evolution of ethnoecology in France was essential to revealing this importance.

3.3 Amazonia Ethnoecological research began in French Guiana in the 1970s. The Wayãpi indigenous people in southern French Guiana were the focus of a large ethnoecological and ethnolinguistic study directed by Françoise and Pierre Grenand, with contributions by several naturalists from the Museum. Their goal was to collect specialised natural history and traditional knowledge concerning more than 2000 named species—878 fauna and 1200 flora (Grenand 1980). In the dictionary that they based on this work, the names of the species represented one-third of the 6200 words, which demonstrates the vast importance of traditional ecological knowledge in this society (Grenand 1989). This research continued by approaching itinerant slash-and-burn practices, hunting and fishing activities, knowledge and its uses in a range of ecosystems, including post-agricultural secondary forest (Grenand and Haxaire 1977; Grenand 1992, 1993; Grenand and Grenand 1996; Moretti and Grenand 1982). These activities were placed in a historical perspective (Grenand 1982; Grenand et al. 1999,

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2017), and in the multi-ethnic context of Guiana, especially in regard to ethnobotanical knowledge (Grenand and Prévost 1994; Grenand et al. 2004; Davy 2007, 2015; Fleury 2015a, b; Fleury et al. 2014; Ogeron et al. 2018) and slash-and-burn agriculture (Renoux et al. 2003; Bahuchet and Betsch 2012). All these studies were pervaded by the contemporary historical context of French Guiana and the difficulties it created for the native communities. Clarifying these difficulties has led to publications on hunting (Grenand 2000), craftsmanship (Grenand and Bahuchet 2006), legal issues (Grenand et al. 2006), and territorial issues (Davy et al. 2012). One thesis was also dedicated to the traditional fishing practices on the Oyapock River, in a multicultural context that straddles Guiana and Brazil (Laval 2016). The Amazonian ethnoecological research spread to Brazil, with an emphasis on agriculture in the flood-prone lands of the central Amazon (Guillaumet et al. 1990), and more recently in the upper Rio Negro region, in studies of the identity relationships between food and agrobiodiversity, with the goal of protecting agricultural biodiversity through a national agricultural system heritage listing (Emperaire 2014; Katz et al. 2008). The evolution of this agrobiodiversity in a periurban context has also been analysed (Eloy and Emperaire 2010; Emperaire and Eloy 2014; Emperaire and Almeida 2016). South of the Amazon River in Brazil, research by French and French-trained scientists has focused on the ethnoecology of the Kayapo, on their use and knowledge of the region’s plant resources and these resources’ economic importance (GonzalezPerez et al. 2012, 2013; Ribeiro et al. 2014). Again, the research has taken a global regional perspective (de Robert and Katz 2010; de Robert and López-Garcés 2012). The research on the Kayapo led to a programme of participatory cartography owing to the pressures on this society’s territory (de Robert 2004; de Robert et al. 2006). This method has been adopted more widely (de Robert and Duvail 2016), especially in Guiana (Fleury 2018; Fleury et al. 2016; Grenand et al. 2017).

3.4 The European Programme: Future of the People of Tropical Forests The research undertaken by our teams in central Africa and the Amazon led to a synthesis report ordered by the European Commission on the Situation of the Indigenous People of the Dense and Humid Forests (Bahuchet 1994, 19957 ; cf. Bahuchet and Grenand 1994; Bahuchet 1997; Grenand 1997). On the basis of this report, we led an important international project to study three equatorial forest regions that include more than 10 countries and three continents or regions.8 Our goal was to document the modern lifestyle of rural forest communities, while also considering the cities in the regions. This research was conducted under the European Union programme Future of the People of Tropical Forests, which was co-directed by Professor Pierre de Maret (Université Libre de Bruxelles) and Professor Serge Bahuchet (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the Museum). This programme was ordered by the

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Development Directorate of the European Commission, and lasted 5 years (1995– 2000), during which time it mobilised 90 participants from five European institutions. The work occurred mostly in the field, with about 30 PhD students from Europe and the study regions. This resulted in a voluminous five-volume report: a synthesis volume, a thematic volume, and three regional volumes (Bahuchet 2000; Bahuchet et al. 2000a, b, 2001; Bahuchet and de Maret 2000; Grenand 2000b).

4 Ethnoecology Today 4.1 Ethnoecology Outside the Tropics Ethnoecology is not only exotic and tropical, despite its original focus on the tropics. For example, interest has always existed in France. Auguste Chevalier, the founder, came from rural Normandy, and published articles about vineyards and other plants, and was involved the knowledge of the varietal diversity of plants from Normandy orchards, apple trees, and pear trees (among many articles, Chevalier 1921, 1922, 1940b, 1941). Barrau worked in Provence (Barrau 1976, 1978b, 1981), Friedberg in the Cévennes (Friedberg et al. 2000); and Pujol studied the geese used for their feathers, as well as the traditional gathering of truffles and other common species in France (Lecuyer and Pujol 1975; Pujol 1969, 1976, 1980). Closer to us, our students and young researchers have dedicated their theses to French ethnoecological issues, including the use of pasture fires in the Cévennes (Dumez 2004), and ethnobiological knowledge of the seaweed collectors in Brittany (Garineaud 2017) and small fishers in the Mediterranean (Reyes 2017; Reyes et al. 2015).

4.2 One Ambition: Interdisciplinarity In line with Mauss (1967) who, during the first half of the twentieth century, laid the foundations of French ethnography, researchers today have developed their field skills through important experiences in the field and teaching several complementary trends to the study of the relationships between human societies and nature, while taking into account techniques (Leroi-Gourhan 1971, 1973; Haudricourt 1968), linguistics (Bouquiaux and Thomas 1976), ecology (Barrau 1975), food (de Garine 1972), and society (Cresswell and Godelier 1976). The result is a strongly interdisciplinary approach that requires a mixed training in areas in addition to human and natural sciences.

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A Definition of Ethnoecology

Among the anthropological sciences, ethnoecology is dedicated to describing and understanding the intimate relationships between humans and our environment. It is an approach rather than a discipline. It is characterised by the association of several complementary investigation methods. First, ethnography, which involves a thorough observation of daily life in its full social complexity, achieved by studying the linguistics (i.e., the words used to cut out the world around it); this includes the stories that a society uses to report its activities. Ethnography is associated with ecology (a society’s knowledge of the plants, the animals, and their relationships in its environment). Hence, ethnoecology considers several inseparable elements, which we can sum up in two expressions: “things and words” and “knowledge and know-how”. Observation of a group’s activities is associated with the collection, as specifically as possible, of knowledge about the elements from the environment that are known and used by the group (to support a thorough scientific assessment). However, it mostly comes with the writing of associated terminology, whether for natural objects (plants, animals), objects or tools, or gestures. This collection of samples, observations, and vocabulary is the required base for precise ethnobiological data. Bahuchet (2014b) provides recommendations and methods for ethnobiological collections. Indeed, very early on, it appeared to us that interviews alone were not enough, because they reflected only what a stakeholder thought of their activities, and not the reality of these activities. Thus, interviews are incomplete without an outside observation of the reported activities. This represents the opinion of Toledo (1992) in his article–manifesto. Ethnoecology is the study of ecology as it is lived and thought about by human societies (Bahuchet 2017).

4.2.2

Goals and a Programme

The world has changed, and conditions are not the same at the beginning of the twenty-first century as they were in the 1950s, when our field began. Daily life, even in the tropics, has changed significantly; the influence of the outside world has increased, to the point that it has become a major concern of researchers. That is how I began my research in 1972, in studies of semi-nomadic groups who performed most of their activities without constraints in an intact forest environment, which nonetheless required me to account for the colonial historical conditions (Bahuchet 1972, 1978, 1979) and the interactions with neighbouring communities (Bahuchet and Guillaume 1982). In the decade that followed, I was able to observe the changes related to both increased logging and the implementation of protected areas and the associated legislation (Bahuchet 1991; Hardin et al. 2010; Robillard 2010; Robillard and Bahuchet 2012). Such disruptions require a change in the approach to asking questions, although this change does not challenge the relevance of the ethnoecological method. What it requires is a thorough analysis of the interrelations among the elements of a community’s environment (i.e., terminology and categorisation, uses and representations,

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access rules). Our approach rests on the concept of ordinary biodiversity. This includes all the spontaneous animal and plant species, but also all domesticated animal and plant species (agrobiodiversity), as well as all the spaces and landscapes influenced by the community’s activities. Our purpose is to understand and highlight what constitutes the support resources and mechanisms for daily life and what we know about them. We use several methodological steps, following two complementary axes: (a) Know-how, which refers to the knowledge of practices (obtaining, making, transforming, using, consuming) and requires an inventory of the species that provide a community’s raw materials, as well as the associated tools and gestures, but that also includes the rules of production and access to resources, the players that follow these rules, and the economic importance of food production and consumption. (b) Knowledge (knowing, naming, classifying, interpreting), which includes local ecological knowledge of the spatial and temporal availability of resources. This framework provides the basic elements we need to understand and analyse contemporary conditions, in all contexts, whether development or preservation. It is also important to consider the regulatory conditions to access the resources, give them value, and sell them in accordance with national and international legislation. The highlighting of local conceptions of species, their interactions, and landscapes in all sociological contexts and in all types of environments, tropical or temperate, is necessary. It lets us understand the differences among the members of a community and between these members and outside players, whether governmental or foreign, and, hence, the conflicts that result from these differences. The confrontation between local communities and national or international political decisions usually results from divergent conceptions of local ecological conditions. Several works from our young researchers have documented the ethnoecological changes and confrontations among stakeholders in France in the contexts of seaweed gatherers (Garineaud 2018), the Cévennes pastoralists and their space management (Dumez 2010), and coastal fishers (Reyes 2016); and in protected areas in central Africa (Robillard 2012), Mexico (Bessy 2017; Sabinot and Doyon 2014), and Brazil (Crespi et al. 2015). The international stakes, such as enforcement of the Convention for Biological Diversity in terms of local knowledge (article 8j, Nagoya Protocol) or the sustainable uses of ecosystems (article 10c), require a specific knowledge of local contexts. It is now known that we need to combine several types of knowledge, connected to different types of players (local community members, academic researchers, members or managers of civil society, the public) in any environment management project, leading to a sharing of knowledge (see, for instance, Thomas and Twyman 2004). The fact that these types of knowledge rest on very different philosophical perspectives and conceptions of nature (ontology) is a significant challenge (cf. Raymond et al. 2010). The recent development of the concepts of “social–ecological systems” and of “coupled human and natural systems” takes into account the complexity of human interventions in ecological systems and offers an ecological interpretation

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of the consequences of human actions, the sustainability of these actions, and their resilience (Berkes and Folke 1998; Folke 2006; Folke et al. 2016; Levin et al. 2013; Liu et al. 2007). The diversity of the subsystems that affect these factors (users, governments, technical services, commercial systems) requires a common reference and analysis framework for the sustainability of these socio-ecosystems (Ostrom 2009). However, it is obvious to us that this approach is based on a conception of social systems in which people are considered mostly through their institutions and institutional organisations. An ethnoecological study with detailed data about the concepts endogenous to a culture and its stakeholders must be added to the sociocultural elements that are essential to these analyses. Climate change, for instance, provides a remarkable example of the importance of local know-how for sustainable management of an ecosystem and illustrates the local perceptions of change and its indicators (Nakashima and Roué 2002; Marin 2010; Orlove et al. 2010; Roncoli 2006). Today’s biodiversity management and conservation trends are increasingly taking into account human activities and advocating coexistence between societies and the living things that support them. This is a major recommendation of the Convention for Biological Diversity, as well as one of the conclusions expected from the two latest converging reports of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change9 (2019). To encourage biodiversity conservation, the concept of ecosystem services was coined, with the goal of making governments (traditionally advised solely by economists) aware that biodiversity has both economic value and unpriced values that are essential to humans and nature. These ecological elements must be taken into account even though they offer no direct advantages for human societies, because they are essential to the operation of ecosystems and hence, indirectly, to the provision of all other services. These are the conditions (e.g., climate) and processes (e.g., primary production by plants) through which natural ecosystems and their component species support human life. As ecologists have been noting for some time, the values of these services have been greatly underestimated by society (Daily 1997). In addition to the supply services (especially nutritional) and regulation services (e.g., erosion, water cycle), ecosystem services are also cultural (spiritual, aesthetic, recreational, educational; Costanza et al. 1997). The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment insists that: Mankind, though protected from environmental changes by culture and technology, actually fundamentally depends on the flow of ecosystemic services. Biological diversity does not only contribute to the material wellbeing and subsistence of human beings (…). It also contributes to safety, resilience, social relations, health and freedom of choice and action (MEA 2005).

In Japan, multi-sector human activities have produced landscapes composed of a mosaic of ecosystems, all of which have been transformed by humans, and each of which has different uses and functions. These include agroecosystems, secondary forests, deciduous thickets, pine forests, evergreen coniferous plantations, rice fields

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and their irrigation systems, pastures, and hills. This type of anthropogenic rural landscape is called satoyama (Takeuchi et al. 2003; Centikaya 2009; Morimoto 2010). During the Convention for Biological Diversity conference in 2010 in Nagoya, the Japanese government suggested a Satoyama Initiative that aimed at clarifying planning policies for agricultural mosaics to implement the Convention’s principles related to an ecosystem-based approach. A work programme based on traditional agroecosystems was formulated and accepted by the conference participants to clarify suitable methods to promote the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. The underlying principles strongly resemble the concept of “the ethnoecology of landscapes” as it is currently being developed (Johnson and Hunn 2012). The 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services report once again warns of accelerating biodiversity loss, environmental deterioration, and pollution, and concludes that one of the goals that must be achieved to restrain biodiversity loss and to achieve sustainable development cannot be achieved under current conditions: Goals for conserving and sustainably using nature and achieving sustainability cannot be met by current trajectories, and goals for 2030 and beyond may only be achieved through transformative (i.e. a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values) changes across economic, social, political and technological factors (IPBES 2019).

The report also recommends, in addition to changing how we use nature, leaning on native communities who are maintaining a less destructive lifestyle: Governance has at many levels moved slowly to further and better incorporate into policies and incentives the values of nature’s contributions to people. However, around the globe, subsidies with harmful effects on nature have persisted (IPBES 2019).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report Climate Change and Land (IPCC 2019) points out the effects of human uses of the environment, first and foremost through agriculture, on greenhouse-gas emissions and temperature increases. It recommends a dramatic change in our practices and evaluates the benefits for the evolution of climate that would result from this change: Sustainable land management, including sustainable forest management, can prevent and reduce land degradation, maintain land productivity, and sometimes reverse the adverse impacts of climate change on land degradation. It can also contribute to mitigation and adaptation. Reducing and reversing land degradation, at scales from individual farms to entire watersheds, can provide cost effective, immediate, and long-term benefits to communities and support several Sustainable Development Goals with co-benefits for adaptation and mitigation.

But the report insists on the short-term benefits of a change in agricultural and food practices to restrain climate change as well as to contribute to reducing poverty: Near-term action to address climate change adaptation and mitigation, desertification, land degradation and food security can bring social, ecological, economic and development cobenefits. Co-benefits can contribute to poverty eradication and more resilient livelihoods for those who are vulnerable.

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In each of these examples of current biodiversity policy, ethnoecology will play a major role in improving our comprehension of contemporary ecological phenomena to contribute to a full and fruitful contribution of local communities throughout the world.

Notes 1. All the volumes of the Revue de Botanique Appliquée (1921 to 1953) and its successor, the Journal d’Agronomie Tropicale et de Botanique Appliquée (1954 to 2000), can be read online for free: https://www.persee.fr/collection/jatba. For a description of the evolution of these journals at these ethnobotany and ethnozoology laboratories, see Hoare (2012). 2. In 2002, a research unit called Eco-anthropology and Ethnobiology had been created, directed by Serge Bahuchet, and then turned into Eco-anthropology in 2019, directed by Evelyne Heyer. 3. https://journals.openedition.org/ethnoecologie/. 4. MNHN, National Museum of Natural History; CNRS, French National Centre for Scientific Research; ORSTOM, Office for Scientific and Technical Research Overseas; IRD, Research Institute for Development; EHESS, French School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences. 5. In the conclusion of that book, the author uses the word “ethno-botany” to represent a synthetic discipline that combines approaches as diverse as botany, geography, archeology, and ethnology. 6. http://www.icafood.eu/index.php/about-icaf. 7. https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/3fb8b531-1851-44d5-8d10261f951ad941. 8. Africa (Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was formerly known as Zaire), the Caribbean and Latin America (French Guiana, Guiana, Belize), and the Pacific–Oceania region (Vanuatu, Papua-New Guinea). 9. IPBES: Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services; https://www.ipbes.net/about; IPCC: intergovernmental panel on climate change https://www. ipcc.ch/.

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“Back to the Trees!”: Historical Ecology in Amazonia Stéphen Rostain

“Back to the trees!” Thus, regularly proclaimed Uncle Vania in a famous novel about the adventures of a prehistoric family that affirmed the need to return to a true communion with the trees to better understand and adapt humans to the world (Lewis 1960). Although considered retrograde and reactionary by his family in the book, he was perhaps actually showing modernism and progressivism. Indeed, many are calling today for a more intimate interaction with our vegetal brothers. Descola (2013) proposes to abolish the border between nature and culture. Hallé (2014) declaims an advocacy to work for the rainforest. Kohn (2013) wonders how forests think, and Wohlleben (2016) tries to pierce the secret life of trees. But before becoming fashionable, trees and forests were the subject of meticulous, interdisciplinary, and innovative scientific observations. Historical ecology very quickly seized this environment to try to break down its mechanisms and the particular relationship it has with humans. It is indeed the marriage of history and ecology—in the broadest sense—that has given rise to a new vision of this silvicultural world. Very logically, the tropical forest, a melting pot of biodiversity and vitality, attracted scientists, and it is Amazonia that most attracted scientists. “Inasmuch as historical ecology begins with the presumption that contemporary landscapes are the result of multiple factors that have interacted in complex ways throughout history, independent data sets provide an important cross-check in building consensus among collaborators” (Crumley 2006: 18). As described in the poem “A garden of verdure and smiles” by Ida Scott Taylor and Oliver (1892): He told of the fruits So luscious and fine, That crowded the tree And loaded the vine; S. Rostain (B) National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 K. Ikeya and W. Balée (eds.), Global Ecology in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9_3

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And samples of each With dextrous display, Columbus set forth That wonderful day. Pre-Columbian anthropogenic activity in the rainforest deeply modified the Amazonian environment. The historical ecology approach, which has been adopted these last few decades by archeologists, enhances understanding of the cultural and natural evolution of the landscape in the long term. It implies the use of an interdisciplinary approach to research, because only the multiplication of evaluations by various disciplines can refine the analysis. The “Earthmovers” program is a good example of interdisciplinary research in historical ecology, during which various skills and training have been combined to enhance our understanding of the functioning of coastal savannas and the evolution of ancient agricultural structures. Thus, in French Guiana, it has been possible to demonstrate the powerful impact of pre-Columbian populations on the landscape, and then the dramatic action of nature itself in this disturbed biotope. It is therefore the combination of very diverse factors—pre-Columbian earthworks, the subtle marriage of land and water, the effective intervention of natural ecosystem engineers—that has produced the forms observed today. In the end, it is thanks to a combination of different scientific disciplines that a more detailed depiction of the reality of an environment with a complex genesis has been proposed. The current appearance of the coastal fringe of French Guiana is the result of a millenary history of gradual co-construction by nature and humans.

1 Interdisciplinarity: “One for All and All for One” The subjects of archeological study now exist only as traces, making it is necessary to diversify points of view to understand the past through interdisciplinary research. In addition, adopting the interdisciplinary approach significantly improves interpretation. The study of raised fields in the tropical lowlands of South America is a good example of such multiple approaches. Although agriculture on raised fields is no longer practiced today, it was relatively common before the arrival of Europeans. The remains of these practices—rows of mounds forming regular checkerboards in the floodplain—are still found along the coast of the Guianas (Rostain 1991) (Fig. 1). The combination of different disciplines has been all the more effective because it has taken a historical ecological perspective that considers savannahs not as simple static features, but as dynamic landscapes in constant evolution to the present day. The human past of the coastal savannahs of French Guiana has been studied by archeologists since the late 1980s (Rostain 1991) and was the subject of a recent research program between 2003 and 2011. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it had finally become possible to identity the pre-Columbian populations that created

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Fig. 1 Pre-Columbian raised fields in a flooded depression in front of the Amerindian village of Awala, in the mouth of the Mana River, on the extreme west of French Guiana (photograph by S. Rostain)

these earthworks (Rostain 2015). Despite previous work in 1989–1991, many questions remained about the history of these landscapes as well as their contemporary ecology. In addition, the considerable refinement of laboratory analytical techniques, particularly in the fields of archeobotany, pedology, and dating, allowed for new and more accurate diagnoses. All these developments justified the implementation of a new project. Two main areas of research interacted in this way: history and ecology. This research has been at the heart of the ongoing debate about the degree to which pre-Columbian occupants had transformed Amazonian ecosystems. Indeed, for more than 20 years, specialists in the Amazon have been studying the ancient human impact and pre-Columbian anthropogenic changes (Balée and Erickson 2006), including work in historical ecology on terra preta (i.e., anthropogenic dark earth; Glaser and Woods 2004; Arroyo-Kalin 2008) and floodplain earthworks (Darch 1983; Spencer et al. 1994; Walker 2004; Erickson 2008; Schaan 2008). However, never before has such interdisciplinary research to address a common question been undertaken in the Amazon. During the “Prehistory of the Western coast of French Guyana” project from 2003 to 2006 and the “Earthmovers” project from 2007 to 2011, field missions brought together researchers from different disciplines who were able to exchange and share their skills. These exchanges have strengthened the common approach and the definition of a common problem. The marriage of

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disciplines was a real success that resulted in the production of several conferences and interdisciplinary publications (Rostain 2008a, b, 2009, 2010a, b, 2012, 2014a, b, 2015, 2016; Iriarte et al. 2010, 2012; McKey et al. 2010, 2014; McKey and Rostain 2010, 2015; Neves and Rostain 2012; Renard et al. 2012a, b, 2013; Rostain et al. 2012; Pfahler et al. 2015; Rostain and McKey 2015a, b).

2 Aerial Archeology Raised field sites were originally discovered by aerial overflights (Rostain 1991). Because of its low forest cover, the Guyanese coastline is ideal for aerial archeology. Thus, many raised fields and apparently anthropogenic developments (canals, raised paths, and ponds) in swamps were identified in 1989 using this method during overflights with ultralight aircraft in French Guiana. The result has been a unique collection of photographs of the former coastal earth structures. Nevertheless, in 2007, new aircraft were successfully tested during the “Earthmovers” project. Overflights at different altitudes were carried out with a kite and a radio-controlled drone (the Pixy: http://www.drone-pixy.com/). The latter takes entirely vertical photographs that allow for highly accurate planimetric analysis. These various photographs are quality controlled by ground surveys in marshes and savannahs to confirm the existence of certain structures. However, it should be noted that many structures are practically invisible at ground level in swamps (Fig. 2). At the same time, a series of small-scale aerial photographs were examined in relief using a stereoscope. On the basis of stereoscopic interpretation of more than 2000 photographs, it has been possible to draw a detailed map of these structures and to understand past and present human impacts within the landscape (Rostain 2012). This study has served as a basis for precise mapping of land structures between Cayenne Island in French Guiana and the Corentyne River on the border of Suriname and Guyana, a distance of nearly 550 km. In French Guiana alone, where the surveys were the most rigorous, there are 662 raised-field complexes, which represent some 2856 ha of savannah transformed by humans. However, these raised fields correspond to only a residual part of the pre-Columbian anthropized space. Account must be taken of the areas destroyed since the European conquest and especially in recent years when there have been multiple destructive factors (Rostain and McKey 2015a). Seven different areas juxtaposed by raised fields have been differentiated along the coast. Each of them has a specific organization of the structures. The nature and distribution of the mounds then depend on the topography and water level, but variations of forms and their organization sometimes exist within a single complex. However, analysis of the distributions of raised fields tells us little about the farmers themselves. This is where the archeological fieldwork comes in.

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Fig. 2 Raised fields west of Kourou seen from the sky (upper panel) and from the ground (lower panel) (photographs by S. Rostain)

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3 Archeology One of the main objectives of the research project was to study the habitats of the sites where the farmers who managed the raised fields lived. In an interdisciplinary study, three archeological sites were excavated in parallel with surveys carried out on specific sectors of the western coast of French Guiana (Rostain 2015). This region is a recent coastal plain that is low and marshy and is bordered on the northern maritime side by a mangrove swamp. This formation fits directly into the old coastal plain. The environment of this plain is therefore a wetland and consists of floodplains and marshes, in the middle of which there are sandy ridges, called cheniers, a few dozen meters wide and tens of kilometers long (Fig. 3). Originally, the sand deposits brought by rivers formed beaches along the coast. Over time the shoreline prograded, and the sand deposits were enclosed by inland swamps. These remnants of former beaches trapped within the coastal plain offered the best sites for human settlement along the coast. However, discoveries were much less frequent than expected. While there is approximately one site per square kilometer in the interior forest—identifiable by the presence of pottery on the surface—this is not the case on coastal, sandy formations. Surveys have shown that the sherds did not rise to the surface in this sandy environment, as they did in the forest, because the pedogenesis is different. The soils

Fig. 3 Cheniers: sandy formations made from ancient coastal beaches (photograph by S. Rostain)

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are deeper, and there is less root and animal activity. As a result, buried sites cannot be identified on the surface, and only development work uncovers them. In addition, several raised fields were also detected in swamps during surveys—some of which were within woods and therefore not visible from the sky—and soil samples were taken for phytolith and pollen analysis. Excavations revealed that these raised fields corresponded for the most part to the Arauquinoid occupation along the Guianas coast, which dates from 650 to 1750 AD (Rostain and Versteeg 2004). The land occupied by these populations gradually expanded from west to east and accounted for a large portion of the coast from the Berbice River in Guyana to the Island of Cayenne in French Guiana (Fig. 4). Mounds are more numerous in the west, especially around Kourou, where almost every floodplain was developed, but it should be remembered that the large colonial earthworks (polders) of Suriname and Guyana were able to erase many of the pre-Columbian structures (Rostain and McKey 2015a). In any case, the population moved from west to east as the western territory was gradually abandoned by the Arauquinoid communities in favor of new lands to the east. This movement explains why the easternmost sites are also the most recent. All the residential sites selected for the excavation were spread over large areas along the sandy cheniers parallel to the coastline. It was therefore necessary to adapt the excavation technique to the field conditions and to be able to respond to the scientific issue. To understand the internal organization of these sites, a decision was

Fig. 4 Map of areas of pre-Columbian raised fields in the Guianas (drawing by S. Rostain)

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Fig. 5 Large-scale excavation of the Sable Blanc site, near Iracoubo, where the traces of preColumbian postholes are marked with small spoons (photograph by S. Rostain)

made to carry out large-scale excavations by scraping in order to uncover the traces and remains in place and thereby obtain an image of their spatial distribution (Fig. 5). Three sites had the characteristics required by the project’s issue, i.e. their location on a chenier, their proximity to raised fields, and the presence of remains from the Arauquinoid tradition. The three excavated sites were Sable Blanc (White Sand) west of the village of Iracoubo, Bois Diable (Devil’s Wood), and Colline Sable (Sand Hill) west of the town of Kourou (Rostain 2015). Sable Blanc (excavated by our team in 2007) had been previously excavated during a preventive operation when it was discovered. However, this work had been limited to the funerary area of the settlement; the domestic space was unexplored. By chance, the excavation area we opened was located in a place that was destroyed immediately after our intervention to provide access to a hangar. This excavation therefore made it possible to study a part of the habitat site that has now disappeared. In addition to the excavation, a complex of recent agricultural raised beds adjacent to the site was analyzed in cooperation with archeobotanists and soil scientists. Bois Diable (excavated by our team in 2008 and 2009) had been known since the late 1980s (Rostain 1994), but because only very limited excavations had been carried out there, the site was not well defined. Much of the settlement had disappeared because of sand extraction by a company, which had created a large artificial lake.

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Fig. 6 The Bois Diable site, west of Kourou, in 1989, showing raised field complexes south of the sandy formation. Shown in the photograph are the archeological site, a modern lake, a coastal swamp to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean in the background (photograph by S. Rostain)

The adjacent raised field complexes just to the south of the site were also studied by the archeobotanists and soil scientists during the program. Colline Sable (excavated by our team in 2009) was discovered during the 2008 surveys. It is located on a chenier that is almost a continuum of the Bois Diable chenier and is separated from it by only a swampy area ca. 100 m wide. It was therefore interesting to determine whether the occupation of the two sites was contemporary. Here again, a large complex of raised fields was located immediately to the south and has been studied by various researchers (Fig. 6). Finally, various archeological surveys have been made around Kourou and Iracoubo. The last survey, in 2010, focused on the chenier bordering the immense Grand Macoua savannah, which is covered with raised fields and was particularly studied by “Earthmovers” ecologists and pedologists. In addition, two raised-field complexes built west of Kourou and just south of the two residential sites of Bois Diable and Colline Sable received special attention from all researchers of the team. The former inhabitants of this coast resided, like the current occupants, on the rare lands that could not be flooded. The Arauquinoid villages were most often installed on the cheniers. The most important sites were systematically located near the coast and a short distance west of a large river. Access to the ocean was thus facilitated for farmers of raised fields, who also made great use of marine resources, as evidenced by the abundance of shell objects found at coastal sites in Suriname. The raised fields

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were generally built in the floodplain savannah south of the residential settlements on the cheniers.

4 Pedology Because raised fields were built with earth, their study has logically involved the expertise of soil scientists. A team led by Bruno Glaser and Jago Birk (Bayreuth University, Germany) carried out a series of analyses on the structures. They specified, inter alia, the quality of the soils, their permeability, and their erosion rate. Soil scientists, for example, looked at the mode of construction of the raised fields. They demonstrated that the sediments used to build the mounds had been carefully selected. The paleosol buried under the raised fields was at the same level as that of the surrounding humus. Above this buried horizon was a thin layer of grey clay subsoil 5 cm thick. The base of the mounds was therefore built with the upper horizon of the surrounding swamp. This paleolevel was surmounted by the mound itself, which was made of a dark sediment very rich in organic matter, nearly 60 cm thick. However, the latter did not come directly from the swamp, but had mostly been transported from further away: there was no humus horizon over a large portion of the perimeter of the top of the sandy upper formation, but a humus horizon was present in its center. The sterile subsoil that appeared on this exposed surface supported much less vegetation than the surrounding area. No natural phenomenon could explain this absence. It was therefore likely that the Amerindians scraped the richest soil from the sandy formation and built the hills with these fertile sediments. They likely used shovels and baskets to transport the soil over a distance of less than 100 m. Soil analysis confirmed the similarity of soil samples collected from the humus level of the pre-littoral sandy formations and nearby raised fields. But buried paleosols can reveal much more. To exploit that possibility, soil scientists have joined forces with archeobotanists to date the mounds. What seemed impossible in the past has become possible today thanks to the progress made in the analysis of soils and various microelements. Drilling revealed the presence of paleosols buried under some mounds. The paleosols therefore correspond to the time of construction of the raised fields that cover them. Organic matter extracted from the tops of paleosols buried under mounds of complexes located west of Kourou was dated with 14 C. The ages obtained were respectively 670–700 years calibrated AP (Beta-254054) and 920–950 years calibrated AP (Beta-254058) (McKey et al. 2010). These dates correspond to those obtained on nearby sites, as well as those of Barbakoeba culture (Arauquinoid tradition) on the western coast of French Guiana and the eastern coast of Suriname. It is therefore very reasonable to attribute the construction of the raised fields to the Barbakoeba groups who lived at least between 1000 and 1300 AD on the cheniers bordering the mound complexes. However, soil is a recalcitrant witness that does not easily provide information and can remain silent, despite multiple analyses. It is therefore sometimes necessary to be creative, as did soil scientist Verena Pfahler (Bayreuth University, Germany),

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who used the atmospheric nuclear tests of the 1950s and 1960s as references for her study (Pfahler et al. 2015). These tests deposited a uniform layer of radioisotopes, including cesium 137 (137 Cs), on the Earth’s surface. Subsequent erosion and disturbance of the soils to different degrees left heterogeneous impregnations of radioisotopes everywhere. The idea was therefore to calculate the vertical and horizontal distribution of 137 Cs activities at specific locations in the savannah—raised fields, foots of hills, and untransformed matrices—and then to compare them. The results of the measurements clarified the evolution of the structures and showed a clear distinction between the mounds and the matrix. The discovery that 137 Cs was present at considerable depth in the raised fields indicated that there had been much bioturbation and therefore a burial of isotopes. In contrast, the quantities recorded were lower than elsewhere because of loss on the sloping sides. This loss was evidenced by the high activities of 137 Cs in the accumulation zone at the foot of the hills, which was indicative of erosion. In the matrix, however, 137 Cs had remained in the surface area where there was no activity of natural soil engineers1 and therefore no bioturbation. These data were obviously essential for ecologists, because they proved that the action of natural soil engineers in the raised fields over the past 60 years had been intense, and probably even since the abandonment of the structures by the Amerindians. There had been previous questions about the good condition of the structures, even though they had ceased to be cultivated more than 500 years ago. It should be noted that in a region with rainfall of 3000–4000 mm per year and without trees as windbreaks, one would expect heavy erosion. However, there is a balance between erosion and deposition, in which natural ecosystem engineers play their part (Pfahler et al. 2015). The low rate of erosion and intense bioturbation could be partly explained by ecologists, as discussed below.

5 Archeobotany The combination of soil science and archeobotany has provided other intriguing results. For example, researchers José Iriarte and Jennifer Watling (Exeter University, UK) conducted sampling (Fig. 7) and made measurements in the Kourou, Grand Macoua, and Organabo savannahs (Iriarte et al. 2010; McKey et al. 2010). Phytolithic assemblages combined with variations of carbon stable isotope ratios provided information about the history of the landscape. Samples were collected along a stratigraphic column down to a depth of 70 cm. Phytoliths at different depths provided an image of the dominant plant community at different time steps, from the oldest at 70 cm to the most recent at the surface. These analyses revealed two trends that evolved in parallel. The first trend was an increase in the relative proportion of grasses in the Panicoideae subfamily from the lower clay level to the more organic upper levels and a decrease in the proportion of Cyperaceae and herbaceous dicots from

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Fig. 7 Extraction of a soil core in peat near raised field complexes west of Kourou to analyze a pollen column (photograph by D. McKey)

70 cm to the surface. The second trend reflected progression from more homogeneous vegetation at the greatest depths to more differentiated vegetation between the mound (Poaceae) and matrix (Cyperaceae) near the surface. These results were confirmed by isotopic analysis of soil organic matter, which showed a transition from one homogeneous isotopic signature to another. At greater depths, there was a higher proportion of C3 plants, whereas at the surface, the isotopic signature was heterogeneous. The mounds indicated a higher contribution of C4 plants (primarily grasses of the Panicoideae subfamily), whereas the matrix showed a signal of vegetation dominated by C3 plants: herbaceous dicots (Heliconia, Marantaceae and Oryzoideae, Poaceae) and monocots (mostly Cyperaceae). The current vegetation in our study sites shows the same pattern, with a higher proportion of C4 plants on the mounds and C3 plants in the matrix. The change of the observed plant community can be interpreted as the result of an environmental change: the transition from a naturally flat and flooded savannah to a savannah dotted with mounds, where heterogeneity has been induced by humans. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, archeobotany has made spectacular progress that has made it possible to develop questions that were unimaginable only

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three decades ago. Indeed, in the humid tropics, it has become an inseparable and related discipline of archeology. The plant remains themselves are not preserved in this extremely corrosive and rotting environment unless exceptional preservation conditions are met. Calcined seeds are sometimes found, but with an appearance that has not been obscured and is recognizable. Obviously, such discoveries are generally made in a culinary context. The analytical techniques have become so refined that symptomatic, botanical microremains can now be recovered from the surface of archeological objects and even from archeological soils. In the absence of botanical macro-remains, we must therefore turn to the very small. There are three recognizable plant remains: pollen, phytoliths, and starch grains. Pollen is an accepted way to define cultivated plants, but it is not ideal. Because pollen is very light and easily airborne, it can be transported over long distances to a place where it has never grown or even been cultivated. We had an unfortunate example of this in French Guiana, when we collected sediments in a raised field complex in the Maillard savannah, near Macouria. Determinations showed that plants imported during the colonial period had mixed with those of the indigenous peoples. Thus, among the recognized cultivated species, there were local species, such as the cocoyam (Xanthosoma), sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas), manioc (Manihot esculenta), and maize (Zea mays), but also colonial species such as taro (Colocasia esculenta), reported since the eighteenth century, and sugar cane (Saccharum officinale), introduced in the seventeenth century (Chacornac and Rostain 2015). In such cases, it is difficult to reach firm conclusions. The analysis of phytoliths can then be used as a guide. They are tiny silica particles produced by many plants, whose morphology is sometimes diagnostic of the taxon (family, genus, sometimes even species) or group of plants (e.g., herbaceous dicotyledons, woody plants) from which they are derived. Some plants that do not produce distinctive pollen grains at the genus or species level, such as many grasses and Cyperaceae, have distinctive phytoliths. Phytoliths are an extremely diverse source of information and lend themselves to multiple uses, both paleoenvironmental and archeological. The two types of microfossils, pollen and phytolith, therefore often provide additional information. The advantage of phytoliths over pollen is that they are heavy particles that do not move easily because they are inside plant tissues and fall to the ground with the plants. In our sites in French Guiana, which are dominated by grasses and Cyperaceae, phytoliths have proven to be very informative in understanding natural vegetation and the identity of plants grown by farmers in raised fields. Finally, there is another type of botanical microfossil, starch grains. Much less resistant than phytoliths to degradation, starch grains can nevertheless be preserved in certain very particular micro-environments. However, starch grains can persist for millennia if they are protected in ceramic tool crevices. They are found on stone tools to grind or to grate food plants or on pottery containers used to prepare and to store food. As their structure is often diagnostic of the species or genus, they provide essential data about cultivated and consumed plants, and they add information that is inaccessible via pollen or phytolithic analysis.

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The study of raised fields automatically involves the question of the plants that were grown there. This question can now be answered thanks to the determination of botanical microfossils. Soil samples were collected by archeobotanists from various mounds at various depths. For the first time in South America, it has become known with certainty what pre-Columbian farmers in the tropical lowlands were growing on their raised fields (Iriarte et al. 2010). The systematic presence of maize has thus been highlighted, both in agricultural areas and on pottery harvested in habitat sites. In addition, the cultivation of squash (Cucurbita sp.) was identified and, possibly, that of yam (Dioscorea sp.) and sweet potato. The consumption chili pepper (Capsicum annuum) and manioc has also been demonstrated (Iriarte et al. 2010; Chacornac and Rostain 2015). Based on the current diet of Amazonian groups, it has often been thought that the diet of pre-Columbian populations must also have been based on cassava. However, recent research in the Amazon has shown that this “manioc civilization” was perhaps less prevalent in the past than it is today. But archeobotany has also provided new data on the history of Guyanese savannahs. A long sediment core was extracted from the bottom of a swamp located near a large, raised field site (Fig. 8). It represented 2150 years of environmental history. The results have combined analyses of pollens, phytoliths, and charcoals (Iriarte et al. 2012). They show low and stable levels of burned biomass during the Late Holocene, when the raised fields were active, and then a dramatic increase in fires when Europeans arrived. The practice of burning the savannah is therefore—at least in this particular region—recent and linked to the emergence of Westerners and the upheavals they have caused. While contemporary populations living in these environments burn in the surrounding woods and regularly burn savannahs, such practices were absent among the pre-Columbian communities in the region, which, on the contrary, controlled and prevented fires to improve the management of soil organic matter and thus their agricultural production. The proliferation of coastal savannah fires in French Guiana is not the only consequence of the European invasion, because other innovations can be observed in the landscape, particularly in the management of these floodplains and in the earthworks that were built there.

6 Historical Sciences History and ethnography are two essential disciplines to assess recent human interventions in the savannahs. Archeological surveys have revealed recent earth structures and remains (Rostain 2012). The great period of agriculture on raised fields in the Guianas ended before the arrival of the Europeans. Rare colonial evidence does indicate some Amerindians cultivating in this way, but these occurrences were rare. For example, the Palikur of northern Amapá, Brazil, still used this technique in swamps in the seventeenth century (Grenand 1981). They planted mainly bitter cassava and, to a lesser extent, yams.

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Fig. 8 A soil core extracted near this raised field complex west of Kourou made possible a study of the vegetal history of the area during more than two millennia (photograph by S. Rostain)

The first Europeans who settled along the French Guiana coast did not feel very comfortable in these wetlands. They fled them because of their bad reputation, acquired following the first failures of colonization. It was believed at the time that the “exhalations” and “noxious miasmas” of stagnant waters caused “putrid” fevers because “the homicidal vapours of this virgin land kill the man who opens it without precaution” (Pitou 1805: 223). They therefore sought the wooded highlands to build their houses and cultivate fields by slash-and-burn, in the Amerindian way. However, quite quickly, Dutchmen started to build polders on the Suriname coast (Fig. 9). These are parcels traced by canals on flooded soils and surrounded by dikes to dry them out. Because they were used to living in their flat floodplain country of origin, the Dutch knew how to manage agriculture at sea level. They therefore applied their centuries of experience in managing floodplains. They built polders on large areas of Suriname, followed by the English in Guyana. In 1668, there were 23 plantations in Suriname; by 1800, there were 641 active plantations along the Para River and in the estuaries of the Suriname and Commewijne Rivers. Those plantations represented thousands of square kilometers of polder land (NPOS and RDPPD 1988). The main crop was sugar cane, transported on barges along the canals to the sugar factories where it was processed (Fig. 10). The polders became increasingly rare with the abolition of slavery. In Suriname, only 3500 ha of polders produced rice in the Coronie district on the western coast during the 1970s. Polders transformed the eastern coastline of Suriname and the entire coast of Guyana, but this technique was much less popular in French Guiana. The floodable savannahs of this country have therefore been largely preserved. In the other

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Fig. 9 Colonial Dutch polders east of Paramaribo, Suriname (photograph by S. Rostain)

two Guianas, on the other hand, these huge earthworks obviously modified the morphology and functioning of coastal swamps. The checkered remains of the canals of these polders are clearly visible during overflights. This period of major agricultural work in the lowlands ended in the nineteenth century. Competition from European beet sugar dealt a blow to tropical cane sugar crops, and the end of slavery at the same time repeated that blow by depriving colonial farms of their slave labor. The abolition of slavery provoked the decline of large polder farms and gave birth to small-family agriculture. It is important to know that the slaves were liberated and released into the wild. Many began to pursue the dream of fortune by goldmining, sacrificing their souls and often their lives, to the illusion of the “Eldorado”. Others, fewer in number, returned to the land and to work in the fields. However, they had been deprived, and they had to build a life as a free peasant, which was unknown to them. They populated the coastal savannahs, which were relatively empty at the time, and created scattered and isolated small farms. With nothing more than their recently acquired freedom and their courage, they invented an original agrarian world. Unfortunately, the official history of French Guiana has forgotten these rural heroes. Faced with the silence of history, archeology can recall these admirable farmers because the traces of their passage are engraved in the ground. To settle in

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Fig. 10 Transportation of bananas on a boat in a polder canal in Suriname at the beginning of the twentieth century (photograph by A. Curiel, collection of Stichting Surinaams Museum)

the savannahs west of Kourou in the 1960s, the Guianese Space Centre moved the farming inhabitants from the savannahs to the town of Kourou. As painful as it was for the farmers, this sudden evacuation was a godsend for the archeologist because the houses were left as they were overnight. A snapshot of life was left engraved in the earth. The modern researcher thus has an indelible testimony of this lost life. There are of course the ruins and remains, which are found in archeological sites of all eras. But, in addition, the Creole peasants created significant earthworks of various kinds. These were the “Creole squares” (Rostain 1991), ditches 1–1.5 m deep surrounding their habitats. These squares, about 30 m wide, surrounded the house and some additional fruit trees: mango (Mangifera indica), corossol (Annona muricata), Cythera apple (Spondias dulcis), lemon (Citrus limonum), and guava (Psidium guajava). The ditches were used to drain the soil, and they provided a source of water, while protecting the domestic space from the intrusion of cattle that circulated and grazed in the area. Other ditches, always straight but with more varied shapes, sometimes completed the drainage system.

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Fig. 11 Recent Creole elevated beds for agriculture in eastern Suriname (photograph by S. Rostain)

Creole farmers also made small, elevated beds for agriculture. They were rectangular structures 20–30 cm high, rarely exceeding 4 m long and 1 m wide. They were generally located on sandy soils that were not easily flooded, and they formed a regular grid on a restricted surface (Fig. 11). Although much less imposing than those of the pre-Columbian period, the Creole earthworks of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries left an indelible mark on the coastal landscape of French Guiana. The most recent manifestation of Guiana’s coastal savannah agriculture has been the return of raised-field agriculture. In 2005, a few cultivated raised fields were found near Kourou (Fig. 12). After a quick investigation, it was discovered that they were the work of a local Haitian peasant woman. She had started building its mounds in 2001 and planted bananas (Musa sp.), manioc, sweet potatoes, and beans (Phaseolus vulgaris). She had obviously noticed the nearby pre-Columbian raised fields in the swamps, which she attributed to former inhabitants. However, her technique was not inherited from a pre-Columbian tradition, but from the ancestral memory of an agriculture already practiced in Africa. This form of agriculture is very common today on the island of Haiti. In the following years, agricultural raised fields such as those of Kourou became significantly more common. Other Haitian farmers came to cultivate crops there, attracted by the success of their fellow citizens. The shape of the mounds was variable: round, elongated, straight, or sinuous. The round mounds ranged from 50 to 100 cm in diameter; the latter three kinds could reach about 15 m in length. They all rose

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Fig. 12 Modern Haitian raised fields, west of Kourou, French Guiana (photograph by S. Rostain)

between 20 and 60 cm in height. The two main plants were bananas and cassavas, but there were also beans, sweet potatoes, yams, and sweet peas (Cajanus cajan). Whereas the pre-Columbian and Haitian raised fields appear similar at first glance, there are significant differences between them. The former are large, tall, and built in swamps, whereas modern structures are much smaller and built in areas that are less prone to flooding or even dry. In any case, all of these agricultural structures—raised fields, polders, agricultural elevated beds (Fig. 13)—testify to an almost continuous millenary use of savannahs by farmers, as well as repeated and marked changes in the coastal landscape of French Guiana.

7 Ecology Ecology is a science that gives cohesion and understanding to archeological projects such as this one. Works and modifications undertaken by humans in the landscape have consequences. Indigenous impacts on the landscape have changed the situation for soil organisms, which have developed ecological responses to these upheavals. It is these reactions of nature that are most often ignored by the human sciences, which are too focused with the extent of human transformation. Ecology is a discipline

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Fig. 13 Remains of a recent Creole domestic structure (square ditch and orchard) on a sandy formation, neighboring pre-Columbian raised fields in a flooded savannah, west of Kourou, French Guiana (photograph by S. Rostain)

that greatly facilitates understanding of the response of natural systems to human activities, including the construction and abandonment of raised fields. The excellent condition of conserved raised fields can be surprising. One of the reasons for this favorable preservation is the low human impact that floodplain savannahs have had since their abandonment by farmers up to the present day. However, through the action of seasonal rains and recurrent fires that reduce the protection provided by vegetative cover, the mounds should have eroded and, in time, disappeared. Ecologists Doyle McKey and Delphine Renard (Montpellier University, France) have suggested the possibility of an underestimated impact of natural ecosystem engineers (Renard et al. 2013; McKey et al. 2014; Zangerlé et al. 2016). For example, Acromyrmex fungal ants are a visible component of this community of organisms that maintain the mounds. Ants are among the essential agents in the maintenance of raised fields to this day. First, they act as central place foragers by bringing organic materials to their nest. Acromyrmex workers cut plants to transport them and chew them to feed a fungal symbiote. It is on this type of compost that they grow the mushrooms they feed on in large chambers in their nests. The waste from their farm, which is deposited on the surface, constitutes a large accumulation of debris. Thus, thanks to the addition of organic matter to the hills, these ants maintain the mass of the raised fields.

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Second, the same ants are also mound builders. They build deep nests, the basic scheme of which is a central well surrounded by lateral chambers, in particular for growing mushrooms. By digging these structures, they transport the subsoil to the surface. This contribution of materials to the surface partially compensates for losses due to erosion. Through this earthwork, they maintain the height of the mound above the flood level. In addition, these material movements facilitate soil aeration and stabilization. Collected data have made it possible to demonstrate the effective action of natural ecosystem engineers. Feedbacks induced by these engineers stabilize organic matter and nutrient accumulations in hills abandoned by human engineers. This feedback has made it possible to develop original models in ecological engineering. This combination of biological effects ultimately seems to explain the maintenance of these pre-Columbian agricultural landscapes. The maintenance of the mounds that these engineering species took over from the Amerindians has preserved them to this day. These landscapes have therefore been co-constructed by human and natural engineers—and more generally by nature. The form of the mounds observed by archeologists today is thus the product of both a cultural and natural genesis.

8 The Past: A Cure for the Future The power of tragedies caused by earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, and other socalled natural forces across the world has raised questions about the rise of this global increase in extreme climatic events and their land-based effects. However, can we continue to call these events natural phenomena? The involvement of humans in their occurrence is becoming more and more obvious every day. It can no longer be denied that humanity’s reckless use of the planet has exceeded its natural resiliency. Humans have thus gone from being mere tenants to owners and then parasites on Earth. As a result, the classic dichotomy between nature and culture no longer makes any real sense. The concept of historical ecology was born from this statement so that the different agents of change in our environment could be studied in a synchronic way. It is no longer a freeze-frame that the researcher observes, but the unfolding of multiple evolutionary factors over time. Such an approach obviously involves specialists from various scientific disciplines. Because the subject of the archeological study exists only as traces, it is necessary to diversify the points of view to comprehend the past. The historical ecological approach helps us better interpret the human and natural components of the environment (Rostain 2021). “Landscapes themselves are specifically culturally impacted arrangements of land, water, and biota” (Balée 2018: 7). For that reason, historical ecology is at the heart of the ongoing debate about the degree to which pre-Columbian inhabitants have transformed Amazonian ecosystems. Historical ecology is the best approach to understand specific interactions between humans and their environment and to explain the evolution of the landscapes involved in these past cultural developments. It is probably this look at landscape dynamics over the long term, and

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no longer the mere evaluation of a freeze-frame, that has drawn archeologists and ecologists into historical ecology. Faced with the crucial natural issues that our society must face to survive, the lessons learned from historical ecology are crucial. A viable response to new environmental challenges can no longer be designed without considering local knowledge. Although native societies were not always aware of, nor did they have precise discourses on climate change, they nevertheless developed effective adaptation strategies. Pre-industrial rural groups thus implemented dynamics based on an intimate knowledge of the environment and a measured use of local technologies. Humankind is the only virus cursed to live with the horrifying knowledge of its host’s fragile mortality. Notes 1. Natural ecosystem engineers are organisms such as ants, termites, earthworms, and plants that significantly affect the physical and chemical characteristics of the environment.

References Arroyo-Kalin M (2008) Steps towards an ecology of landscape: a geoarchaeological approach to the study of anthropogenic dark earths in the Central Amazon region. PhD, multigr., Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge Balée W (2018) Brief Review of Historical Ecology. In: Rostain S, de Saulieu G (eds) Les Nouvelles de l’archéologie, dossier Écologie historique, 152, Paris: éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, pp 7–10 Balée W, Erickson CL (eds) (2006) Time and complexity in historical ecology. Columbia University Press, New York Chacornac M, Rostain S (2015) Les plantes cultivées sur les champs surélevés précolombiens. In: Rostain S (ed), Archéologie de l’Amazonie. Les premiers habitants de la Guyane côtière, Oxford: BAR International Series 2758, Paris Monographs in American Archaeology 44, pp 141–155 Crumley CL (2006) Historical ecology: integrated thinking at multiple temporal and spatial scales. In: Hornborg A, Crumley CL (eds), The world system the earth system: global socioenvironmental change sustainability since the Neolithic, Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press Darch JP (ed) (1983) Drained field agriculture in central and South America, BAR International Series, 189, Oxford Descola P (2013) Beyond nature and culture. University of Chicago Press Erickson C (2008) Amazonia: the historical ecology of a domesticated landscape. In: Silverman H, Isbell W (eds) Handbook of South American Archaeology. Springer, Kluwer, Plenum, pp 157–183 Glaser B, Woods WI (eds) (2004) Amazonian dark earths: explorations in space and time. Springer, Heidelberg Grenand P (1981) Agriculture sur brûlis et changements culturels : le cas des Indiens Wayãpi et Palikur de Guyane. Journal D’agriculture Traditionnelle Et De Botanique Appliquée 28(1):23–31 Hallé F (2014) Plaidoyer pour la forêt tropicale, Actes Sud Iriarte J, Glaser B, Watling J, Wainwright A, Birk J, Renard D, Rostain S, McKey D (2010) Agricultural landscapes of coastal Amazonia: Phytolith and carbon isotope analysis of raised fields from French Guiana savannah. J Archaeol Sci 37(12):2984–2994

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Iriarte J, Power MJ, Rostain S, Mayle F, Jones H, Watling J, Whitney BS, McKey DB (2012) Fire-free land use in pre-1492 Amazonian savannas. PNAS 109(17):6473–6478 Kohn E (2013) How forests think: towards and anthropology beyond the human. University of California Press Lewis R (1960) The evolution man, Pantheon McKey D, Durécu M, Solibiéda A, Raimond C, Lorena K, Montoya A, Iriarte J, Renard D, Suarez Jimenez LE, Rostain S, Zangerlé A (2014) New approaches to pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture: ecology of seasonally flooded savannas, and living raised fields in Africa, as windows on the past and the future. In: Rostain S (ed), Amazonía. Memorias de las conferencias magistrales del 3er Encuentro Internacional de Arqueología Amazónica, pp 91–136, Quito: MCCTH, SENESCYT, 3EIAA McKey D, Rostain S (2010) Les champs surélevés préhistoriques : histoire, sols et impact sur le fonctionnement actuel des savanes côtières de Guyane. In: Pavé A, Fornet G (eds), Amazonie, une aventure scientifique et humaine, pp 132–134, éditions Galaade McKey D, Rostain S (2015) Farming technology in Amazonia. In: Selin H (ed), Encyclopaedia of the history of science, technology, and medicine in non-western cultures. Springer, Business Media Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_9893-1 McKey D, Rostain S, Iriarte J, Glaser B, Birk J, Holst I, Renard D (2010) Pre-Columbian agricultural landscapes, ecosystem engineers and self-organized patchiness in Amazonia. PNAS 107(17):7823–7828 Neves E, Rostain S (2012) Diversité linguistique et agrobiologique dans le passé amazonien. In: Schlanger N, Taylor A-C (eds), L’archéologie des autres. Perspectives archéologiques et anthropologiques, pp 119–136, Paris: La Découverte NPOS & RDPPD (1988) Suriname Planatlas, the national planning office of suriname & regional development and physical planning department, Washington DC Pfahler V, Glaser B, McKey D, Klemt E (2015) Soil redistribution in abandoned raised fields in French Guiana assessed by radionuclides. J Plant Nutr Soil Sci 178:468–476 Pitou L-A (1805) Voyage forcé à Cayenne, dans les deux Amériques et chez les anthropophages. Sylvie Messinger, Paris Renard D, Birk JJ, Glaser B, Iriarte J, Grisard G, Karl J, McKey D (2012a) Origin of mound-field landscapes: a multi-proxy approach combining contemporary vegetation, carbon stable isotopes and phytoliths. Plant Soil 351(1–2):337–353 Renard D, Birk JJ, Rostain S, Glaser B, McKey D (2012b) Ecological engineers ahead of their time: The functioning of pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture and its potential contributions to sustainability today. Ecol Eng 45:30–44 Renard D, Birk JJ, Zangerlé A, Lavelle P, Glaser B, Blatrix R, McKey D (2013) Ancient human agricultural practices can promote activities of contemporary non-human soil ecosystem engineers: A case study in coastal savannas of French Guiana. Soil Biol Biochem 62:46–56 Rostain S (1991) Les champs surélevés amérindiens de la Guyane, Cayenne: Coll° La Nature et l’Homme, ORSTOM, Cayenne Rostain S (1994) L’occupation amérindienne ancienne du littoral de Guyane, Paris: éditions de l’ORSTOM, coll° Travaux et Documents Micro-fichés 129, 2 tomes Rostain S (2008a) Agricultural Earthworks on the French Guiana coast. In: Silverman H, Isbell W (eds) Handbook of South American Archaeology. Springer, Kluwer, Plenum, New York, pp 217–234 Rostain S (2008b) Le littoral des Guyanes, héritage de l’agriculture précolombienne. Études rurales, Varia 181, pp. 9–38, Paris: éditions de l’EHESS Rostain S (2009) Western coast of the Guianas around 1000 BP. Proceedings of the Twenty-second Congress of the International Association for Caribbean Archaeology, Kingston Rostain S (2010a) Archéologie de l’ouest guyanais : le site de Sable Blanc. In: Barone-Visigalli E, Roosevelt A (eds), Amaz’hommes. Sciences de l’homme et sciences de la Nature en Amazonie, pp 59–81, Matoury: coll° Espace Outre-Mer, Ibis Rouge Éditions

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Rostain S (2010b) Pre-Columbian Earthworks in Coastal Amazonia. Diversity 2(3); Balée W (ed), special issue long-term anthropic influences on the diversity of Amazonian landscapes and Biota, pp 353–369 Rostain S (2012) Islands in the rainforest. Landscape management in pre-Columbian Amazonia, serie New Frontiers in Historical Ecology, Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek Rostain S (2014a) Pre-Columbian Heritage in The Guianas. In: Smith C (ed) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, section World Heritage. Springer, New York, pp 7293–7302 Rostain S (2014b) Agricultural earthworks (Guianas). In: Reid BA, Grant Gilmore III, R (eds), Encyclopedia of Caribbean archaeology, pp 33–35 Rostain S (2016) Amazonie. Un jardin sauvage ou une forêt domestiquée, Arles: collection Essai d’écologie historique, Actes Sud, Errance Rostain S (ed) (2015) Archéologie de l’Amazonie. Les premiers habitants de la Guyane côtière, Oxford: BAR International Series 2758, Paris Monographs in American Archaeology 44 Rostain S (2021) La forêt vierge d’Amazonie n’existe pas. Le Pommier, Paris Rostain S, McKey D (2015a) Les paysages de champs surélevés de Guyane française: un patrimoine bioculturel menace. Revue d’ethnoécologie, 7, Varia, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, CNRS, Paris. https://ethnoecologie.revues.org/2193 Rostain S, McKey D (2015b) Des fourmis et des hommes. Les constructeurs de paysage d’Amazonie. Les carnets du paysage, 27, pp 128–141: Actes Sud, École Nationale Supérieure de Paysage Rostain S, McKey D, Iriarte J, Glaser B, Renard D, Birk J, Roux B (2012) Les savanes du littoral guyanais: des paysages héritiers d’une histoire oubliée. In D. Guiral & R. Le Guen (eds.), Guyane Océane, pp 106–125, éditions Roger le Guen, IRD Rostain S, Versteeg A (2004) The Arauquinoid tradition in the Guianas. In: Delpuech A, Hofman C (eds), Late ceramic age societies in the eastern Caribbean, pp 233–250, Oxford: BAR International Series 1273, Paris Monographs in American Archeology 14, Archaeopress Schaan DP (2008) The nonagricultural chiefdoms of Marajó Island. In: Silverman H, Isbell W (eds) Handbook of South American Archaeology. Springer, Kluwer, Plenum, Springer, New York, pp 339–357 Spencer CS, Redmond EM, Rinaldi M (1994) Drained fields at La Tigra, Venezuelan Llanos: a regional perspective. Lat Am Antiq 5(2):95–110 Scott Taylor I, Oliver MC (1892) The story of columbus told in rhyme, Raphael Tuck & Sons, London, Paris, New York Walker JH (2004) Agricultural Change in the Bolivian Amazon, Pittsburgh-Trinidad: University of Pittsburgh Memoirs in Latin American Archaeology, 13, Fundación Kenneth Lee Wohlleben P (2016) The hidden life of trees: what they feel. Greystone Books, How they Communicate Zangerlé A, Renard D, Iriarte J, Jimenez LES, Montoya KLA, Juilleret J, McKey D (2016) The surales, self-organized earth-mound landscapes made by earthworms in a seasonal tropical wetland. PLoS ONE 11(5):e0154269

Changing Mountain Landscapes in Japan: Wild Bear–Human Interactions in the Short Term Kazunobu Ikeya

1 Introduction Mountains occupy about 80% of Japan’s landmass. Therefore, since the time of the hunter-gatherers (Jomon period c. 14,000–300 BCE), the inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago have held a close relationship with nature. A huge amount of research has been accumulated in the fields of archeology, history, geography, and forest science, although most reports are written in the Japanese language. This chapter reviews when the satoyama landscape was created and how it has been maintained until now. Wild animals that once lived deep in the Japanese mountains have expanded their areas of activity and can now be seen not only in the satoyama but also in villages, towns, and cities. Here, I discuss the history of human–animal interactions from the perspective of Japanese environmental history, noting that bigger conflicts occurred in the past than in the present and that several policies have led to the extinction of various animals in the country. Six large mammals are known to live or to have lived on the four main islands of Japan: the Japanese black bear (Ursus thibetanus japonicus), the Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata), the Japanese deer (Cervus nippon), the Japanese boar (Sus scrofa), the Japanese serow (Capricornis crispus), and the Japanese wolf (Canis lupus hodophilax). Except for the Japanese wolf (Knight 1997, 1999), which became extinct around 100 years ago (2), these large mammals have continued to survive deep in the mountains and in secondary forests called satoyama (1). Of the remaining mammals, the Japanese black bear and Japanese serow are found in northern and central Japan, the Japanese boar and Japanese deer are found in western Japan, and the Japanese macaque is found nationwide. Recently, bears, boars, and monkeys have injured humans and caused great damage to agricultural products (Izawa ed. 2005).

K. Ikeya (B) National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka 565-8511, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 K. Ikeya and W. Balée (eds.), Global Ecology in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9_4

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With regard to wild animal–human interactions, several interesting research questions can be posed. First, how have the distributions of these six large mammals changed as a result of human activities over the past 100 years? For example, in the Kitakami Mountains in Iwate Prefecture, why have the wolf and boar became extirpated, whereas the other mammals have not? Second, is it true that all of the boars on Tsushima Island in western Japan were killed during the Edo period (1603–1867)? Finally, bears were once found throughout Eurasia. Why did they become extinct in Western Europe, for example in the Pyrenees, but not in Japan? Worldwide, there are currently six extant species of bears. Two species of bear, the Japanese black bear and the wild brown bear (Ursus arctos) in Hokkaido, inhabit Japan. Historically, the bear was deeply associated with the ancient cultures of the Jomon, Matagi, and Ainu peoples, the historical inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago, and today the bear remains a part of modern human activities in Japan. However, bears are now threatened by extinction as a result of expanding socioeconomic activities and population growth. In this chapter, I describe the distribution of wild bears in Japan. I also examine the historical changes in the Japanese black bear’s environment and the relationship between the bears and humans over the past 100 years. The study area was selected at the foot of the Kitakami Mountains in the Tohoku region located in northeastern Japan. The area is characterized by an abundance of secondary forest and it receives a light snow cover in winter. Over the past 25 years, I have undertaken fieldwork in the mountain areas of the Tohoku region and investigated the economic situation and social relationships among the mountain villages in the heavy snow zone from the perspective of political ecology (e.g., Ikeya 2003). My two study frameworks are intended to be used to elucidate animal–human relationships. It is important to clarify the interactions between three components: the types of large mammals, the types of vegetation, and the types of livelihood in the rural area (Fig. 1). Traditionally, mountain villagers have survived through a combination of hunting, gathering, and farming, including shifting cultivation and animal husbandry. However, certain types of hunting, such as trapping and gun hunting, have had a strong impact on bears. Recently, euthanization of nuisance wildlife has become another form of hunting.

2 Bear–Human Relationships in Japan Populations of Japanese black bear continue to exist on the islands of Honshu and Shikoku, but they are likely to have gone extinct on the island of Kyushu in the last few decades (Oi and Yamazaki 2006:125). Figure 2 shows the distribution of the Japanese black bear in the Tohoku region, the Hokuriku region, and Nagano and Yamanashi Prefectures in 2003. There is a relationship between the distribution of bears and vegetation, with two types of vegetation that support bears in Japan: beech and oak or pines. Bears populate the beech forests because the nuts of the beech tree are good food for the bears.

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Fig. 1 Interactions of people with animals and plants

Fig. 2 Annual total agricultural product damaged by bears in Japan (Source Oi and Yamazaki 2006)

The changes in the annual bear harvest for the period 1946–2004 are shown. In Japan, bears are caught for two purposes: for sport or because they pose a nuisance. Regarding these data, the year runs from April 1 through March 30 of the following year; no data related to the euthanization of nuisance bears for the years 1958 and 1962 were obtained (Oi and Yamazaki 2006:126). Figure 3 shows the annual total amount of agricultural product damaged by bears in Japan from 1990 to 2004. The amount of product damaged has steadily increased since 1994. Figure 4 shows the numbers of nuisance bears captured and numbers of people injured or killed by bears in 2006. In 2006, the total number of the nuisance bears captured was 2956: 398 in Nagano Prefecture, 363 in Yamagata Prefecture, 301 in

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Fig. 3 Number of bears captured and number of persons injured or killed by bears in select Japanese prefectures in 2006 (Source Modified by the author from Asahi Shimbun newspaper data)

Fukushima Prefecture, 241 in Gunma Prefecture, and 213 in Iwate Prefecture. A total of three people were killed by bears that year (2 in Nagano Prefecture and 1 in Toyama Prefecture); the number of injured people was 15 in Akita Prefecture and 14 in Iwate Prefecture.

3 Traditional Bear–Human Relationships in the Tohoku Region in the 1900s It is difficult to reconstruct animal–human relationships from the Edo period. The distribution of fences to prevent boar damage reflects the damage caused to farms by boars. The death of horses killed by brown bears is recorded for Matsumae-han in the Edo period (Kikuchi p.c.), but data were not recorded for black bears. Forest use in the Tohoku region for the period around 1900 is shown. We can find two types of land use in Kitakami: shifting cultivation field and forest. Mountain villagers in remote areas perceived bears as a special animal. Damage to bears is not documented in any source during that time. However, boars became extinct in Nanbu-han and Tsushima-han due to the influence of federal government policy. The Matagi people, who resided in those mountains, traditionally practiced a combination of bear hunting, fishing, farming, and gathering (Ikeya 2004), and, in the late Edo period, exchange of goods with traders. However, bear hunting formed the basis for their economy According to Ikeya (2006), the Matagi used a characteristic hunting technique.

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Fig. 4 Study area (central part of Tono City, Iwate Prefecture)

I have previously described the traditional bear hunting activities practiced by the Matagi, which included cave bear hunting, hunting with traps, and group hunting (Ikeya, 2006). For cave bear hunting, the hunt must be carried out before the bears leave their caves. Mid-March to early April is the best season for this type of hunting. Local villagers know of numerous bear caves distributed throughout the mountain range. Hunting with traps is done from late September to mid-November and it consists of an initial phase in which the hunters place traps and a latter phase during which hunters repeatedly check the traps. Group hunting, called makigari, is also important for the villagers to forge social relationships and perform mountain rituals. The Matagi believed in Yamano-kami, which control the animals living on the mountain and gift them to the hunters. During hunting trips into the mountains, the hunters spoke using Yama-kotoba. The Matagi had four bear rituals: wearing the bear’s hide, opening the heart, roasting the meat on skewers, and the bear festival. It has been posited that the type of bear festival in which a Buddhist priest participated was a more developed form of the traditional rituals (Ikeya 1997). A comparison of Ainu and Matagi bear rituals shows that, despite similarities in their prayers to the god of the mountain for good hunting, there was also a major difference in their perception of the god of the mountains: the Ainu believed that the bear itself was a manifestation of the god of the mountains, whereas the Matagi believed that the god of the mountains remained in the mountains.

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Commercial bear hunts have been held since the late Edo era. Bear gallbladders used for traditional medicine and skins were then sold or given as gifts to the chief of the han; the villagers consumed the shared meat.

4 Bear–Human Relationships in Tono City, Iwate Prefecture 4.1 History of Damage by Animals All six large mammals of Japan (i.e., black bears, macaques, deer, boars, serow, and wolves) are known to have lived deep in the mountains and in secondary forests around villages located in the Kitakami Mountains. In the early Edo period, deer hunting for skins was a common activity in Nanbu-han (Emori 1998). Wolves are known to have attacked horses in Nanbu-han during the Edo period (Kikuchi p.c.). However, wolves and boars are thought to have gone extinct in the area about 100 years ago (in the late Meiji era); deer and macaque populations currently exist around Mt. Goyo (Oka 2007). In Tono City, hunting is a minor subsistence activity for villagers. Hunters called Tettupou-uzu (Tomeba 1988: 68) or Yamadachi (Tono City Museum 1998: 35) sold bear gallbladders. Presently, hunting is allowed in Tono City only during hunting season. Damage to livestock attributed to wolves occurred in the Tono basin during the early Meiji period. For example, bulls, small cattle, four small horses, and two male horses were killed on Shirami Farm (in Tono City) in Meiji 3 (1871) (Tamenki 1986: 14). Four cattle and five horses were also killed in Meiji 5 (1873) (Tamenki 1986: 14). Subsequently, villagers hunted the wolves and drove them into extinction. Boars also became extinct. I will describe the underlying reasons for the extinction of wolves in the Kitakami highland area. According to land-use records for the Kitakami Mountains from around 1900 (Osumi 2005), there were large areas of grassland as well as areas of virgin forest and artificial forest(s). Most parts of the Kitakami Mountains showed a secondary vegetation landscape. We cannot neglect the human impact on the natural landscape. Subsequently, no great change has taken place during the Taisho (1912–1926) and Showa (1926–1989) periods. Great damage to farms by bears has occurred over the past several years (Fig. 5).

4.2 Bear Ecology Land in Tono City is mainly classified as farmland, grassland, virgin forest, or planted forest. Many medium-sized and large mammals inhabit the area, including Japanese

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Fig. 5 Land use in the central part of Kitakami Mountains in the early twentieth century. (Source Osumi 2005)

black bear and Japanese serow. Telemetry studies have clarified the bear seasonal home-range changes in Kamigou Town, Tono City, for the period between March 2001 and February 2002. For example, for one XX Japanese black bear called “Oyone”, its home range in the summer covered around 4.0 km2 whereas in the autumn it covered only around 0.7 km2 (Fig. 6a) (Saito and Aoi 2003:14). For other bears too, their home range area increased from spring to summer and decreased from summer to autumn/winter in 2005 and 2006 (Fig. 6b) (Takahashi 2006).

4.3 Damage by Japanese Black Bears Human injury or death and agricultural damage caused by bears in Tono City (2000–2006). Table 1 lists the number of people injured and the number of incidences of agricultural product damage by Japanese black bears in Tono City for the period 2000–2006. The incidence of agricultural product damage was unusually large in 2001 and 2006. Injury or death caused by bears remained at around 0–3 per year. One example of a death was a wild-plant gatherer that was killed in Aozasa Town in the eastern part of Tono City in 2001 (Iwate-nippou Newspaper, 10 June 2001). The yearly change in the incidence of agricultural product damage was large. Incidence of agricultural product damage by district in Tono City. Figure 7 shows the number of incidents of agricultural product damage by bears in each of the nine districts of Tono City. In 2000, a total of 25 incidents were recorded, with the highest number of incidents (16) recorded in Kamigou Town in the southwestern part of the city. In the central part of the city, 1 incident occurred in Matsuzaki Town and none in Ayaori Town. In 2001, the number of incidents in Kamigou Town increased to 27 and those in Matsuzaki Town and Ayaori Town increased to 5. In 2006, the number of incidents in Kamigou Town decreased to 15.

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Fig. 6 a Home range of a XX Japanese black bear called “Oyane” in 2001. (Source Saito and Aoi 2003), b Home ranges of bears in XX for the period between 2005 and 2006. (Source Takahashi 2007) Table 1 Human injury or death and agricultural product damage caused by Japanese black bears, and local bear population size, for Tono City, Iwate Prefecture, for the period 2000–2006

Year

1. People damage

2. Agricultural product damage

3. Bear information

(2000)

2

25

10

(2001)

2

68

37

(2002)

1

53

58

(2003)

1

25

52

(2004)

0

36

33

(2005)

2

19

24

(2006)

3

64

74

Changing Mountain Landscapes in Japan … Fig. 7 Incidence of agricultural product damage by bears in each of the nine districts of Tono City for the years 2000, 2001, and 2006

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Agricultural damage by product. The crops damaged by bears were mainly maize, apple, pear, rice, beehives, chicken, and fish feed. The crop that was damaged most by the bears varied by year: chicken in 2000; maize, hybrid maize, and apple in 2001; hybrid maize and rice in 2002; rice in 2003 and 2004; apples in 2005; and rice in 2006. This suggests that there are three stages of damage: Stage 1—chestnuts and persimmons; Stage 2—apples and hybrid maize; and Stage 3—rice.

5 Discussion: Bear–Human Relation Model 5.1 Changes of Animal Areas in the Past 100 Years (Tono Model) This chapter has examined the changes in the interactions between bears and people in Japan. From this discussion, three periods of bear–animal relations can be identified (Fig. 8). (1) In the first period a deep relationship existed between bears and villagers, both economically and religiously. (2) During the second period a decline of the bear population occurred as a result of development in mountain regions and commercial hunting. (3) In the third period, there was a change in the bears’ regional territory from the deep mountains to secondary forests as a result of forest clearing and artificial forest development. Consequently, humans increasingly encounter wild bears near villages, towns, and even cities. Human injuries and agricultural damage by black bears therefore occur more often, fueling conflict between bears and humans. Changes of Japan’s deer distribution in the central part of the Kitakami Mountains since the 1950s have also been reported (Oi 2005), suggesting that the deer–human relationship is also changing in Tono City.

5.2 Why Have Bears Visited the Satoyama in the Past 10 Years? Bears like to eat the abundant chestnuts and persimmons found in satoyama mountain clearings. Complex reasons underlie the influence of forest clearing and development of artificial forests and shortages of foods such as chestnuts. Bears do not visit the satoyama as soon as forest clearings are finished; however, for reasons that remain unclear, bears begin to visit the satoyama from around 10 years after the end of clearing. In recent years, many satoyama areas have fallen into disuse because of population decline and changes in lifestyle, making it easy for bears to access these landscapes.

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Fig. 8 Changes in animal area over the past 100 years

5.3 Differences in Attitudes Toward Nature in Japan and Europe Bears play important roles in the traditional culture of France (Lajoux 2006) but became extirpated there about 100 years ago. The reasons for their extirpation probably include deforestation and livestock (sheep) damage by the bears. However, bears remain in Japan, except in the Kyushu region in southwestern Japan. This suggests there are some regional differences. In Japan, black bears have lived in the mountains without competition for natural resources, and agricultural damage by bears has increased only recently. Previous studies have compared the interactions among wolf, deer, and people in the rice-field societies of Japan and pastoral societies of Europe. Attitudes toward wolves differ in Japan and in Europe (Takatsuki 2006). In general, Japanese people respect wolves because they prey on boar and deer, which destroy agricultural fields. In contrast, Europeans dislike wolves because of their predation of sheep. Horse and cattle grazing are important for the economy of the Kitakami Mountains. There are salient similarities between the extinction conditions of wolves in Kitakami and the extirpation of bears in France about 100 years ago. However, the situation appears to be different for bears. For example, during the Edo period, brown bears killed horses in southern Hokkaido (Kikuchi 2007); nevertheless, they have not been extirpated.

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I would like to collect information related to indigenous knowledge about the co-existence of animals and people for the mountain villagers of Japan. It is important to sustain bear populations in secondary forests, such as those of the Kitakami Mountains, because Japanese attitudes toward nature differ from those of Europeans. Notes 1. Satoyama refers to the secondary forests around a settlement that are used for col lecting firewood or grasses for use as a roofing material. 2. Since 1600, at least 484 animals and 654 plants have become extinct. Most extinct tions happened on islands and in freshwater and rivers (i.e., in isolated habitats). The twentieth century extinction rate for mammals was about 40 times the background rate (McNeill 2000: 262–263).

References Ikeya K (1997) Bear ritual of the Matagi and the Ainu in northeastern Japan. In: Yamada, Irimoto (eds) Circumpolar animism and shamanism. Hokkaido University Press, pp 55–63 Ikeya K (2003) Social Monograph among the wild plant gatherers: resource use and territoriality. Tohoku University Press. (in Japanese) Ikeya K (2004) Cultural ecology of Zenmai gathering in the Northeastern Japan. Science Reports of Tohoku University, 7th Series (Geography) 53(1–2):1–28 Ikeya K (2006) Mobility and territoriality among hunting-farming-trading societies: the case study of bear hunting in mountain environments of northeastern Japan. In: Grier C, Kim J, Uchiyama J (eds) Beyond Affluent Foragers: Rethinking Hunter-Gatherer Complexity. Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK, pp 34–44 Izawa K et al (2005) Manual of preventing damages of the Japanese monkey. Doubutsusha. (in Japanese) Kikuchi I (2007) The bear attacking the horses: the case study of Matsumae-han in Edo era. In: Ikeya K (ed) Environmental Histories of the relationships between People and Animals. (in Japanese) Knight J (1997) On the extinction of the Japanese wolf. Asian Folklore Studies 56:129–159 Knight J (1999) Monkeys on the move: the natural symbolism of people-Macaque conflict in Japan. J Asian Studies 58:622–647 Lajoux JD (2006) The brown bear and human history. In: Amano T et al (eds) The Introduction of the brown bear. Hokkaido University Press. (in Japanese) McNeill JR (2000) Something under the Sun: an environmental history of the twentieth-century world. Norton, W.W Oi T (2005) Human disturbance and wildlife: the land of dancing deer. In: Osumi K, Ikeda S and Sugita H (eds) Ecological history of the Kitakami Mountains’ landscape, Kokon Shoin Publishers, 87–101. (in Japanese) Oi T, Yamazaki K (2006) The status of Asiatic black bears in Japan. In: Japan Bear Network (eds) Understanding Asian Bears to secure their future, 122–133 Oka K (2007) Hunting in the rural area in northern Tohoku and the decrease of number of big mammals. In: Ikeya K (ed) Environmental Histories of the relationships between People and Animals. (in Japanese) Saito M, Aoi T (2003) Seasonal changes in habitat use of black bears in satoyama. Bulletin of the Iwate University Forests 34:11–22. (in Japanese) Takatsuki S (2006) Ecological monograph of deer. Tokyo University Press. (in Japanese)

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Tamenki S (1986) Yamana Soshin, a pioneer born in Tono. Tono Education and Culture Foundation. (in Japanese)

Ethnozoology Over Time in Monsoon Asia

Undoing Monkey Attraction to the Village: A Food-and-Threat Response to Wildlife Crop-Raiding in Rural Japan John Knight

1 Introduction This paper is about the challenge of keeping monkeys away from villages in Japan. There are various ways of doing this, including fencing (blocking access to farmland), catching or culling, scaring and chasing (expulsion from farmland and village), and attracting the monkeys elsewhere (counterattraction) (Knight 2017). This paper focuses on strategic deterrence: turning the village into a monkey-unfriendly environment that, having less food appeal and greater threat, no longer attracts crop-feeding monkeys. This paper is based on a survey of the Japanese-language literature on the problem of monkey crop damage in Japan. In particular, it draws on the writings of Masateru Inoue, an agricultural extension worker in Nara Prefecture and an influential figure in the campaign to counter wildlife crop damage and promote crop safety in rural Japan. Through his publications written for farmers and local officials, Inoue “encourages farmers to re-engineer farm practices and the farm landscape” (Sprague and Iwasaki 2006: 38). The aim is to incorporate the principle of anti-wildlife defense into dayto-day farming practices and the management of village space. Reform of villager behavior is seen as the key to making the village wildlife-proof. This paper also draws on my fieldwork in rural settlements in areas of Japan within the distribution range of monkeys, including on the Kii Peninsula and the island of Sh¯odoshima in western Japan.

J. Knight (B) Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 K. Ikeya and W. Balée (eds.), Global Ecology in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9_5

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2 Crop Appeal and Crop Attraction Here, I draw a distinction between crop appeal and crop attraction. Crop appeal refers to the palatability of crops to monkeys. The appeal of human food crops to monkeys is something that can change over time: Crops that do not appeal to (or may not even be treated as food by) monkeys at one point in time may well come to appeal as food at some later time. Nonetheless, once monkeys do acquire the taste for a given crop item, this is likely to persist as a food preference thereafter and be extremely difficult to change. Primates select their feeding grounds on the basis of not only food availability but also their safety from predators (Miller 2002). It follows that, from the farmer’s perspective, one potential way of protecting crops in this situation is to make an otherwise appealing crop-feeding environment appear too dangerous for monkeys to enter. In this way, monkey attraction to crops can be countered indirectly by raising the threat level of the village environment. Village crops may continue to be appealing, but if the environmental conditions of the village are suitably altered this appeal will not necessarily be translated into attraction. Threat provides a lever to indirectly control attraction (movement towards the appealing crop item). In what follows, two broad categories of response are distinguished in this raidprevention strategy. The first category, reducing food appeal, involves removing or concealing attractants of both a crop and a non-crop nature. The second category— increasing the threat in the village environment—involves both indirect threat (in the form of changes to the physical environment) and direct threat (an emphasis on the fright produced by direct encounters). Taken together, these changes are aimed at degrading the village as a safe feeding ground. The reasoning is that the lower the value and the higher the risk of the village as a feeding ground, the less inclined monkeys will be to go there. As one report on the monkey problem put it, the challenge is to turn the village into “an environment that monkeys hate” (saru ga iyagaru kanky¯o) (Okada 2007: 2).

3 Reducing Appeal Monkeys are a major source of crop damage in rural Japan. What is known as engai or “monkey damage” includes damage to rice, fruit, and vegetables. In 2016 it accounted for around ¥1 billion (US $9.7 million) worth of losses (Ministry of Agriculture 2016). Monkeys also climb onto roofs, damaging tiles and drainpipes in the process; more habituated monkeys may even enter houses and local shops in search of food. The most serious form of engai is where a whole troop of monkeys visits a village, potentially causing major damage if undisturbed. However, often it is just a single monkey that comes to feed in a village and the scale of crop loss is accordingly much less.

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One main task in tackling engai is to reduce the village’s food appeal to monkeys. Addressing local residents at risk from monkey visits, one municipal website invokes the following analogy: Please try and think of the field and the monkeys as like a kitchen with flies. In the kitchen blue bottles don’t come unless a fish’s head drops on the ground, and fruit flies don’t come if there is no old fruit left lying around. In a kitchen where there is neither of these things, flies, even if they come along, do not stay, do they? In other words, a kitchen where flies stay around is one where there is food that flies love. In that sort of kitchen, what sort of fly countermeasures do you think are carried out? You use a fly swat and insecticide and it just becomes an endless battle. What you should do instead from the outset is concern yourself with the feeding ground that monkeys are drawn to rather the monkeys themselves, namely the field. (Inabe-shi 2008: 4)

The message is a simple one. Just as a kitchen free of flies is one where there is nothing to attract them, so for a village to be free of monkeys requires the removal of things that attract them. Neither flies nor monkeys will be a problem if the kitchen and the field, respectively, cease to appeal to them. Attraction removal is the simplest and most effective way of keeping pests away.

4 Countering Crop Appeal A common response to wildlife interest in crops is to fence the animals out. The presence of a physical fence serves to keep the crops out of reach. Although an animal may be in the village, it cannot feed on the crops. An anti-monkey fence must take into account the monkey’s climbing ability; one form of exclosure is a roof structure that prevents the monkey climbing over it, making the fence resemble a cage. Roofless fencing can also work, such as soft-net fencing supported by glassfiber poles that bend outwards under the weight of the monkey, impeding climbing attempts. Electric fencing that delivers a shock to climbing monkeys is another option. Fencing solutions are not always entirely effective. Even when a fence stops monkeys from entering a field, the crops closest to the edge may still be lost to monkeys that are able to reach through the fence mesh: This is known as amigoshi higai or “through-the-mesh damage” (soybean and other pulse crops are often depleted in this way) (Inoue 2002: 41). Moreover, a fence that works now may not always do so: Clever (kashikoi) monkeys are known for eventually finding ways into fenced-off fields, whether this is because an electric fence shorts out or the monkeys manage to find a way across it with the aid of nearby trees. Fencing solutions therefore do not always or indefinitely work. However, even if a fence is eventually breached, it can still be said to have worked in the sense of slowing down a monkey’s food-getting visit to the village. This point is made in a notice on the monkey problem that appeared on the Iwaki-shi home page (from the Miwa branch of the municipal administration):

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J. Knight Even if it [the fence] does not stop them, the more time it takes them to enter the field, the more the monkeys will dislike it. It is better to think of the fence as an obstacle that makes the attempted incursion take longer rather than something that necessarily prevents the incursion completely … (Iwaki-shi 2013)

If monkeys cannot be securely fenced out, farmers may well opt to discontinue growing crops—especially those crops that are highly susceptible to monkey damage. In their report on the engai problem in Hachimori, Horiuchi et al. (2009) pointed out that one of the main crops affected was soybean. There were lots of residents who gave up cultivating soya beans because of the damage. There were also residents who said, “it is shameful that we used to grow soya beans to use in our traditional home-made bean paste but now have to buy them in a shop. (Horiuchi et al. 2009: 17)

Horiuchi et al. point out the shift away from growing crops that monkeys damage towards growing crops that monkeys do not damage, or at least damage to a lesser extent. However, they quote a resident as saying, “We don’t really want to grow it, but, because the monkey damage situation is so grave, we don’t have any choice but to grow crops that don’t get damaged very much” (in Horiuchi et al. 2009: 17). One would expect that where there is a trend towards growing less risky crops there would be a benefit from the reduced overall damage. However, because farmers are unable grow their preferred crops in this situation, this would seem to be a hollow victory. Farmers considering switching to other crops are constrained by the fact that only relatively few crops are completely safe from monkeys. The Ministry of Agriculture produces a Wildlife Damage Prevention Manual in which it lists all the crops that monkeys do not like (N¯orinsuisansh¯o Seisankyoku 2007: 87). Three items are listed that monkeys absolutely dislike and never eat: the takanotsume chili pepper, devil’s root, and water chestnuts. Another seven items are listed that monkeys do not like as a rule, but that may very occasionally be eaten: green peppers, chili peppers generally, mint, ginger, basil, taro, and crown daisy (an edible variety of chrysanthemum). Finally, it lists another five items that are disliked but may still be eaten: burdock, ginger, okra, Japanese parsley, and parsley. Farmers can use this information to substitute these crops for frequently damaged crops in order to reduce their losses. An alternative to stopping the cultivation of preferred crops is to hide them. Crops will be safe if the monkeys do not notice them. At a minimum, this may mean repositioning their favorite crops, such as tomatoes and strawberries, in fields closer to the house to ensure that they are not among the first ones that encroaching monkeys come across. Certain plants, such as sweet corn, may present a special challenge. Sweet corn is highly conspicuous because its tassels can be noticed from afar by monkeys. Masateru Inoue writes that the tassel is like a “signpost” (mejirushi) that informs monkeys of the presence of sweetcorn in a field (Inoue 2002: 67). However, the noticeability of sweet corn to monkeys can be easily reduced by simply cutting off the tassel (ibid.). Another tip is to make the leaves of the plant face the inside of the fence and thereby serve as a kind of green screen concealing the colorful crops growing behind

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them; in this way, the foliage acts as a mekakushi, or “blind” (Inoue 2002: 67). A monkey looking in from outside the fence sees only the leaves and not the ripening fruit behind them. In this way, farmers are encouraged to practice what amounts to concealment agriculture: to plant and cultivate crops in ways that minimize crop visibility to monkeys.

5 Countering Non-crop-Food Appeal A recurring theme in Inoue’s campaign is that villagers’ daily habits contribute to engai. This is especially the case with respect to the disposal of food waste. Inoue gives the example of the use of radishes. When cooking, rural housewives often go out to the field next to the house and pull out a radish, cut away the ends there and then, leaving them in the field and taking the main part of the vegetable back to the house. What this means is that the discarded parts of the vegetable in the field are readily available for visiting monkeys to eat (Inoue 2002: 39). Similarly, kitchen waste—such as fruit peelings, old or rotten parts of vegetables, or eggshells—is scattered on rice fields as fertilizer, thus acting as easily accessible food for monkeys (ibid.: 43). Inoue also gives an example—and shows a photo of it in his book—of a radish, partly eaten by a monkey, that has just been left in the field and becomes available for a visiting monkey to finish off (ibid.: 40). When a monkey comes to the field again, the housewife may well complain about it and demand that the authorities do something, yet, through her own actions, she has increased the likelihood that monkeys will feed on the crops in her fields. Inoue expresses his exasperation at such behavior. He compares it to a person piling up newspapers, tissue boxes, boxes of matches, and cans of heating oil next to the cooking stove in the kitchen, and then, when a fire starts in the kitchen, demanding that the fire brigade hurry up and come and put the fire out (Inoue 2002: 40)! Fruit trees are another kind of unintentional attractant. In and around villages there are many fruit trees (for example, loquat trees, persimmon trees, and chestnut trees) that villagers no longer harvest but that appeal to monkeys and other animals. Monkeys face little resistance when coming to feed on this unharvested fruit. Villagers may even view this kind of monkey feeding in the village in a positive light. Inoue records the following reactions to monkeys feeding on mikan trees: Grandmother observes, “Oh, today there are lots of monkeys that have come to eat the oranges. There are lots of baby monkeys among them. Well, if they’re eating all those oranges, today I don’t have to worry about my fields …” Then, after Grandmother goes back, Grandfather comes along. He’s holding hands with his two grandchildren. “Oh, lots of monkeys have come for the oranges. Y¯usuke, Hironori, can you see the monkeys?” “Yes, we can see them, Grandad. That monkey is very clever at peeling the orange.” “I was angry when they were stealing my sweet potatoes, but when you see them like this they are cute. Y¯usuke”. (Inoue 2008: 90–1)

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Monkeys also feed on persimmon fruit on trees in and around villages. Persimmons are a favorite late autumn and early winter food for monkeys and can make up a large proportion of their diet at this time of year. Given that the fruit is unclaimed by villagers and would otherwise rot on the tree, consumption of the fruit by the monkeys is not itself classed as engai. On the whole, villagers are not complaining that the monkeys are taking persimmons from them, as the persimmons have already been abandoned. The problem with monkeys eating the persimmons has to do with its effect on field crop damage. For monkeys lured into a village by persimmons, it is a relatively small step for them to move to feed in nearby fields on crops that are valued. For this reason, monkeys’ feeding on persimmon and chestnut trees at the edge of a village has been referred to as “the initial stage of crop-raiding” (Muroyama and Yamada 2010: 153). It follows that this temptation should be removed. One obvious measure would be for the persimmons to be picked when ripe. This could involve asking the owner of the tree to pick them. If the owner cannot pick them (for example, because they are absent from the village or are physically unable to do so), another way forward is to get the owner’s permission for others, such as other villagers, to pick them, or even for the owner to invite outsiders to come and help themselves (Inoue 2008: 148). Some localities have held kakimogi or “persimmon-picking” events, at which residents of nearby towns and cities come and act as fruit-picking volunteers (N¯orinsuisansh¯o 2007: 20–2; Ishikawa-ken Hakusan Shizen Hogo Sent¯a 2008; Asahi Shinbun 2/11/2016). Urban volunteers get a day out in the country and are allowed to take some of the fruit back with them in recognition of their efforts. For its part, the village gets much of its surplus fruit harvested, thereby removing, or at least reducing, a major food temptation for monkeys. The event is also an opportunity to educate visitors from the city about the rural wildlife problem and the proper way to manage it, and this educational effect becomes all the greater when (as is often the case) the event attracts media attention. Another way of dealing with the trees is to cut them down (Inoue 2008: 113– 15). Although the kakimogi event removes the persimmons for that year, tree-felling offers a lasting solution. However, not everyone may be happy with the felling of such trees. One objection might be that to do so would spoil the landscape, as the sight of the trees full of orange fruit is one of the classic images of the Japanese countryside in the late autumn (Inoue 2008: 146). Villages contain assorted other types of forage, such as the renge (Chinese milk vetch or Astragalus sinicus) flowers that grow in paddy fields and on which monkeys feed. Although villagers will chase a monkey feeding on rice stalks in the paddy fields, if the monkey is feeding on vetch flowers villagers tend to tolerate its presence because it is not actually damaging the rice crop (Taiki-ch¯o n.d.). However, such tolerance of the monkey’s presence in the village environment will ultimately contribute to habituation. Villagers should not, therefore, tolerate any monkey presence in and around their villages, and they should react with equal vigor to monkeys feeding on rice and those feeding on vetch plants.

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Food waste is another accidental attractant of monkeys to the village zone. Farmers dump crop waste (imperfect or inferior produce that is unsaleable) at sites close to the village. This is something especially common among fruit growers (e.g. Watanabe 2000: 90; Enari et al. 2005: 86; Miura 2008: 37–8). Wild animals exploit these food dumps and thus get a taste for such crops, or have that taste reinforced, making the area near the village more likely to be used by monkeys as a feeding ground. Villagers should carefully dispose of food waste (either household food leftovers or inferior cultivated crop materials) to stop monkeys and other animals feeding on it.

6 Making the Village Environment More Frightening There are limits to the reduction of a village’s food appeal to monkeys. The likelihood is that food grown in villages will continue to be of interest to food-seeking monkeys. This does not necessarily mean that monkeys will visit a village, however, because monkeys are concerned with the safety of the feeding grounds they visit. It follows that the more dangerous a village appears to monkeys, the less likely they will be to visit it. We saw above how crops can be concealed from monkeys. However, concealment can also work against crop safety if it also allows crop-seeking monkeys to conceal themselves from human eyes in the village environment. Villagers should remove as much cover as possible from their villages in order to restrict the ability of monkeys to conceal themselves. The more exposed the village environment, the less comfortable it is for monkeys and the more difficult it becomes for them to make raids. To this end, villagers are encouraged to cut away secondary growth in abandoned fields (Inoue 2002: 93). Villagers already perform collective path-clearing operations in which they cut away grass and other vegetation from along paths running through the village, but this kind of activity needs to be extended to abandoned farmland throughout the village environment. Of particular importance is the cover that tends to develop at the edges of villages. Abandoned peripheral plots next to the forest become overgrown. The primatologist Yasuyuki Muroyama suggests that villagers should create a gap of at least 50 m between the edge of farmland and the forest to make it harder for crop-seeking monkeys to enter a village (Muroyama 2003: 154). Villagers should cut away the secondary growth on these abandoned fields and create a fully exposed space that the monkeys would have to cross to get to the crop-filled fields. The problem of fruit trees acting as attractants to monkeys has already been mentioned. However, these tall, leafy trees are additionally problematic as a source of cover for crop-feeding monkeys, affording them a degree of security in the village environment. Such trees dotted about the village are potential sanctuaries for monkeys. Inoue points out that fruit trees help raiding monkeys in a number of ways. First, they are an important part of the route taken by the monkey as it moves from forest to field (Inoue 2002: 44). During a raid, the tall fruit tree, with its thick foliage,

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is a preferred midway stopping-off point or staging post from which the monkey can move in on the field crops. In other words, the monkey’s visit to the village is not necessarily a direct forest-to-field dash—a single A-to-B movement—but may well consist of a number of phases, stages, or micro-journeys, and fruit trees located between forest and field can play an important role in such phased raids. What this means is that the habituation threshold for engai to occur can be much lower in the presence of such trees. For wary monkeys, the existence of fruit trees in the village may well make possible raids that would not otherwise occur. This does not, of course, mean that there would be no monkey crop-raids in a treeless village, but it does mean that a higher level of habituation—i.e., bolder monkeys—would be required in the absence of trees. Bold monkeys might raid anyway, but usually engai begins with wary, tentative monkeys. The cover-removal strategies mentioned above are aimed at making it harder for monkeys to conceal themselves in the village environment, but the effectiveness of such measures is related to the ability of humans to detect the monkeys and to the consequences of detection when it occurs. This brings us to the other strand of threat enhancement in the village: vigilance in spotting monkeys and consistency in the follow-up action of expelling the monkeys. Field guarding is an established form of monkey detection, especially in late summer when the rice crop is maturing. In earlier fieldwork I encountered the practice of guarding fields from monkeys (known as saru no ban) in mountain villages on the Kii Peninsula (Knight 2003: 107–9). Monkey raids have become much less common since villagers have been encouraged to patrol their farmland. Villagers should also maintain routine daily vigilance in which each resident keeps an eye on his or her own fields and, ideally, on the fields of immediate neighbors. Ideally, villagers should form an oiharaitai or “chasing squad” in which households band together to take turns patrolling the village perimeter. Emphasis is also placed on confronting any monkeys spotted and chasing them away, ideally out of the village and not just away from the field (Knight 2020). If a troop of monkeys is involved, this may require villagers to come together to expel them, making use of dogs, catapults, rocket fireworks, and air guns as they do so. Where possible, villagers should chase the monkeys into the forest to intensify the fright effect in the hope that the monkeys will be deterred from returning to the village in the future. One practical problem with trying to implement this kind of organized, collective response is that monkey visits are unpredictable. Although arrangements can be made in advance for a group of villagers to gather at a certain time in an area of village farmland, the monkeys may not actually appear on such occasions. One way of overcoming this problem is to radio-track (or, more recently, GPS track) the monkey troop so that when it comes within range, it can be intercepted and chased away by a group of pre-assembled villagers (Watanabe 2000: 85–6). A campaign to discourage monkeys calls for villagers to apply a wide range of practical measures to both reduce the food appeal of the village and increase the monkeys’ fear of the village environment. However, more generally, a campaign

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involves the radical reframing of engai in a way that emphasizes the role of human— rather than monkey—agency in the emergence of the problem and in finding a solution to it.

7 The “Provisioning” Frame Many villagers see engai as a monkey problem. By their crop-feeding visits, monkeys cause loss and harm to villagers. “Theft” and “warfare” are terms often applied to engai (Knight 2003: 97–9). Crop-feeding monkeys may well be characterized as thieves (dorob¯o), criminals (hannin), and troublemakers (itazuramono), or as a kind of warring enemy that encroaches on the human territory of the village. In both cases, engai is depicted as the outcome of illicit or aggressive action on the part of the monkeys, and villagers appear as victims of these monkey actions. Inoue Masateru has challenged this view by characterizing engai as ezuke or “provisioning”—that is, human feeding of monkeys (Inoue 2002). Ezuke is a term normally applied to the active feeding of wildlife for field research or for tourism. (Monkey parks and deer parks are examples of visitor attractions based on ezuke.) Inoue’s extension of the term engai to ezuke is of course meant figuratively rather than literally: Villagers do not actually offer their crops to monkeys. However, he argues that, by not taking what he sees as reasonable or necessary precautions to make their fields safe, villagers are effectively creating a feeding ground for the monkeys. On top of that, villagers contribute further to the problem when they do not respond swiftly and resolutely to monkey sightings. Monkeys come to the village because of both the food opportunities there and the lack of resistance they encounter on their visits. Inoue’s use of the term ezuke in this context generally refers to villager inactivity. If villagers do not do what they should do, it is as though they are giving away their crops to the monkeys. Villagers are guilty of what is variously known as fuy¯oi na ezuke (“unintended provisioning”) (Watanabe 2000: 90) or muishiki no ezuke (“unconscious provisioning”) (Inoue and Kanamori 2006: 70). Inoue’s use of the term ezuke is intended to make rural dwellers realize that they are, in large part, responsible for the engai situation by inadvertently attracting monkeys via feeding opportunities. The engai village becomes a kind of esaba (“feeding station”) by default (Inoue and Muroyama 2002: 2). However, the village is not just another esaba: It is actually a superior esaba—a gurume na esaba or “gourmet feeding station”—that holds an extremely powerful appeal for monkeys (Inoue 2002: 30). Playing further on this analogy, Inoue has likened the scene in which a whole troop of monkeys comes to feed on village farmland to that at the famous Takasakiyama Monkey Park (Inoue 2003: 2). It should be noted that sometimes villagers do actually give food to monkeys. This tends to involve lone monkeys, as in the following scenarios:

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It happened four or five years ago. At first, I noticed a black thing moving on the roof of the Chinjusan shrine. I thought that if it was a cat it must be a really big one, and when I got closer it was a monkey. It was the first time we’d seen a monkey in the village, and so everyone went over to see it because it was so rare. Children, too, went over and left oranges on the stone lantern. It settled in the shrine forest for a while. It was there for about a month, I think. After a while, I think it started to take food by hand. (Inoue 2002: 15)

Inoue also refers to reports of women feeding a monkey through a window (ibid.: 16). Inoue points out that people have an “indulgent” (amayasu) attitude to these “pitiable” (kawaiis¯o) monkeys and think that “as it’s just the one, there won’t be much damage” (ibid.). Feeding of lone monkeys would seem to qualify as provisioning in the sense of voluntary human-to-animal food transfer. However, even this kind of food-giving is very different from the provisioning practiced by the monkey parks. Feeding a lone monkey at the edge of a village is an attempt to use food to enhance or extend an encounter that has already occurred. Food handouts may help to reduce the distance to the monkey and may well be done in combination with an attempt to photograph or video-record the monkey on a cell phone. By contrast, initial provisioning made it possible for monkey parks to use food to contrive encounters with troops of monkeys. This was done by placing large amounts of food (such as sweet potatoes) along forest paths in the monkeys’ range to lure them to clearings where they could be viewed (Knight 2011: Chap. 3). The challenge for the early provisioners was to create a new pattern of food-directed mobility. To do this, they had to bring about a change in the monkeys’ diet and establish the park as a kind of superfood patch that the monkeys would visit day after day and throughout the year, as opposed to the manifold smaller, seasonal food patches dispersed throughout their forest range. This change was not just about food. For monkeys to accept human food handouts in a park, they had to accept the park as a safe place for the troop to come and feed. As the provisioners knew all too well, it could take a lot of time for the monkeys to learn not to flee in the presence of humans and to adjust to the exposed and human-populated space of the park. In other words, provisioning comprised a double behavioral change on the monkeys’ part: a change in feeding behavior (acquiring the taste for the food handouts) and a change in their behavior towards people (learning that it is unnecessary to flee). Monkeys formerly hunted by people had to learn that it was safe to occupy the open space of the park where humans—often in large numbers—were just meters away from them. Villagers’ giving food to a lone monkey at the edge of a village is very different from this kind of organized feeding. Unlike park provisioning, it tends to be impromptu or opportunistic. That said, it can develop into a pattern of feeding in which the lone monkey comes back the next day seeking more food. These kinds of recurring feeding interactions between particular villagers and lone monkeys do

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occasionally occur, and where this is the case the monkey may become bolder or tamer. Nonetheless, this type of feeding remains starkly different from the organized provisioning of a troop. Nevertheless, for the most part, Inoue’s reference to village ezuke has to do with accidental, rather than intentional, giving. Another way of putting this is to say that Inoue is blurring two different kinds of attraction: what we might call “attractee attraction” and “attractor attraction”. Attractee attraction involves a simple relationship between attractant and attractee—such as that between the crop and the animal attracted to it. There is no other, third party manipulating the attraction—that is, there is no attractor. The animal is attracted to the crop, but it is not attracted to the crop by some other third party that has placed the crop in a place where the animal would notice it. With attractor attraction, on the other hand, there is an attractor who uses the attractant to manipulate or control the movement of the attractee. Ordinarily, cropfeeding or crop-raiding situations are understood as examples of the former—that is, as (attractor-less) attractee attraction. However, by applying the term ezuke to engai, Inoue suggests that the villager is acting as a kind of inadvertent attractor. He is doing so in order to change the villagers’ behavior so that crops become less easily accessible and the village becomes a scarier place for monkeys to enter.

8 Conclusion The first part of this paper examined how Japanese villagers try to deter crop-feeding monkeys. On the face of it, this is an upstream solution that aims to turn the village into an unattractive place that monkeys do not visit. Instead of repelling monkeys attracted to the village, the aim is to counter the pull of the village in the first place. The obvious point of comparison is provisioning—the human use of food handouts to attract monkeys to clearings where they can be viewed by tourists. Indeed, the engai problem itself is framed as a form of unconscious provisioning that needs to be reversed to make village crops safe from monkeys. Inoue’s use of the term ezuke is understood better as a rhetorical strategy intended to mobilize villagers to do more to protect their crops from monkeys than as a claim that villagers are literally offering food to monkeys (even though, as we have seen, this does occur). In other words, the deficiency of the villagers’ crop-defending actions is such that it is as though they are giving their crops away to the monkeys. Inoue’s proposed answer is to mobilize villagers to greater efforts, including in the ways described above. The way forward is to reduce food appeal and increase threat—in other words, to reverse the conditions in which the engai problem developed. Three stages can be distinguished. The first stage is where villagers, through their inactivity, accidentally attract monkeys to the village, but are unaware of it. At this time, they may well understand engai in terms of an antagonistic relationship with monkeys in which the latter “steal” their crops and they themselves are victims of

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these monkey “thieves”. The second stage is where (thanks in part to the efforts of Inoue and others) the villagers become aware of their accidental attraction of the monkeys. The third stage should follow on from this: Now conscious of their own engai-generating actions, the villagers should resolve to change their behavior and act in ways that deter, rather than attract, the monkeys. Understood in this way, the reframing of engai would seem to put villagers in a position to correct, or undo, the monkey attraction by acting to reduce the food appeal and increase the threat of the village. How realistic is this in an era of large-scale rural depopulation? Some of these corrective actions, such as measures to manage food appeal, seem commonsensical and relatively simple to implement. However, others— especially the more energetic forms of threat enhancement—seem less achievable for the elderly inhabitants of today’s sparsely populated villages.

References Asahi Shinbun (2016) ‘Saru ni senteuchi, jid¯ora kakimogi—Yonezawa Mizawa chiku’ (Seizing the initiative from the monkey, children carry out persimmon-picking—Mizawa district, Yonezawa) Enari H, Matsuno H, Maruyama N (2005) Shirakami sanchi hokut¯obu ni seisoku suru yasei nihonzaru (Macaca fuscata) no n¯ochi riy¯ogata tabemono sentaku’ (Food selection among wild Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata) utlizing farmland in the northeastern part of the Shirakami Mountains). Wildlife Conservation Japan 9(2):77–92 Horiuchi S, Imai N, Takayanagi K, Imai Y (2009) ‘Yasei nihonzaru ga n¯osanson j¯umin ni oyobosu seikatsu higai no shihy¯oka—saru no shutsugenritsu, hatake no higai reberu, sakumotsu no s¯osh¯ukaku kens¯u no bunseki’ (New indices for monkey damage affecting the everyday life of rural residents: analyses of frequency of monkey appearances, level of damage to farmlands, and total crop harvests). Naturalistae 13:9–18 Inabe-shi (2008) ‘J¯ugai taisaku – saru hen’ (Wildlife countermeasures – the monkey edition’. Inabeshi J¯oh¯oshi Link, November 2008 Issue, pp 4–5 Inoue M (2002) Yama no hatake o saru kara mamoru (Protecting Mountain Fields from Monkeys). Tokyo: N¯obunky¯o Inoue M (2003) ‘Jibun no hatake wa jibun de mamoru’ (Protect your fields by yourselves). Tokyo Prefecture. Available at http://www.agri.metro.tokyo.jp/sinkou-ka/tosinougyou-kakari/yuugaitai saku.htm. Accessed 31 July 2009 Inoue M (2008) Kore nara dekiru j¯ugai taisaku (Practical Countermeasures for Wildlife Damage). Tokyo: N¯obunky¯o Inoue M, Kanamori H (2006) Yama to tahata o shika kara mamoru (Protecting Forests and Fields from Deer). Tokyo: N¯obunky¯o. Inoue M, Muroyama Y (2002) ‘Nara-ken no engai b¯oshi taisaku (1)—j¯oh¯o teiky¯o’ (Countermeasures against monkey damage in Nara Prefecture: supplying information). Wildlife Forum 8(1):1–9 Ishikawa-ken Hakusan Shizen Hogo Sent¯a (2008) ‘J¯ugai b¯oshi e sh¯ukaku taiken’ (Harvest challenge to protect against wildlife damage). Hakusan 36(3):15 Iwaki-shi (2013) ‘Saru ni ch¯ui shimash¯o’ (Let’s be careful when dealing with monkeys). Iwakishi Miwa Shisho. http://www.city.iwaki.lg.jp/www/contents/1001000003246/simple/monkey_ taisaku.pdf Knight J (2003) Waiting for wolves in Japan: an anthropological study of people-wildlife relations. Oxford University Press, Oxford Knight J (2011) Herding monkeys to paradise: how macaques troops are managed for tourism in Japan. Leiden: Brill

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Knight J (2017) Wildlife tourism as crop protection? Double-goal provisioning and the transvaluation of the macaque in postwar Japan. Human–Wildlife Interactions 11(2):217–230 Knight J (2020) How to chase a monkey: reforming the oiharai response to crop-feeding macaques in Japan. Society and Animals, in press Miller LE (2002) An introduction to predator sensitive foraging. In: Miller LE (ed) Eat or Be Eaten: Predator Sensitive Foraging among Primates. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 1–17 Ministry of Agriculture (2016) Zenkoku no yasei ch¯oj¯urui ni yoru n¯osakubutsu higai j¯oky¯o (H 28) [The national situation of crop damage according to wild animal species for 2016]. Tokyo: N¯orinsuisansh¯o. Available at http://www.maff.go.jp/j/seisan/tyozyu/higai/h_zyokyo2/h28/ Miura S (2008) Wairudoraifu manejimento ny¯umon (Introduction to Wildlife Management). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten Muroyama Y (2003) Sato no saru to tsukiau ni wa—yasei d¯obutsu no higai kanri (How to Deal with Village Monkeys: Managing the Damage Caused by Wild Animals). Kyoto: Ky¯oto Daigaku Gakujutsu Shuppankai Muroyama Y, Yamada A (2010) Conservation: present status of the Japanese macaque population and its habitat. In: Nakagawa N, Nakamichi M, Sugiura H (eds) The Japanese Macaques. Springer, Tokyo, pp 143–164 N¯orinsuisansh¯o Seisankyoku (2007) Chiiki ni okeru ch¯oj¯u higai b¯oshi taisaku – torikumi jireish¯u (Wildlife Damage Defence Countermeasures by Locality: Case Studies of Local Initiatives). Tokyo: N¯orinsuisansh¯o Seisankyoku Okada M (2007) ‘N¯ochi e no saru no shinny¯u fusegu tame ni’ (Preventing monkeys from invading fields). Gijutsu J¯oh¯o 129:2–3 Sprague DS, Iwasaki N (2006) Coexistence and exclusion between humans and monkeys in Japan: is either really possible? Ecological and environmental anthropology (University of Georgia). Paper 5. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/icwdmeea/5 Taiki-ch¯o (nd) Nihonzaru ni yoru n¯orinsanbutsu higait¯o no b¯ojo ni tsuite’ (On Protection against Damage to Farm amd Forestry Crops by Japanese Monkeys). Taiki-ch¯o: Town Hall. Available at http://www.town.taiki.mie.jp/hpdata/_images/Media/info/saru_higai.pdf. Accessed 25 August 2009 Watanabe K (2000) Nihonzaru ni yoru n¯osakubutsu higai to hogo kanri (Crop Damage by and Conservation Management of the Japanese Monkey). Tokyo: T¯okai Daigaku Shuppankai

Rearing Wild Boar in Okinawa: Thinking About Their Domestication Yaetsu Kurosawa

1 Introduction 1.1 Issues and Research Objectives The Ryukyu wild boar (Sus scrofa riukiuanus) can be found throughout the Ryukyu Islands in the southwest of Japan. Traditional boar hunting cultures have existed on these islands now (Imai 1980; Ebihara 2009). In recent years, a culture of rearing wild boars has flourished, which reflects a new relationship between wild boars and humans (Kurosawa 2017). There are historical materials that attest to how the rearing of wild boars (pigs) in Japan has existed since ancient times (Tanaka and Kurosawa 2019). However, with the advent of Buddhism in the fifth century and the spread of vegetarianism, the practice of wild boar rearing became unclear. Wild boar rearing became popular in the 1970s during the period of rapid economic growth, with the development of tourism, the gourmet food boom, and increased demand for wild boar meat. Nationwide, farmers began producing hybrid livestock called ino-buta, as wild boar is a wild ancestor of and can be crossbred with pigs (Takahashi 1990). Tourism in Okinawa developed following Okinawa’s reversion to Japanese administration in 1972 and in particular after the Okinawa International Ocean Exposition of 1975, and wild boar and inobuta rearing began to be seen. Thus, Okinawa is a very interesting region where wild boar domestication, through hunting and rearing, can actually be observed today (Kurosawa et al. 2013). However, long-term or widespread studies on the rearing of wild boar are unavailable, and there have hardly been any reports that discuss the domestication of wild boar through local rearing.

Y. Kurosawa (B) Tokyo University of Agriculture, Tokyo 156-8502, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 K. Ikeya and W. Balée (eds.), Global Ecology in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9_6

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This study aims to understand the start and practices of wild boar rearing on the Ryukyu Islands. In light of my findings, I propose models that explain the process of wild boar domestication in Okinawa.

1.2 Research Methods First, I present a research framework to better understand domestication. A prerequisite for rearing is frequent encounters with wild boar that make it possible to capture individuals. The most obvious situation for encounters with wild boar is during hunting. I accompanied locals on hunting expeditions to observe what can be considered the earliest stages that would lead to wild boar rearing. Rearing of wild animals and domestication events unfold through reciprocal relationships between humans and animals and the environment that encompasses this relationship. Thus, various fields of knowledge that can be derived from hunting activities and the living environment of island dwellers is presented to consider how rearing of wild boars began. The study was conducted on Iriomote Island, Ishigaki Island, and Okinawa Island, where I visited from 1974 until the present for the purpose of clarifying relationships to wild boars (an ancestor of the pig) from a morphological and genetic perspective. Specifically, a time-oriented comparative observation was performed on the degree of change in human intervention in breeding reared wild boar. This research is expected to clarify the relationship to epigenetic control which is attracting attention in recent years regarding changes in reared wild boar morphology, physiology, and activities in artificial environments that differ from those in the wild. This research involved on-site observation and interviews of hunters who captured and butchered wild boar; specifically, I investigated their motives that led to wild boar rearing, rearing practices, rearing history, and management techniques. A total of 50 subjects were studied: 15 on Iriomote Island, 10 on Ishigaki Island, and 25 on Okinawa Island. They comprised 35 hunters and 15 non-hunters, and all hunters were breeders. Non-hunters were island dwellers and included juveniles. The nonhunters included individuals as well as corporate groups from the construction and hotel industries. The latter were teenagers when they captured live wild boar piglets for fun and are presently veteran hunters in their 40s and 50s. There were instances in which wild boar could not be clearly differentiated from ino-buta through a headcount of livestock, and some rearing groups did not clearly distinguish between them but rather treated their livestock provisionally as wild boar.

1.3 Ryukyu Wild Boar Targeted by This Study How animals are reared also interacts with their biology; therefore, it is necessary to understand the Ryukyu wild boar’s biological characteristics. The Ryukyu wild boar

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Fig. 1 Habitat distribution of Ryukyu wild boars (Sus scrofa riukiuanus)

(Sus scrofa riukiuanus) is classified as a subspecies of the Eurasian wild boar (Sus scrofa). Figure 1 is a distribution chart showing how the Ryukyu wild boar is spread throughout Iriomote Island, Ishigaki Island, Okinawa Island, as well as Tokunoshima Island, Kakeroma Island, and Amami-Oshima Island, which are part of the Ryukyu Islands. The most prominent characteristic of the Ryukyu wild boar is its small size. Although the Japanese wild boar (Sus scrofa leucomystax), which can be found throughout the islands of Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, and Awaji, weighs over 100 kg and there are specimens of continental wild boar that can weigh in as much as 300 kg, the adult Ryukyu wild boar is extremely small, weighing only about 40 to 50 kg. The primary reason for the small size of Ryukyu wild boars is the island rule, which pertains to small geographically isolated islands. Particularly within the closed environment of Iriomote Island in recent years, pressure fromtrap called “Hane” by spring effect using natural wood hunting has impacted wild boar groups (Fig. 2) (Imai 1980; Ebihara, 2009). Hane traps have a high trapping rate. They are said to have been brought from Taiwan before World War 2 to decrease wild boar populations and thereby reduce damage to farm crops. Inbreeding is suspected to have progressed due to reduced size of boar groups, resulting in wild boars decreasing in size. Consistent with this explanation, Iriomote Island wild boar groups have a very low genetic variability (Kurosawa et al. 1989), likely due to inbreeding. Although the details are unknown, two abnormal specimens with extra feet have also been discovered recently on Iriomote. In addition to its small stature, the Ryukyu wild boar’s tusks are smaller than those of other wild boars. These characteristics reduce the risks to hunters during

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A Snare Trap

Fig. 2 Trap setting and capture of a Live boar (Photo b)

live capture, and this animal is said to be relatively easy to handle. In studying hunting activities, I many times observed a single hunter wresting an adult wild boar weighing about 40 kg from a trap, tying it up, throwing it easily over the shoulders, and carrying it out of the hunting grounds (Fig. 2). Wild boar piglets, which are affectionately referred to as Uribo, are commonly known to have uniquely colored fur and to be omnivorous. Wild boar cause damage to farm crops, root for leftover food and waste, and encroach into human habitations, and Uribo in particular wander into fields and living areas and are easily captured alive. As wild boars are commensal animals with the ability to sufficiently adapt to environments modified by humans, they have an affinity for humans. During the study period, there were reports of wild boar wandering around in villages and of many wild boar footprints being found on farmland. This information demonstrates how wild boar can easily adapt to environments built by humans; thus, they possess biological characteristics that facilitate domestication and rearing.

2 Study Results 2.1 Start of Rearing Prior to Okinawa’s reversion to Japanese administration in 1972, the practice of feeding pigs was common in Okinawan island villages, and because the people were poor, they could not afford to keep wild boars as pets. Wild boar began to be reared as tourism developed in Okinawa and people’s financial situations started to improve

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after Okinawa’s reversion to Japan and the holding of the Okinawa International Ocean Exposition of 1975. In addition to rearing wild boar mainly to promote tourism by producing wild boar and ino-buta meat, unexpected behavior by hunters was observed wherein their hunting directly connected to the rearing of wild boar. Table 1 is a summary of motives for rearing wild boars observed during hunting or heard through interviews. More than 50% of those interviewed answered that they began rearing wild boars after capturing piglets. Such piglets were often given artificial milk and caringly reared within the home. There is greater human involvement in the lives of wild boars that received tender loving care in homes. Other motives for rearing wild boars included recommendations from other breeders, experience raising pigs, difficulty in butchering all of the wild boar from a large catch all at once, and an individual’s pregnant wife stopping him from butchering it. There were also cases of wild boar rearing that began as a result of feeding. Other than rearing wild boars at someone else’s recommendation or because the hunter had prior hog raising experience, fortuitous human behavior was the reason behind rearing wild boars as a result of hunting, live capture of wild boar piglets while going about everyday business, or feeding wild boars due to a chance encounter. Rearing wild boars due to an excessive catch or being stopped from slaughtering a wild boar by a pregnant wife should also be considered secondary happenstances. This period roughly coincides with when the extinct Conventional Okinawan Pig or the so-called shima-buta was revived around 1990 and its breeding became revitalized in 2000. This resulted in the crossbreeding of shima-buta and wild boar and in hunters wanting to produce ino-buta on each island, many of whom were focused on Okinawa Island. Wild boar rearing on Okinawa Island can be observed in heavily forested areas in the North, such as Nago City, Higashison, and Kunigamison; in the north of Ishigaki Island; and in the villages of Iriomote Island, all of which are covered by forest. Wild boars were also transported to and reared on Miyako Island, where wild boars did not originally live. Some hunters even bred wild boar piglets for sale, as the Uribo Table 1 Motives for Domestication. n = 50 Motive

Number of cases %

Degree people related

Captured cubs

26

52

+++

Received from acquaintance

13

26

++

Recommended from acquaintance

4

8

++

Breeding as work

1

2

+

Raise for food

2

4

+

Because captured a lot

1

2

+

Request to not kill by spouse

1

2

+

Returned home with weakened cub

1

2

+

By feeding wild boars

1

2

++

+To what degree people related

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Fig. 3 Area and scale of wild boar domestication observed in the Okinawa Islands (2000–2010)

fur colors were popular, particularly on Okinawa Island. Local hunters who were well-informed on wild boar rearing and saw the data in Fig. 3 related that there were actually twice as many breeders on Okinawa Island. Wild boars are being reared in various regions in Asia (Kurosawa and Tanaka 2017). This interaction between wild boars and humans has occurred commonly and fortuitously in disparate regions, suggesting how actions in the earliest stages of wild boar domestication are multiple events that are apt to occur in various regions of Eurasia. In countries that I have visited on survey expeditions since 1975, the most instances of wild boar rearing were confirmed in villages on the border between Nepal and India (Kurosawa et al. 1992). In these regions, domestication is not a past event but must be deemed to be continuing today.

2.2 Rearing Practices Depending on the method of wild boar rearing, when rearing begins, the boar will become very attached to the human owner. When wild boar piglets are captured during hunting, some hunters will release the piglets into the wild; however, many bring the piglets home as pets. Once a wild boar piglet becomes attached to its owner, it will return to the owner even if it is released. When a male wild boar piglet that was captured alive and reached 4 years of age in 2017 was regularly let loose, it did not run away. Although it had sharp tusks, it became very attached to me during the study and did not assume a threatening attitude even during our first meeting (Fig. 4). Wild boars are left to roam at will after habituation to feeding on Iriomote Island (Fig. 5), 90% of which is covered in tropical and subtropical evergreen broadleaf

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Fig. 4 Ryukyu wild boar that showed obedience even though it was the first time with me

forests. The hunter owns a 1-ha forest and feeds the wild boars wheat bran once a day at approximately 4:00 pm. The boars approach the feed while keeping a certain distance from the owner. The fed boars copulate freely; completely wild individuals come into the farmland through a gap in the fence and frequently crossbreed with those being reared. Since the advent of similar wild boar rearing in 1975, female pigs left to roam at will were crossbred with wild male boars (Kurosawa 2017). Because the pigs and ino-buta group were periodically being inseminated with wild boar genes, subsequent generations began to take on wild boar-like morphological characteristics (Fig. 6). Figure 7 shows an example of a successful case of wild boarrearing in Higashison in the north of Okinawa Island. Wild boars were lured by a mandarin orange field and frequently intruded into the farmland. The farmer loosely built an enclosure around the area, and rearing was completed under human management. During the mating season, male wild boars from the surrounding wilderness would often draw near and mate with the enclosed females (Fig. 7). At times, pregnant females would be set free and would then return to the rearing grounds with wild boar piglets. The hunter works with wild boars’ natural behavior while gently encouraging them to adapt to a man-made environment. This interaction between wild boars and humans, which is thought to have occurred during the initial stages of domestication through semi-rearing, is being reenacted in modern times in Okinawa. Today, a breeder in Higashi village who succeeded his father in wild boar rearing is now rearing a third generation of breeder female wild boars. This kind of rearing occurs when human living spaces are situated in close proximity to wild boar habitats in outlying regions such as remote islands or in mountains or forest areas isolated from cities.

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Fig. 5 A wild boar that has settled in a hunter’s land on Iriomote Island and is free to roam

Fig. 6 Boar–Pig hybrids (ino-buta) on Iriomote Island. Wild boars are regularly crossbred and 5 years later cannot be distinguished from wild boars

As reared wild boars grow, the rearing practices may change depending on the scale of rearing. This may happen to enhance management and prevent incidents, just in case the wild boars escape and damage surrounding crops or harm humans. Or a modern rearing practice may be adopted for meat production by expanding the scale of rearing. Male wild boars are often difficult to handle during breeding season; to breed successive generations of wild boars, a systematic rearing method may be employed to manage their activities.

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Fig. 7 A captive female wild boar population in which male wild boars invade from the surrounding forest during the breeding season

2.3 Changes in Rearing Practices Among domestication facilities, the largest cohort of wild boar rearing experience was 1–10 years (Fig. 8). A few breeders with the longest experience (i.e., more than 40 years) had been breeders since capturing wild boar piglets for fun when they were children. I surmise that over the course of such long experience, initial rearing techniques improved gradually by trial and error, which also led to the enhanced human management of wild boar propagation.

Fig. 8 Numbers of domestication facilities (light green) and farmers with multi-generational breeding experience (dark green) according to the number of years of operation

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Specifically, breeders attempted to breed successive generations of wild boars, castrate males, or transport reared males by truck during breeding season to other breeders’ farms for mating. The wild boars that were propagated were provided to those who wished to rear them, and much of the butchered meat was used for personal consumption or sold in the village (Kurosawa et al. 2013); therefore, the wild boars were treated no differently than reared pigs. Interestingly, there were also breeders who introduced large Japanese wild boars from Honshu and Kyushu and mated them with small Ryukyu wild boar in an attempt to improve them. Such long-term rearing of wild boars indicates a process of enabling the human management of wild boar propagation. Over time, the body shape and size, and the cranium of reared wild boars began to resemble the morphological characteristics of pigs. Thus, changes in wild boar biology that occur due to rearing practices and the accompanying environmental changes can inform us about the kind of domestication being carried out. Based on the findings of these studies, I surmise that once wild boar rearing techniques are acquired, domestication will proceed relatively quickly and easily. Interestingly, there were breeders who went as far as to say, “for our family, wild boar are livestock” as their perception of reared wild boars was quite different from boars in the wild. The thinking of these breeders would fit the definition of livestock (Nozawa 1986) that they are “animals whose propagation is under the management of humans.” It can be said that in Okinawa, the rearing of wild boars as livestock, which involves raising, breeding, and utilizing their meat for consumption, has more or less been established.

3 Discussion The conditions of wild boar rearing, which have not previously been extensively researched, were clarified in detail. This study investigated rearing and domestication models.

3.1 Backdrop to Wild Boar Rearing The following points can be raised to describe the backdrop to wild boar rearing. First, the forests where wild boars live are close to villages of islanders, which facilitates frequent encounters between villagers and boars, and wild boar piglets can be captured easily. Second, the small size of Ryukyu wild boars makes them easy to rear, particularly on Iriomote Island and Ishigaki Island, where they are caught alive in highly efficient hane traps. Third, Okinawa has a tradition of pig raising. This means that wild boar that are caught while hunting or reared are, for the most part, butchered in villages on the island. This practice is reminiscent of the earlier culture when pig raising flourished on the islands. Methods of butchering, such as singeing, are roughly the same as for pigs. In addition, depending on the

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village, wild boar meat is served at feasts on special occasions such as sports days, celebrations of births, and the coming-of-age ceremony. In other words, wild boar meat has become integrated into the culture of Okinawans. In addition, pig raising has been firmly rooted in Okinawan culture since ancient times. Owing to Okinawa’s relationship with China since the Ryukyu Kingdom era, pig raising culture had deeply penetrated into island living, which was not the case on the Japanese mainland. Therefore, present day hunting and wild boar rearing may give us a glimpse into the sentiment of islanders toward the Okinawan Pig Breed which was the local variety of old. This is linked to how Okinawans have proactively accepted wild boar and ino-buta rearing as a normal aspect of their lives.

3.2 Wild Boar Domestication Models Based on the results from this study on Ryukyu wild boar hunting and rearing activities, two models may explain the process of domestication in Okinawa (Fig. 9)(Kurosawa et al. 2013). where wild boar domestication is assumed. First, the process of rearing of adult wild boars following capture and the chance encounter and capture of wild boar piglets as pets result in human management. This is a domestication process whereby human management is enhanced in the process of rearing wild boars, making them into pets, butchering them for meat, producing ino-buta by cross-breeding them with pigs, and allowing them to break away from human management to become wild again. Second, the process from feeding wild boar piglets, which draws them near human living areas so that they

Fig. 9 Two observed processes of domestication of Ryukyu wild boars

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become accustomed to life on farmland; building a fence loosely around this area; and luring male wild boars to a group of reared female boars during mating season, result in human management. Although there are differences in the degree of human intervention, both processes are similar in that rearing began due to chance encounters with wild boars, and through common experiences in rearing wild boars from piglets, breeding of successive generations of wild boars was achieved under human management. In addition, by reintroducing boars into the wild or allowing male wild boars to intrude into enclosures for reared livestock, ongoing rearing was achieved with both wild and reared boar groups. I hypothesize that domestication will proceed more quickly than anticipated by gently separating boars from a wild group and continuing with actions in the earliest stages that lead to domestication. Domestication is said to generally proceed gradually and loosely; but based on the results of this study of small wild boars with high affinity for humans and living in close proximity to human settlements, domestication will occur on farmland under human management more readily than with other animals and under other circumstances. In fact, instances of wild boar rearing can be observed here and there in various countries throughout Asia today (Kurosawa 2017). Interaction between wild boars and humans commonly and fortuitously occurs even in disparate regions. This wide occurrence of boar domestication suggests that it readily and repeatedly occurs in various regions of Eurasia. The knowledge and insights derived through this study of the Ryukyu wild boar from hunting to rearing affords much information to clarify how wild boars are domesticated. Acknowledgements A part of this study was conducted with a fellowship grant from the Institute for Animal Science. I express my warmest appreciation for their funding.

References Ebihara I (2009) A study of the hunting practices and knowledge of a trap-hunter in Iriomote Island, Okinawa: based on trapping field maps over a period of 11years. Bulletin of the National Museum of Ethnology, 34(1):131–165. (in Japanese with English abstract) Imai I (1980) Ecological and Anthropological Study of wild-boar hunting in Iriomote Island, Yaeyama, Ryukyus. Minzokugaku-Kenkyu 45(1):1–31 (in Japanese with English abstract) Kurosawa Y (2017) The mysterious relationship between the domestic pigs and wild boars the Southwest Islands, Japan. Biostory 27:22–27 (in Japanese) Kurosawa Y, Tanaka K (2017) External features of raising wild boars (Sus scrofa)-from a domestication Viewpoint. Rep Soc Res Native Livestock 28:267–275 (in Japanese with English abstract) Kurosawa Y, Takada M, Tanaka K (2013) Ryukyu wild boar (Sus scrofa riukiuanus) Rearing practices-a discussion of domestication with special reference to hunting. Rep Soc Res Native Livestock 26:177–194 (in Japanese with abstract)

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Kurosawa Y, Tanaka K, Nishida T, Doge K, Hongo A, Rajbhandary HB (1992) External characters of the domestic native pig and the wild pig (Sus scrofa cristatus) in Nepal. Rep Soc Res Native Livestock 14:127–135 (in Japanese with English abstract) Kurosawa Y, Tanaka T, Oishi T (1989) Genetic variability of the Ryukyu Wild Pig (Sus scrofa riukiuanus) Population in Iriomote Island. Honyurui Kagaku(Mammalian Science), 29(2):13–21. (in Japanese with English abstract) Nozawa K (1986) Genetic studies on the origin and phylogeny of native domestic animals in East and Southeast Asia. Rep Soc Res Native Livestock 11:1–35 (in Japanese) Takahashi S (1990) A geographical study on feral animals. In: Fukutake sience and culture foundation, pp 97–103. (in Japanese) Tanaka K, Kurosawa Y (2019) Domestic pigs indigenous to Asia: a photo and historical illustration record. Tokyo University of Agriculture Press, Tokyo (in Japanese)

Adaptive Strategies of Cormorant Fishers in Response to Decreased Fishing Area: A Case Study of Poyang Lake, Jiangxi Province, China Shuhei Uda

1 Introduction Cormorant fishing, in which cormorants are used to capture fish in rivers and lakes, has been practiced in England, Japan, and China. In England, cormorant fishing, like falconry, was typically regarded as an aristocratic practice in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Kani 1966). In Japan, cormorant fishing (called “ukai”) has a long history. It is best known along the Nagara River in Gifu Prefecture, where cormorant fishers use torches to illuminate the river surface at night (Jackson 1997). These fishing activities are a popular tourist attraction. Earlier studies have detailed the lives and techniques of cormorant fishers in Japan (Research of Nagara River 1994). In China, cormorant fishing has been practiced for more than a thousand years (Hoh 2000), mostly as a primary subsistence strategy. Numerous travelers and researchers have described various aspects of cormorant fishing in the country (Gudger 1926; Laufer 1931), particularly in the provinces of Yunnan and Hunan (Wang 1999; Manzi and Coomes 2002). For example, Uda (2008a, 2011, 2014) analyzed the history and distribution of cormorant fishing in China, described the techniques used to rear cormorants by hand, and reported that domesticated cormorants laid more eggs and had higher hatching rates than their wild counterparts. However, these studies have tended to describe the fishing techniques and current lifestyles of cormorant fishers as fixed in time, and have not considered the strategies used to adapt to abrupt changes in environmental and policy conditions in China. In general, rural residents use adaptive strategies involving changes to subsistence methods, rules, social organization, and sometimes new technologies to cope with changing circumstances (Yohe and Tol 2001). Recent studies of rural communities have examined their response mechanisms and adaptive capacities to elucidate how S. Uda (B) National Museum of Ethnology, Senri Expo Park 10-1, Suita City, Osaka 565-8511, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 K. Ikeya and W. Balée (eds.), Global Ecology in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9_7

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they respond to sudden or permanent changes such as the addition or loss of a natural resource, population pressure, new technology, climate change, or soil degradation (Batterbury 2001; Diamond 2005). In this paper, I examine the adaptive strategies of cormorant fishers in Poyang Lake in Jiangxi Province, central China. Environmental and social conditions in this region have changed drastically in recent years, especially in the central Yangzi River Basin (in the provinces of Hubei, Hunan, and Jiangxi). Sociological and anthropological studies have examined the effects of these changes on agricultural villages in this region, with a central theme being the adaptability of rural residents to changes in factors such as national policy, natural resource availability, economic climate, and infrastructure development (e.g., Mobo 1999; Zhuang 2000; Cheng 2003). Previous studies of Chinese fishers have mostly focused on those inhabiting the eastern or southern coastal regions, particularly in Guangdong, Guangxi, and the Pearl River Delta (e.g., Chen 2002a, b; Liu 2007). Specifically, many have examined how boat people, known as Danmin, have been affected by living conditions, subsistence, customs, health, and education in modern China. They have also examined various attempts to ameliorate the difficulties faced by these fishers (Kani 1970; Qin and Xu 2005a, b). However, these studies only addressed the present situation, adopting a simple cause-and-effect approach. Moreover, to my knowledge, no reports have focused on fishing activities in Chinese freshwater lakes. The studies described above primarily examined innovation in fishing methods and suggested that many fishers have adopted modern technologies such as GPS receivers and fish finders to cope with the current threats to their livelihoods. Fishers in eastern coastal areas were found to have positive attitudes about innovations in fishing methods that help maintain subsistence fishing (Chen 2002b, 75; Zhan 2004, 96–99; Qin and Xu 2005a, 9). These studies have regarded innovations in fishing methods as the main strategy for adaptation. These types of technological changes are less applicable to cormorant fishing, however, because any changes to the cormorants, fishing nets, or fishing boats are less feasible. Additionally, modern fishing technology is too costly for most cormorant fishers to access. Consequently, the fishers have had to devise other adaptive approaches. An examination of cormorant fishers can thus add valuable data on alternative adaptive strategies. This report is the first to specifically examine the adaptations of cormorant fishers in Poyang Lake to reductions in fishing area over the past 20 years.

2 Materials and Methods This study was conducted in four stages: (1) collection of quantitative and qualitative data on cormorant fishing in Poyang Lake; (2) analysis of Landsat images; (3) observation of daily fishing activities; and 4) examination of how cormorant fishers have coped with the decline in fishing area.

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Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through ethnographic surveys. Quantitative data were collected from numerous sources. During the period of the field research from 2006 to 2010, I conducted general surveys of households to collect basic data including names, ages, family structures, and inventories of fishing gear. Using a participant–observation approach, I also gathered information related to daily catch species, fishing spots, and fishing techniques. Changes in fishing area were identified by using Landsat images of the southern portion of Poyang Lake (where the cormorant fishers operate) during 1989–2006. Qualitative data were obtained via interview and participant–observer methodologies. Interviews specifically emphasized the period from the implementation of the Household Responsibility System (HRS) in Early 1980s to the present. Participants were interviewed about changes in fishing methods, rules, and policies. Respondents were asked their opinions on national fishing regulations, the current fishery situation, and their behavior while fishing on Poyang Lake.

2.1 Study Site The study site was W Village in Y County in Jiangxi Province, located at the southern end of Poyang Lake (Fig. 1). As the largest freshwater lake in China, Poyang Lake is 170 km long from south to north and 74 km wide from east to west, with an area of 3583 km2 and a shoreline length of 1200 km. Its mean depth is 8.4 m and its maximum depth is estimated as 25.1 m. During the study, 40 households in W Village were engaged primarily in cormorant fishing. All fishers were ethnically Han. They had an average of 26.6 years of fishing experience. All cormorants kept by fishers in W Village were great cormorant

Fig. 1 Location of W Village in Jiangxi province, China (map by author)

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Fig. 2 Each household keeps cormorants along the edges of their fishing boat

(Phalacrocorax carbo sinensis). During the study period, fishers kept a total of 962 cormorants (683 males, 279 females) with an average age of 3.3 years. Each household kept an average of 24 cormorants along the edges of fishing boats (Fig. 2). Many fishers kept male cormorants because the predatory capability of the male is superior to that of the female.

2.2 Cormorant Fishing Techniques Cormorant fishing requires a cormorant, a fishing boat, a long bamboo pole, and rice straw. Fishers in W Village use fishing boats of two types. The larger type is approximately 920 cm long, with a beam of 225 cm and depth of 150 cm. This type has a diesel motor, fish tank, and gas cooker. The smaller type is 527 cm long, with a beam of 123 cm and depth of approximately 70 cm. These smaller boats are powered by rowers. The procedure for cormorant fishing is as follows: (1) In the early morning, fishers situate their cormorants along the edges of their fishing boat and travel to fishing grounds located along the shores of the lake and river and near submerged objects. (2) After arrival at a fishing ground, fishers tie a piece of rice straw around the base of each cormorant’s throat. This prevents the cormorants from swallowing larger fish, which are held in the throat, but allows them to swallow smaller fish. (3) Next, fishers set the cormorants free in the water and beat the water surface repeatedly with bamboo poles to agitate the fish and to signal that the cormorants

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Fig. 3 After fishing is completed, fishers sort the catch by market value

should dive and catch fish. When a cormorant catches a fish in its throat, the fisher picks up the bird and returns it to the boat to retrieve the fish held in its throat. These fishing activities continue for 4–5 h. (4) After fishing is completed, fishers sort the catch according to market value, bring the cormorants back to the boat, and feed the cormorants nonmarketable fish (Fig. 3). (5) The fishers return to the port in W Village in the evening. Caught fish are carried to the market in R Town by male fishers and are sold to local residents at prices determined by the fish size and species. Barring strong winds or engine trouble, fishers generally work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday.

3 Changes in Fishing Area The available fishing area in Poyang Lake has changed in recent years. After the communal system was dismantled, the effective use of land became a major issue in China. In response, the Chinese government implemented the HRS in the early 1980s, under which a household or company can contract for the right to use land or water areas for certain periods of time. This system led to radical changes in agriculture and aquaculture in China. Initially, implementation of the HRS did not greatly affect subsistence fishing in the Poyang Lake region because the public transportation network in that area was poorly developed. For that reason, access to urban markets was limited. Households and companies were not interested in contracting for the right to use water in this region. However, local governments subsequently began to reclaim land from the

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lake to develop ports for residential use, transport, and fish farming. Following the completion of road and bridge construction, merchants could make the 40-km trip to Nanchang city, the capital of Jiangxi Province, in less than 1 h, a trip that previously had taken 7–8 h. With this new development, some private entrepreneurs purchased the rights to use the waters of the inner lake and the lakeshore and began engaging in aquaculture. These developments reduced the area suitable for cormorant fishing. This can be seen by comparing two satellite images, one taken in 1989 and another in 2006, in combination with data collected through intensive fieldwork. In 1989, the HRS and land reclamation work had had little effect, but by 2006, the area available for fishing was considerably reduced. In 1989, the total available fishing area was about 890 km2 . In 2006, this had shrunk to about 210 km2 , meaning that cormorant fishers in W Village had lost access to more than 75% of their former fishing grounds. Two main factors reduced the fishing area. First, there has been an increase in the area covered by exclusive water rights. After implementation of the HRS and improvements to transportation infrastructure, many aquaculture companies and households purchased fishing rights for the inner and shoreline areas of Poyang Lake. These rights were used to support shrimp, crab, and other fish-farming activities, and entitled the rights-holders to exclusive use of specific water areas, thereby excluding cormorant fishers from them. Cormorant fishers chose not to purchase the rights to specific water areas because they would have been unable to maintain sufficient catch volumes if they continued to fish in a single location. They must change fishing areas daily, and avoid fishing in the same area more than once every seven days. The second factor behind the decline in cormorant fishing area is land reclamation. Since the 1990s, population growth and the expansion of the market economy have increased demand for new land and resources. The shores of Poyang Lake in particular have been targeted for grain production and residential development. This increased exploitation of land around the lake has reduced the area of open water on both Poyang Lake and its surrounding rivers, and has reduced the available cormorant fishing area year by year. Regarding this decrease of fishing area, one fisher said, “Almost all the good fishing areas disappeared in the 1990s. That is beyond our control.” Another said, “We cannot fish, this is the last straw. Nevertheless, there is nothing we can do about this change.” Cormorant fishers have been forced to respond to this clear and present threat to their survival.

4 Behavior of Cormorant Fishers Under Decreased Fishing Area Changes in the Poyang Lake region have brought decreased fish catches per unit of effort and the loss of many fish species (Cui and Li 2005). Additionally, the number of fishers working on Poyang Lake has declined, and of the 41 fishing methods that

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were practiced on the lake in the early 1990s, many have vanished in recent years (Cui and Li 2005; Uda 2008b). At the same time, fish farming has become a lucrative industry (Chinese Ministry of Agriculture 2006; Zhang and Li 2007) and has placed other inland fisheries in a difficult situation. Despite these challenging conditions, the results of the field survey indicate that the households of cormorant fishermen in W Village have not changed markedly over time. Immediately after the Maoist period in the late 1970s, 44 or 45 households in W Village were engaged in cormorant fishing. Subsequently, in the 1980s, the number dropped to 41 or 42 households, and in the 1990s, to 36–38 households. In 2004, the number had decreased to 35 households (63 male, 21 female fishers) followed by 36 households (64 male, 22 female) in 2005, 39 households (68 male, 25 female) in 2006, and 40 households (69 male, 26 female) in 2008 and 2009. From the 1970s to 1990s, seven or eight households in W Village changed their primary means of subsistence, decreasing the number of households relying on cormorant fishing. Recently however, young villagers have begun to return from migrant work in eastern coastal regions and take up cormorant fishing on Poyang Lake. Therefore, despite the generally bleak conditions, the number of cormorant fishing households has experienced a recent increase and has almost returned to 1980s levels. This recovery raises the question of how the cormorant fishers coped with the reduction in fishing area. The strategies they employed are discussed in the following section.

4.1 Group Fishing and the Expansion of Marketing Channels Cormorant fishers in W Village coped with the decrease in fishing area by changing fishing methods and by expanding marketing channels. Specifically, most households moved away from family fishing in narrow stretches of the river to group fishing in wide sections of the river. They also established direct contact with merchants and processors who purchase and smoke the fish. During the Maoist period, state cadres controlled fishery production. Cormorant fishers operated with groups of households functioning as production teams. Since the Maoist period, increased liberalization of work practices has given cormorant fishers greater control over their own production and the opportunity to earn income by more freely selling fish at market. In addition, decisions about fishing grounds, catch targets, and distribution can now be made at the household level. At the same time, economic risks have also been passed down to the household level. This change allowed the cormorant fishers in W Village to abandon the restrictions imposed by production teams and start family-based fishing. Figure 4(1) shows the “dangan” practice of family-based cormorant fishing, which is undertaken by various family members including parents, children, husbands, wives, and brothers. This method involves large boats dragging iron wires across

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Fig. 4 Types of cormorant fishing practiced in W Village

the lakebed during fishing activities. The iron wires dislodge bottom dwellers such as carp (Cyprinus carpio) and catfish (Silurus asotus), forcing them off the bottom; this enables the cormorants to catch the fish as they emerge behind the boat. Fishers watch the cormorants from small boats and retrieve them using a bamboo pole. As the available area for cormorant fishing began to gradually decrease, fishers had to share fishing grounds to maintain viability. Starting in 1995, households began to organize themselves into six to eight fishing groups. Figures 4(2) and 5 show the group fishing method, called “huo,” practiced by some households. Large groups can consist of as many as 10–12 households using 20–25 fishing boats and 200–250 cormorants. In the late 1990s, nearly all cormorant fishing relied on family-based fishing. Now, almost all fishers practice group fishing (Fig. 5).

4.2 Changes in Cormorant Fishing Practices Over Time Before 1995, all cormorant fishers in W Village used the dangan method and fished in river narrows, creeks, and near-shore areas. Catches consisted mainly of catfish and yellow catfish (Pseudobagrus fulvidraco), both high unit-price species. Fishers did not contract directly with merchants because they were able to sell their entire catch to local residents in the market. Interviews and observations conducted during the present study showed no differences between dangan practices of the past and those of the present. After 1995, cormorant fishers started using the huo method in wider river reaches. Recently, almost all cormorant fishing is done by using the huo method. Merchants purchase any carp and qiaozuibaiyu (Culter alburnus) that are not sold at the local market.

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Fig. 5 Many fishers catch fish together in group fishing

To compare past and present cormorant fishing economies, the activity durations required for dangan and huo fishing were compared, and changes in cormorant fishing resulting from the transition from dangan to huo fishing and the expansion of marketing channels were identified. Finally, the adaptive strategies of cormorant fishers are discussed in light of the above analysis.

4.3 Daily Income By virtue of the introduction of huo fishing in wide river reaches, fishers have been able to catch large numbers of carp and qiaozuibaiyu and sell the excess to merchants. These changes are also reflected in net daily income. For seven days from July 5, 2006, I investigated the net daily incomes of three randomly selected households engaged in dangan fishing and three households engaged in huo fishing, and examined differences in income between the two methods. The net daily income from dangan fishing ranged from 0 to 224 yuan (1 Chinese yuan is about 0.15 US dollars) per person, with an average of 72.9 yuan. On some days, there was zero profit yielded after deductions for fuel. However, other days yielded considerable profit. Overall, the net income from dangan fishing was quite unstable. By contrast, the net income from huo fishing varied from 39 to 154 yuan per person, with an average of 69.4 yuan. In other words, the huo method produced a smaller range of net daily incomes. Fishers received an average of at least 40 yuan in income per day. The standard deviation of net daily income was also small, indicating that the net income from huo fishing was more stable than that from dangan fishing.

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Part of this difference in income is related to the species caught. The species caught using the dangan method are primarily catfish and yellow catfish. These species are mostly sold at the local market in R Town, and their price is more than 20 yuan per kg, which is four times that of carp and qiaozuibaiyu. Therefore, fishers can earn large revenues if they are able to sell their entire catch. However, these species are not purchased by merchants. Any unsold catfish and yellow catfish are therefore used as feed for the cormorants, meaning that the fishers receive little income from this excess catch. Consequently, dangan fishing is associated with either a generous income compared with huo fishing, or a meager one. By contrast, the species caught using huo fishing are primarily carp and qiaozuibaiyu. Fishers can sell these fish at the local market in R Town at a price of 5 yuan per kg. If they cannot sell their entire catch at the market, they can sell the remaining fish to merchants. The merchants pay only 4 yuan per kg for these species, but merchants consistently buy all of the remaining carp and qiaozuibaiyu catch. Consequently, fishers enjoy a more stable income with the huo fishing method. Historically, the daily income from dangan fishing was as unstable as it is today. After fishers faced reductions in fishing area, they responded by resuming large group fishing in wide river reaches and offshore areas of the lake, and entered into contracts to sell their surplus catch to merchants, effectively stabilizing their fishing income.

4.4 Activity Duration Changes in fishing methods and areas have had direct impacts on activity duration. Table 1 presents the durations of various activities during dangan and huo fishing. Generally, cormorant fishing can be divided into eight activities as follows: moving, in which fishers travel between the fishing ground and their homes; preparation, in which fishers tie pieces of rice straw around the throats of the cormorants; fishing, in which fishers deploy cormorants to catch fish; rest, in which fishers rest and have a meal; sorting, in which fishers sort fish by market value; selling, in which fishers sell their catch; distribution, in which fishers divide the daily income among fishers; and care, in which fishers feed their cormorants. Significant differences (p300,000

Ethnic group

Meat, religious culture, social culture, crossbreeding for milk products, employment

Bhutan

3000

Ethnic group

Crossbreeding for milk products, employment

Myanmar

Unknown

Ethnic group

Meat, social culture

China

4000

Ethnic group

Meat, social culture

gayal to the bride’s household. In India, mithun meat is regarded as more tender and superior to, the meat of any other species. The quality of mithun hide is reportedly superior to that of traditional cow hide (Das et al. 2011). National Research Centre on Mithun in India has processed different varieties of leather from mithun hide, which has been found to be very good for producing shoe upper leather, bag leather, and garment leather. Mithun bag leather has been found to be far superior to cow bag leather. Furthermore, mithun hide with hair makes an excellent exotic outer covering for lounge. The ICAR-National Research Center on Mithun in India has also standardized the process of making paneer, barfi, rasgulla, curd, and lassi from mithun milk. Unlike in other countries, where mithun are kept for meat purposes, in Bhutan the use of the species is unique. They are kept for crossbreeding with traditional Nublang cattle (B. indicus) to produce hybrids for milk and draft purposes. These crosses are well adapted to the sloping terrain and the transhumance system of cattle management prevailing in the country. Documentation of this breeding practice exists as early as the seventeenth century. It is also vividly described in the Country Report on the State of Animal Genetic Resources in Bhutan (Royal Government of Bhutan 2002).

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Gayals are a source of income in Bangladesh. Gayals are very expensive animals nowadays. One adult Gayal is sold at 1500.00 US$, which is a huge amount to forest people (Faruque et al. 2015). Therefore, by possessing gayals and selling them, the forest people earn much money that is assisting in improving their livelihood. However, because of deforestation and the conversion of forest land for the cultivation of fruit and grain crops, the extent of natural grazing land for gayals has decreased in Bangladesh and in the state of Mizorum in India. In these areas the animals are now endangered (Mondal et al. 2014; Faruque et al. 2015). The governments of India, Bhutan, and China have established the Gayal Research Institute to protect and promote the species. They have also undertaken a conservation program for gayals. Such efforts have yet to be undertaken by the governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar. However, private entrepreneurs have come forward in Bangladesh and have established a gayal farm on the plains under a semi-intensive system. This can be seen as an ex situ conservation program (Fig. 6). The current stage can, therefore, be regarded as a period of protection for gayals.

5 Conclusion The gayal–human relationship provides a good example for considering human relationships with other animals in the Anthropocene, the epoch dating from the start of human influence on Earth’s environment. In the past, humans rarely used wild gayals in the forest; their use started with hunting. With the changing environment over time and with the development of various technologies, gayals have been exploited and used in multiple ways by humans, and they still play an important role in the socioeconomic and cultural lives of local ethnic populations. As described here, gayals have been transformed from unused animals to animals that are very useful to ethnic peoples. Moreover, they have become symbolic objects to be protected through the implementation of effective conservation programs especially in Bhutan and India. Consequently, the case of historical change in gayal–human relationships is an example we can use when considering the relationship of humans with once-wild animals in today’s world. Acknowledgements This study was supported by Monbushou Grant Number 21251011 on “Environmental history of livestock husbandry in the tropics” and by BAS-USDA Grant no LS 2 on “Conservation and improvement of endangered livestock species in Bangladesh”.

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Ethnobotany Over Time in Monsoon Asia

Bamboo Culture in Monsoon Asia: From a Case of the Hmong Farmer in Northern Thailand Shinsuke Nakai

1 Introduction Nearly 1500 species of bamboo have been identified throughout the world (see Uchimura 2004; Clark et al. 2015).1 Bamboo, which is characterized by this diversity, has been regarded by Westerners as a plant symbolic of Asia (cf. McClure 1966). In fact, an overview of the bamboo forest area of the world shows that as much as 60% of it is found in the Monsoon Asia region (Fig. 1, Kuehl 2015). Studies on human beings and bamboo in the Monsoon Asia region have mainly been undertaken from the aspects of (1) ethnographic research from the perspective of material civilization (cf. Piper 1992) and (2) the study of industrial structure, where bamboo is utilized as a biomass resource (Olsen et al. 2001). Furthermore, bamboo shoots have been dealt with as a foodstuff in food culture research. In this and other preceding research, although details of bamboo craft used in daily living and the state of bamboo utilization in industrial situations have been reported, there has been little discussion on how people recognize bamboo in the natural environment and how they have used bamboo over time from the standpoint of historical ecology (cf. Balée 1998; Gepts et al. 2012). In particular, many points still remain unclear regarding the formation of the human–bamboo relationship among slash-and-burn farmers who live with repeated relocation in the mountainous areas of Monsoon Asia (cf. Kunstadter 1967; Geddes 1976; Nakano 1978). Therefore, with the understanding that bamboo culture represents the integral relationship between human beings and bamboo in these regions, in this chapter we aim to discuss the special features of the bamboo culture in Monsoon Asia, using the case of the Hmong people who live by slash-and-burn farming in a mountainous area in the northern part of Thailand.

S. Nakai (B) Saga University, Honjo 1, Saga 840-8502, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 K. Ikeya and W. Balée (eds.), Global Ecology in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9_9

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Fig. 1 Distribution of bamboo forest areas. Source Modified by Kuehl (2015)

2 The Hmong People: Slash-and-Burn Farmers There is a mountainous area in the northern part of Thailand, about 1000 m above sea level, covered with a monsoon forest. A Thai ethnic group (Thai-Kadai languages) has lived in the basins scattered within it for more than about 800 years. They have lived by paddy rice cultivation, with each group forming a Buddhism-based kingdom and maintaining a political system. For example, the Nan Kingdom is located in Nan province. Before the Thai ethnic group arrived, people speaking Austro-Asiatic languages (currently called the Khamu) were the indigenous inhabitants. In the thirteenth century, the Lanna Kingdom, centered mainly in the present-day city of Chiangmai, was established by a Thai ethnic group that exerted a broad influence over many areas in northern Thailand. Hmong people have lived in southern China for a long time. They repeatedly migrated to reach the area of today’s Thailand at the end of the nineteenth century (Geddes 1976). The population density had traditionally been very low in the mountainous area in northern Thailand. In the nineteenth century, the Hmong people and other ethnic minorities (Karen, Mien, etc.) began to move into the monsoon forest and form villages, after cutting trees by loggers, where they engaged in slash-and-burn farming. The scenery we see today in this area, consisting of slash-and-burn farms and bamboo groves in fallow land, is the result of efforts made by the Hmong people and other neighboring ethnic minorities in the monsoon forest over a long period. The Hmong are a group linguistically akin to the Miao (Miao-Yao languages) and their current population in China is about 7 million. Today, there are approximately 150 thousand Hmong people in Thailand. Figure 2 shows the location of Hmong Village A (approx. 700 m above sea level, formed in 1980, Fig. 3), which is the study area of the human–bamboo relationship discussed in detail below. Even during the past 50 years or so, these people relocated their village while engaging in slash-and-burn framing. Village B (approx. 1000 m

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above sea level) was their village in the 1970s and Village C (altitude unknown) was the village where they had lived before that. As they had lived in Village B for about 10 years, it is assumed that their stay in Village C had been during the 1960s. Before that time, they are believed to have lived in an area near the national boarder with Laos and, until then, in Laos. The author has been conducting a field study intermittently in Village A since 2005 (Fig. 4). The main livelihood of the people living in Village A since the 1990s has depended on upland rice cultivation for subsistence and on maize cultivation for cash income (Nakai 2009). In addition, before and while they lived in Village B, they cultivated opium poppies. The distance from Village A to Nan City is 40 km, which today takes only about one hour by car. However, up until 2007 when the mountain trail connecting to the arterial road became paved, residents had great difficulties in going to town during the rainy season and had to live almost in isolation.

Fig. 2 Locations of former and current villages. Source Author’s field study

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Fig. 3 Landscape of the research area (Village A, October 2005)

Fig. 4 Hmong people of Village A in 2005

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3 Livelihoods and Bamboo The Hmong people in Village A (hereinafter referred to as “the People”) eat not only bamboo shoots but also bamboo worms (Omphisa fuscidentalis) found in the bamboo culm. The People cultivate rice in slash-and-burn fields, and they often slash and burn bamboo groves for this purpose. According to them, logging of bamboo is best carried out during the rainy season. If only a few bamboo trees are cut down, one man can carry them back on his shoulder (Fig. 5). When many bamboo trees are cut down at the same time, several men work together at logging, loading them onto a truck, and carrying them home. There are a great variety of bamboo items in and around the People’s houses. Besides bamboo baskets, which are essential to agricultural work, bamboo is used, for example, as house wall and floor materials and for bamboo fences to partition the space between houses. Bamboo baskets are woven with much care and time. Bamboo baskets with a fine mesh are used for daily life, and those with a large mesh are used in maize harvesting (Fig. 6). The Hmong and other neighboring ethnic minorities also use bamboo musical instruments. In the case of the Hmong, it is said that the sounds played are translatable into verbal speech. Each house has a bamboo grove in its backyard (Fig. 7), and chickens and pigs roam around it in a typical village scene. Bamboo is also commonly used for cages to keep chickens during the night and for pigpens Some paddy fields are seen along a stream that is located within a short walking distance from the settlement area. Cylindrical bamboo baskets to catch small fish are laid in the ditches beside the

Fig. 5 Cutting and carrying bamboo culms Village A in 2005

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Fig. 6 Making a bamboo basket Village A in 2005

paddy fields. In the forest a short distance from the footpath between fields, springloaded traps, whose springs are also made of bamboo, have been set to catch wild animals. Table 1 contains a list of bamboo tools and other items utilized in Village A. It also illustrates the diversity in the uses of bamboo in Monsoon Asia, referring to previous studies revealing the use of bamboo in weaving machines (Taguchi 2009a), as building materials for floors, walls, and roofs (Shimizu 2009), and for musical instruments and ritual tools (Fukuoka 2009; Baba 2014; Iijima 2014) by groups that include those living closer to urban civilization, such as the Thai and Lao people. Each item carries its own indigenous social context.

4 Recognition of Bamboo Varieties The recognition of bamboo varieties by the People is discussed using the class names for bamboo and their characteristics. In general, the People call bamboo shon (xyoob) and bamboo shoot jo-shon (ntsuag xyoob) in the Hmong language. (Words enclosed in parentheses indicate Hmong spellings; “HSU” indicates that the Hmong spelling is unknown.) Shon has further been classified into 12 varieties, as listed in Table 2. Of these 12 varieties, eight varieties, namely, shon-da (xyoob daj), shon-tochu (xyoob tswm), shon-chaicyo (xyoob tshai tsov), shon-mochia (xyoob mov cab), shon-tapua (xyoob to puam), shon-phuchutsuon (xyoob pu tsw tsoom), shon-malai (xyoob mai lai), and shon-kain (xyoob qeei), grow in and around Village A (Fig. 8). The remaining four varieties, which are shon-ma (HSU), shon-prokai

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Fig. 7 Bamboo trees located close to the settlement Village A in 2005

(HSU), shon-poo (HSU), and shon-tsuai (HSU), do not grow in this area, and the majority of the People in their 30 s and younger do not know of their existence. For four of the eight varieties growing in and around Village A, the meanings of their names in the Hmong language are as follows: (1) shon-da: bamboo and yellow; (2) shon-chaicyo: bamboo, fear, and tiger; (3) shon-mochia: bamboo, rice, and cut; and (4) shon-kain: bamboo and whistle (Table 2). Thus, the name of each variety of bamboo is made up of words indicating colors, psychological features, animals, foodstuff, acts, and/or musical instruments. Among the four varieties that are not seen in or around Village A, shon-ma grows around Mt. Phu Keng, where Village B was located in the 1970s (approx. 1000 m above sea level and 15 km away in direct distance from Village A). Furthermore, the People in their 50s and older remember that they previously used shon-prokai, shon-poo, and shon-tsuai when living in Village C located near Bo Kluea at the border between Thailand and Laos in the 1960s. Consequently, different varieties of bamboo are recognized by different People depending on their age group and changes in the ecological environment brought about by relocation. Furthermore, although the People know the Thai vocabulary for bamboo mai phai and bamboo shoots no mai, they do not know the Thai vocabulary for the 12 varieties of bamboo that have been named in the Hmong language. Next, the morphological characteristics of the culms of the eight varieties of bamboo used by the People are discussed (Fig. 9). First, the bamboo culms can be generally classified as large (shon-da and shon-tochu; 10-cm diameter), medium (shon-chaicyo, shon-mochia, shon-tapua, and shon-phuchutsuon; 7-cm diameter), and small (shon-malai and shon-kain; 3- and 2-cm diameter, respectively).

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Table 1 List of the tools made by bamboo material in Monsoon Asia Items observed

Purpose

Hmong village A

Previous studies

House, storage, fence

House, storage, fence

Watershoot, laundry pole

Watershoot, laundry pole ladder, carrying pole

Desk, bed, basket, sieve

Desk, chair, bed, basket, sieve

Smoking supplies, cup, chopsticks

Smoking supplies, cup, chopsticks straw, bowl

Steaming rice basket, rice bin

Steaming rice basket, rice bin shade, hammock, rice container undergarment

Field hut, storage at one point

Field hut, storage at one point

Shoulder basket

Shoulder basket

Winnowing basket

Winnowing basket, knife

Hunting-gathering

Bow, trap, fish pole

Bow, trap, fish pole blowtube, whistle

Animal confinement

Livestock hut, cowbell, bird basket

Livestock hut, cowbell, bird basket

Daily life

Subsistence

Agriculture

Insect basket Weaving Ritual

Weaving machine Ceremonial tool, whistle Ceremonial tool, whistle Harp

Recordkeeping Hobby

Writing material, paper material Peashooter, stilts

Kite

Note 1 Previous studies include the following, Piper (1992), Kawano (2007), Oono et al. (2007), Akimichi (2009), Fukuoka (2009), Hirota and Nakanishi (2009), Hirota (2010), Shimizu (2009), Taguchi (2009a, b). Source Author’s field study. Modified by Nakai (2010)

As shown in Fig. 9 the People have identified the following morphological differences among the culms of the varieties of bamboo. Of the two large-size varieties, shon-tochu has a larger inside thickness of the bamboo culm. Among the four medium-size varieties, shon-mochia and shon-tapua have about the same thickness, while shon-chaicyo and shon-phuchutsuon are thicker than these. Furthermore, although shon-mochia and shon-tapua are almost equal in thickness, shon-tapua has a longer internode length. Also, regarding the morphological features of growing bamboo, the People have observed that shon-tochu has a thicker stump than shon-da, and that shon-tsuai, which the People previously used when they lived near Bo Kluea in the 1960s, closely resembles shon-mochia. As for bamboo ecology, people have noted that shon-tapua generally grows in a watery environment.

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Table 2 List of bamboo types identified by the Hmong people in Village A, Thailand No

Bamboo name

Scientific name

English spelling

Hmong spelling

Meaning

1

shon-da

xyoob daj

bamboo + yellow

2

shon-tochu

xyoob tswm

3

shon-chaicyo

xyoob tshai tsov

bamboo + fear + tiger

Cephalostachyum perigracile Munro

4

shon-mochia

xyoob mov cab

bamboo + rice + cut

Bambusa polymorpha Munro

5

shon-tapua

xyoob to puam

6

shon-phuchutsuon

xyoob pu tsw tsoom

7

shon-malai

xyoob mai lai

8

shon-kain

xyoob qeei

Dendrocalamus latiflorus Munro Dendrocalamus hamiltonii Nees et Arn.ex Munro

bamboo + whistle

9

shon-prokai

n.d

n.d

10

shon-poo

n.d

n.d

11

shon-ma

n.d

n.d

12

shon-tsuai

n.d

n.d

Note Scientific name of each bamboo was identified by Dr. Etsuzo Uchimura (Botanist) Source Author’s field study. Modified by Nakai (2010)

5 Bamboo Use and Landscape The People collect bamboo shoots and culms in bamboo forests in and around the village. These bamboo forests spread across the fallow fields that remain after slashand-burn agriculture. Figure 10 shows the areas of farmland in 2005. The land other than farmland within the village border mainly consists of secondary bamboo forest. Of the eight varieties of bamboo, four (shon-da, shon-tochu, shon-mochia, and shonmalai) are the most common in and around the village. With regard to the collection of bamboo shoots and culms, the matters related to possession rights are managed as follows. Although the land around Village A is nationally owned, the rights to cut down vegetation and establish slash-and-burn farms are decided on the basis of traditional village rules. As a general rule, the People think that all villagers can freely collect bamboo shoots and culms in the bamboo forests located in the fields after slash-and-burn agriculture. In daily life, the villagers most often collect and bring home small amounts of bamboo shoots and culms while they work at farming. Therefore, the villagers usually collect these products in the bamboo forest located in fields adjacent to their own household. On the other hand, there are also cases where the right of use of part of a bamboo grove in the backyard of each house that is very close to the settlement area of the village

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Fig. 8 Varieties of bamboo in Village A, Thailand. The numbers in the figure correspond to Table 2. Source Author’s field study (October 2006)

Fig. 9 Recognition of bamboo stem forms among the Hmong in Village A. In addition to the characteristics shown here, the People recognize that the internode of to puam is longer than that of mov cab. Source Author’s field study (October 2006). Modified by Nakai (2010)

is granted to a specific person (e.g., the head of the nearest household), which is recognized among the villagers. However, even in the case where the right of use is recognized to be held by a specific person, use can be permitted by negotiation.

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Fig. 10 Distribution of cultivated fields in 2005 and sites of bamboo shoot collection. Source Author’s field study, aided by GPS system. Modified by Nakai (2010)

The People collect bamboo shoots to eat mainly during the rainy season, which is from April to October. The People say that they “eat bamboo shoots every day in the rainy season”. Among the three varieties of bamboo shoots they eat—that is, shonmalai, shon-mochia, and shon-tochu—shon-malai is eaten most often. According to the People, this is because “shon-malai tastes the best (among the three) and is very prolific (in and around the village)” (the information in parentheses was added by the author). Table 3 shows the compositions of the 23 meals that I consumed during my 11-day stay in Village A in August 2005. Dishes using bamboo shoots were prepared five times (Meal nos. 2, 11, 13, 18, and 22). Including Meal No. 3, in which bamboo shoot dishes left over from the previous day were consumed again, bamboo shoots were served a total of six times. They were all shon-malai bamboo shoots and were either boiled or deep fried. The frequency of consuming bamboo shoot dishes at a given meal was thus 26% (6 out of 23 meals) and 55% of the number of days (6 out of 11 days). The meal compositions shown in Table 3 are for not only Household X, with whom I stayed, but also for Household Y (the parents of the head of Household X) and Household Z (the head of Household Z is a parallel cousin of the head of Household X). This is because I ate meals with Household Y and Household Z when

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the husband and wife of Household X were not at home. Therefore, out of six bamboo shoot dishes I ate, three (Meal nos. 2, 3, and 13) were served by Household X, one (Meal no. 11) by Household Y, and two (Meal nos. 18 and 22) by Household Z. Furthermore, the bamboo shoot dishes (Meal nos. 2, 3, and 13) eaten with Household X were all made of bamboo shoots collected by Household Y. This is because the head of Household X was the administrative officer of the village and was earning cash income from this official duty and, therefore, was less engaged in farming. On the other hand, Households Y and Z were average farmers in the village earning cash Table 3 Composition of meals eaten in Village A (August 2005) Meal ID

Date

1

21st

2 3

22nd

B

Boiled bamboo shoot 2

s-rice 1, grilled fish, steamed X mushroom

D

Mixed cooked rice 1

X

23rd

B

Mixed cooked rice 2, grilled fish, fried vegetable (tomato leaf, pork)

X

D

s-rice 2, fried pork, vegetable X (cucumber)

24th

25th

10

11

26th

12 13

27th

18

s-rice 1, fried vegetable

X

s-rice 2, fried vegetable (tomato, water morning glory, pork) 1

X

B

s-rice 3, fried vegetable (tomato, water morning glory, pork) 2

X

D

Rice, fried vegetable (pumpkin and tofu), wild mouse meat soup 1

X

Rice, wild mouse meat soup 2

Y

s-rice 4, fried chicken*, grilled chicken*

X

B

Fried bamboo shoot

s-rice 1

X

D

s-rice 2, vegetable soup

X

28th

B

s-rice 3, chicken soup

X

D

s-rice 4, fish soup 1

X

29th

B

s-rice 5, fish soup 2

X

Rice, boiled pumpkin

Z

16 17

B D

D

14 15

X

Rice 2, roasted corn, vegetable (lead tree leaf)

8

9

X

Boiled bamboo shoot 1

6 7

Household ID Rice 1, fish soup

D

4 5

Meal composition B

B

D

Fried bamboo shoot

Fried bamboo shoot

(continued)

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Table 3 (continued) Meal ID

Date

19

30th

B D

s-rice 2, fried vegetable

X

31st

B

s-rice 3, grilled fish

X

20 21

Meal composition

22

L

23

D

Household ID s-rice 1, fried egg, mushroom X soup

Fried bamboo shoot

Rice

Z

s-rice, beef soup*, pounded beef*

X

Note 1 Author stayed in Household X. Household Y consists of the parents of the head of Household X. The head of Household Z is a parallel cousin of the head of Household X Note 2 B, Breakfast; D, Dinner and L, Lunch Note 3 ‘rice’ means non-glutinous rice and ‘s-rice’ means sticky rice Note 4 ‘*’ means purchased in the city Note 5 Each dish may not be eaten all at once; leftovers may be reheated and eaten several times. The number after the dish indicates how many times it has been eaten, for example ‘s-rice 1’ indicates the situation immediately after it has been cooked, and ‘s-rice 3’ indicates the situation of eating leftovers a third time Note 6 The husband of Household X visited the city and purchased cooked meals on the 26th and 31st Note 7 On the evening of the 31st, principal of the primary school visited Household X for a party, which included drinking alcohol Source Author’s field study (August 2005). Modified by Nakai (2010)

income through the cultivation of cash crops and were often working in the fields and collecting bamboo shoots. Therefore, Households Y and Z ate bamboo shoots more frequently than Household X. In the case of Households Y and Z, the bamboo shoots used in the dishes listed in Table 3 had been collected in the bamboo forests near the families’ fields (Fig. 10).

6 Discussion 6.1 Model 50: 50 Years of Bamboo Use (1960–2000s) The People have lived for the past 50 years in relatively homogeneous ecological environments around the border between Laos and Thailand, while repeatedly relocating their domicile. This study has revealed that there are varieties of bamboo that were once used but are no longer being used. Furthermore, this study has shown changes in the recognition of bamboo varieties depending on the generation (i.e., people aged 30 or younger vs. people aged 50 or older). With regard to bamboo use in the People’s lives, it was also clarified that (1) eight varieties of bamboo are utilized, (2) out of these eight varieties, four varieties grow

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Fig. 11 Summary of bamboo use among the Hmong in Villages A, B, and C. Source Author’s field study. Modified by Nakai (2010)

in and around Village A, and (3) out of these four varieties, shon-malai is mainly used as food and shon-da as building material (Fig. 11). It has been shown above that a certain “diversity” observed in bamboo use among the People is the result of change caused by relocation, and only a limited number of varieties are commonly used. In this respect, there are only a few comparable preceding studies (see Kunstadter et al. 1978; Nakano 1978; Sponsel 1998). For example, Fujita (1999) reported that he conducted research of a paddy rice farming village of the Lao people in Ubon Ratchathani Province, located in northeastern Thailand, at the end of 1990 and identified 11 varieties of bamboo in the village. Nine out of these 11 varieties were used for food. This gives us an impression of the existence of a greater variety of edible bamboo among the Lao villagers than among those in Village A. In the case of Village A, there were no specific rules regarding the collection of bamboo shoots and culms by members of their group. Bamboo is considered as a material that can be used as needed for food, building, and tool making (Fig. 12). For the purpose stated in this chapter, such a labelling can be regarded as a fundamental characteristic concerning the use of bamboo that is widely applicable to mountain villages in Monsoon Asia where the population density is relatively low. Meanwhile, as in the case of the area around Vientiane, Laos, a lack of bamboo materials has been reported from the farming villages in the vicinity of urban areas owing to increased demand for commercial use (Taguchi 2009a). This phenomenon has occurred because bamboo materials have come to be incorporated into the social structure made up of production areas and consuming areas, as in Japan, suggesting

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Fig. 12 Bamboo forest and cultivated fields in Village A in 2006

a difference in context between the mountain villages, where resource utilization is relatively limited, and the suburban farming villages, where demand exceeds supply. Generally speaking, a study on the scarcity of an object tends to draw attention because of the significance of its political connotation. The discussion in this chapter suggests that the human–bamboo relationship in Monsoon Asia now and in the future will be focused on the dynamics between abundance and scarcity.

6.2 Model 1000: 1000 Years of Bamboo Use (1000–2000s) How can we interpret the long-term transition of the human–bamboo relationship in northern Thailand? Figure 13 schematically shows the transition over centuries of the living areas of three ethnic groups segregated by altitude. First, the indigenous Khamu group (Austro-Asiatic languages) was engaged in slash-and-burn and paddy field farming in the thirteenth century and earlier. Then, the Thai people (Thai-Kadai languages) advanced southward, developed paddy rice fields along rivers in the basin, and formed Buddhist kingdoms in the 13th to nineteenth centuries. Finally, in the twentieth century and later, the Hmong (Miao-Yao languages) migrated southward and entered the unoccupied high mountainous area while carrying out slash-and-burn agriculture.

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In the schematic dynamics of such ethnic groups, what changes have been observed in their use of bamboo? One way to view this transition is by dividing the timeline into (1) the period when bamboo forests ranged around the Khamu people’s fields, (2) the period when bamboo forests ranged along with the development of paddy rice fields by the Thai people, and (3) the period when slash-and-burn farms were developed near the top of the mountains by the Hmong and bamboo forests were expanded into fallow land. According to “Model 50”, the bamboo varieties people used changed depending on where they lived, suggesting that the bamboo varieties selected also changed depending on altitude. Meanwhile, in the paddy field village, where relocation has become unlikely to take place, how have the bamboo varieties used by people changed? For example, in Japan, bamboo is called take and there are three well-known varieties that are important in Japanese bamboo culture.2 With the exception of ma-dake (Phyllostachys bambusoides), these varieties originated from China. The bamboo culture in Japan, including the present vegetation, has been formed by the people living there.3 Furthermore, when viewed over the long term, bamboo use in Monsoon Asia has also received attention from the archaeological perspective in the form of the “bamboo hypothesis” (Brumm 2010), which concerns the question of technical adaptation of the hunting–gathering tribes in the prehistoric age to the ecological environment, motivating the study of the significance of bamboo tools (which are, unlike stone tools, poorly preserved) in human history. Thus, in this chapter, the human–bamboo relationship has been described from the viewpoint of the relocation of the slash-and-burn farmers and transitions in their use of bamboo at their destination. Other anthropogenic influences not discussed here include the transport, transplant, and cultivation of bamboo.

Fig. 13 Model of ethnic migration and land use in northern Thailand during the past 1000 years. The relative position of a group within each triangle (lower vs. higher) indicates lower versus higher altitude. c, century. Source Author’s study

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Notes 1. Largely categorized into three groups: Bambuseae, 812 species; Arundinarieae, 546 species; and Olyreae 124 species (Clark et al. 2015). 2. As an indispensable element in Japanese culture, not only has the bamboo tree been planted in gardens, but also its culm has been used in bamboo handicrafts (take-zaiku) and the bamboo shoot (take-noko) has been used as a foodstuff. In particular, bamboo has been used in a symbolic cultural craft (kadomatsu) that decorates the entrance of a house on New Year’s Day. With regard to bamboo use in these situations, the social structure of distribution has evolved to connect the places of consumption (mainly in urban cities) and the places of production from where bamboo is supplied. For example, in and around the Kyoto area (old capital of Japan), which is well known as a production area of craft materials and bamboo shoots, there are well-groomed bamboo farms of mousou-chiku (Phyllostachys pubescens Mazel). 3. In Japan, there are three well-known bamboo varieties (Muroi 1973; Ueda 1979): ma-dake (Phyllostachys bambusoides), mousou-chiku (Phyllostachys pubescens Mazel), and ha-chiku (Phyllostachys nigra). In particular, mousou-chiku was introduced from China (Qing dynasty) via the Ryukyu kingdom in the 1700s, and today accounts for the majority of bamboo forests in Japan.

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Use and Knowledge of Sago Palms in Borneo: A Case of the Penan Hunter-Gatherers Miyako Koizumi

1 Introduction Plants play important roles in human societies. While some are well known, with wide distribution under cultivation, there are other, locally used species, both domesticated and undomesticated. The locally used species are no less important than the widely used species. For example, wild Marantaceae plants play a key role in the life and culture of the Baka pygmies of Cameroon (Hattori 2006). The dominant use of major crop species is a relatively recent phenomenon in some regions. For example, extensive rice-based economies were not common in Borneo until as recently as last century (Barton 2009, 2012; Barton and Denham 2011), and the extensive manioc-based economies in the central Amazon emerged only after European conquest (Neves 2013). Thus, local economies and cultures have been shaped by local flora and crops, as well as by the major crops adopted from elsewhere. From an ethnographic perspective, it is becoming difficult to study the relationships between important local plants and societies because of the increasing uptake of major crop species and the availability of industrial products. Nevertheless, in some societies of former hunter-gatherers in Borneo, forest-based cultures still exist in spite of extensive social changes. This chapter examines sago palms (starchproducing palms) as important local plants in Borneo, and considers the scope of the knowledge that developed in a society that was dependent on those palms. It focuses on ethnobiological and utilization information; ideology related to resource use is discussed elsewhere (Koizumi and Levang, unpublished data). In this chapter, palms and their uses in Borneo are identified, ethnobotanical knowledge of sago palms among the Penan (former hunter-gatherers) is provided from a case study, and the history of sago palm use is briefly reviewed. The importance of local plants in the

M. Koizumi (B) Kyoto, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 K. Ikeya and W. Balée (eds.), Global Ecology in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9_10

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formation of human societies and cultures is acknowledged, as well as the diminution of these roles when an introduced crop becomes the dominant food source.

2 Useful Palms of Borneo There are 2585 known species of palms in 188 genera throughout Earth’s tropical and subtropical regions (Palmweb 2019). Of these, 273 species in 27 genera are native to Borneo (Dransfield et al. 2008). These include many that are useful to local people, although the available species differ somewhat from area to area. For example, in a village of the Iban hill rice farmers, 48 species of useful palms were recorded (three were found only under cultivation; Christensen 2002); in a village of the Kelabit hill and wet rice farmers, 25 species were recorded (three only under cultivation; Christensen 2002); and in a village of the Penan former hunter-gatherers, 26 species were found (only naturally occurring species were studied; Hattori and Koizumi 2016). These palms are indispensable in rural life for the variety of materials obtained from them. The canes of Calamus caesius Blume and many other rattans (climbing palms) are used to make a variety of baskets and mats. Local people distinguish among the cane qualities of rattans, and choose appropriate ones for specific purposes (Figs. 1 and 2). The leathery leaf sheath of Caryota mitis Lour. is used for knife sheaths and blowpipe dart cases. The leaf stalk of Arenga undulatifolia Becc. is split to make blowpipe darts, and the spongy pith of the leaf stalk of Eugeissona utilis Becc. is shaped into occlusions on the darts. The robust leaf stalks of Salacca affinis Griff. are used as flooring (Fig. 3). The unopened leaves of Licuala spp. are used for sun hats, and the mature leaves are suitable for thatching (Fig. 3). Various other plant parts and species provide good materials for an assortment of tools and light construction materials. Many palms are also a source of foodstuffs. Hearts of palm (unexposed leafy shoots) of E. utilis, A. undulatifolia, Oncosperma horridum (Griff.) Scheff., and others are common vegetables in rural areas, although the particular species used often differ among villages depending on local vegetation and tastes (Fig. 4). Some palms or their parts are considered to have medicinal properties. Some species bear edible fruit, although these fruit rarely make up a significant portion of the diet. Sago (palm starch), which is extracted from the stems of E. utilis, A. undulatifolia, and several other species, has been the staple food of Bornean hunter-gatherers until recently (Fig. 5). Sago palms accumulate starch in the stem at flowering and fruiting, which can be extracted.

Use and Knowledge of Sago Palms in Borneo: A Case of the Penan … Fig. 1 Harvested rattan of Ceratolobus discolor Becc

Fig. 2 Rattan basket made from Calamus caesius Blume

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172 Fig. 3 Swidden hut thatched with Licuala sp., and with flooring of Salacca affinis Griff

Fig. 4 Palm heart of Eugeissona utilis Becc

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Fig. 5 Palm starch of Arenga undulatifolia Becc., cooked with other ingredients

3 Bornean Hunter-Gatherers and Their Knowledge of Sago Palms The hunter-gatherers of Borneo were forest nomads who relied upon foods found wild in those forests. The current population of the former hunter-gatherer groups is approximately 30,000 (Koizumi and Levang, unpublished data), with several language clusters distinguishable among them (Sellato and Sercombe 2007). The largest cluster, the Penan, includes about 16,500 speakers (Koizumi and Levang, unpublished data). During fieldwork conducted in 1951 and 1952, it was determined that the movements of the Penan depended on the availability of sago palms (Needham 1953). Around 1950, the population of the Penan was only about 3000 (Needham 1953). If a similar population growth rate is assumed for all hunting and gathering groups, it can be estimated that the population of forest nomads in the mid-twentieth century was approximately 5500. This suggests that several thousand forest nomads were dependent upon sago palms at that time, in addition to the farming populations who were partially dependent on it. By the middle of the twentieth century, some of the Penan had already settled and adopted agriculture, influenced by farming societies. In the second half of the twentieth century, many others had settled as a result of persuasion by governments and churches, by their own preference, or as a consequence of forest degradation due to logging. These people are now more or less food producers and can no longer be defined as hunter-gatherers in terms of how they obtain their food. At present there are few or no fully nomadic bands. Despite being settled, however, the Penan people still demonstrate distinctive social characteristics, including extreme economic flexibility,

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Fig. 6 Location of the studied village

sharing practices (Sellato 1994; Kaskija 2007; Koizumi et al. 2012), and a rich knowledge of forest plants (Koizumi and Momose 2007). I conducted fieldwork in a village of the Penan Benalui, who speak the Western Penan language, in North Kalimantan (known as East Kalimantan at that time), Indonesia (Fig. 6), intermittently during 2002–2009 for a total of about a year. The total population of the Penan Benalui is about 450, and in the study village, Long Belaka, the population was 161 in 2002. Bands of this group settled between the 1950 and 1970s as a result of encouragement by farmers or by their own preference. They now grow rice, but they sometimes also extract wild sago, especially during rice shortages. The Penan of the study village were familiar with ten local taxa of sago palms (Table 1). Five of the taxa were observed in the field, and three of these—nangah (E. utilis), jakah (A. undulatifolia), and leséi (C. mitis)—were abundant near the village. Although the other five were not found nearby, the species were deduced from descriptions provided by the people. Characteristics and availability differ among these sago palms. For example, clustered palms produce multiple vegetative stems at a single site; when some of the stems are harvested, others remain to continue growing. Clustered palms are thus more tolerant of continuous use than are solitary palms. Seven of the ten locally important taxa are, or are thought to be, clustered palms (Table 1). The people in this study prefer to extract starch from larger stems, which seven of the listed palms have (Table 1). Four of these are clustered palms with large stems. One of them, nangah payah, was reported to have a larger stem and to grow at higher elevations than nangah but was otherwise similar to nangah. Although it was not observed directly, its description suggested it is a form of E. utilis. Three of the species—E. utilis, A. undulatifolia, and Metroxylon sagu Rottb.—are particularly suitable for

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Table 1 Sago palms known to the Penan Benalui people, their presence around the study village, and pertinent plant characteristics Local taxa (Penan Benalui name)

Corresponding species

Presence

Habit

Stem

Wild/cultivated Habitat

Large

Wild

Ridges, steep slopes

Cluster? Large

Wild

Higher places

Large

Wild

Riversides

Nangah or Eugeissona utilis Nangah Becc. muun

Observed, Cluster abundant

Nangah payah

Eugeissona utilis Becc.?

Not observed

Jakah or Jakah muun

Arenga Observed, Cluster undulatifolia Becc. abundant

Jakah payah

Arenga sp.?

Not observed

Cluster? Short

Wild

Higher places

Boo

Arenga brevipes Becc.

Observed

Cluster

Short

Wild

Primary forest

Daluu

Arenga pinnata (Wurmb) Merr.

Not observed

Solitary

Large

Cultivated

Only on cultivation

Iman

Caryota no Becc.

Observed

Solitary

Large

Wild

Relatively open forest sites

Leséi

Caryota mitis Lour. Observed, Cluster abundant

Slender Wild

Secondary forest

Anau

Corypha sp.

Not observed

Solitary

Large

Wild

Riversides

Balau

Metroxylon sagu Rottb.

Not observed

Cluster

Large

Cultivated

Swamps

Note Species identity of palms that were not observed in the field are based on explanations provided by the villagers

sago extraction. Eugeissona utilis grows in poor soils on ridges and steep slopes (Fig. 7), A. undulatifolia prefers open moist sites on riversides, and M. sagu, an introduced species from New Guinea, grows in swamps. The most important starch source among Bornean hunter-gatherers was E. utilis (Brosius 1992; Sellato 1994). This may be attributable, at least in part, to the unsuitability of the habitat of E. utilis for farming, leaving these locations uncleared. Therefore, hunter-gatherers could live far from large rivers on sloping terrain because these locations had an abundant wild source of starch but were unattractive to farmers. The Penan people have a variety of terms to identify specific growth stages of the three important sago palms (Tables 2, 3 and 4). The most detailed terminology applied to nangah (Table 2). The terminology used for the other important palm taxa overlaps that of nangah in some instances, but there are several unique terms as well (Tables 2, 3 and 4).

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Fig. 7 Eugeissona utilis growing on a steep slope

In the Penan terminology for E. utilis, a fallen fruit, tevangah, germinates and becomes a seedling, urip tevangah. When the seedling becomes larger, this vegetative stage is called uvut, and an edible shoot can be collected. If the shoot is collected, however, that stem will die. Nangah palm may remain in the vegetative phase for 8 or 9 years before it reaches reproductive maturity, and the reproductive stage generally lasts from 4 to 12 months. A stem which has progressed to the reproductive stage is itself called nangah, and starch can be extracted from this point onward. The reproductive stage begins with the formation of an inflorescence, called bue dilem, within the stem. At this point, there are no longer any edible shoots on that palm. The Penan identify this stage, called muju, by the reduced size of the leaves. When the young inflorescence emerges, it is called bue uben. As the branches of the inflorescence open, it is called bue nyaragap. Flower buds begin to develop, and when they reach about 2 cm in size, they are called purah silun daran. The starch content is high at this stage of development. The inflorescence actually flowers twice. In the first flowering, when only male flowers are present, the inflorescence is called purah danak. During the second flowering the inflorescence is called purah sekelep, and the flowers are hermaphroditic, i.e., each flower has both male and female functions. The starch content begins to decline at this stage. The developing young fruit is called nevangah ulun kutit, and the nearly mature fruit is called tevangah upah. The starch content has become low at this point. The mature fruit, either on the tree or fallen to the ground, is called tevangah tek. After the fruit has fallen, no starch is left in the stem, and it is called muluh. The stem will die, and the decaying stem is called munghuh. The abundance and specificity of these terms clearly indicate that the Penan have observed the palms very carefully and communicated these observations among

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Table 2 Penan Benalui terms denoting growth stages of nangah (Eugeissona utilis) Penan Benalui term

Growth stage or plant part, and related ethnobotanical information

Tevangah

Fallen fruit.

Urip tevangah (urip : ‘living’)

Seedling, up to about 30 cm height. The endosperm is edible after germination until the first leaf appears.

Uvut or tevangah uvut

A stem until the inflorescence emerges. Unexposed leafy shoots are edible.

Nangah

A stem in the reproductive stage, and also a stem in the vegetative stage at about 15 m inheight.

Muju

The growth stage just before the inflorescence emerges. It can be recognized by the declining size of the leaves. A stem may take eight to nine years to reach reproductive maturity.

Bue dilem (dilem: ‘inside’)

Inflorescence formed inside the stem. It presence can be recognized by the reduced size of the leaves. Bue means reproductive organs or fruit in a narrow sense.

Bue uben

Young inflorescence, not fully elongated, only about 20 cm, whose branches not yet open.

Bue nyaragap or bue rang suwah (rang: ‘hook’; suwah: ‘bush-knife sheath’)

Inflorescence with branches fully open.

Purah silun daran (silun: ‘nail’; daran: ‘a soft-shell turtle’)

Inflorescence with buds (of stainiiiate flowers) about 2 cm long is apparent. The starch content is high at this stage. Purah means inflorescence. Pollen is edible. Pollen is reddish when young and maturing yellow.

Purah danak (danak: ‘unmarried person’)

Inflorescence at the first flowering (of staminate flowers).

Purah sekelep

Inflorescence at the second flowering (of hermaphroditic flowers, or perfect flowers). The starch content is decreasing.

Nevangah ulun kutit or tevangah ulun kutit (ulun: ‘head’; kutit: a bird species, Pitta granatina?)

Young fruit the size of the head of a kutit bird. Nevangah means young fruit; tevangah means mature fruit, or nearly mature fruit, or fruit in general

Tevangah upah (upah : ‘be spilled’)

Nearly mature fruit. The starch content is becoming low.

Tevangah tek (tek : expressing the “sound” of Fruit just fallen or fruit immediately before cutting a thing by a chop) falling. (continued)

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Table 2 (continued) Penan Benalui term

Growth stage or plant part, and related ethnobotanical information

Muluh

Stem after the fruit has fallen. No starch remains.

Munguh

Decaying stem after the inflorescences and the leaves have fallen.

Batang unguh

Fallen stem.

Table 3 Penan Benalui terms denoting growth stages of jakah (Arenga undulatifolia) Penan Benalui term

Growth stage or plant part, and related ethnobotanical information

Tevangah

Fallen fruit.

Urip tevangah

Seedling.

Tevangah jakah

Stem in the vegetative stage.

Muju

The growth stage just before the inflorescence emerges. Reproductive maturity of the stem may take four years.

Bue dilem

Inflorescence formed inside the stem.

Bue memurai

Large hanging (female) inflorescence .

Bue tasak (tasak: ‘a spine on a leg of a chicken’)

Smaller (male) inflorescence, which protrudes from the lower part of the stem than the bue memurai. The presence of many bue tasak indicates a high starch content.

Bue danak

Inflorescaice with young fruit.

Bue nevangah

Inflorescence with immature fruit but after the bue danak stage.

Bue maat

Inflorescence from which some to all the fruit has fallen. The starch contait is becoming low.

Muluh

Stem after the fruit has fallen. No more starch remains.

Munguh

Decaying stem after the inflorescences and the leaves have fallen.

Batang unguh

Fallen stem.

themselves. This means that observation of the palm is a feature of the Penan culture. When they move through the forests for hunting and gathering, they recognize sago palms in various stages of growth, and when needed they can go directly to sago palms in the reproductive stage. To extract sago starch, knowledge of other plants is also needed. With a few tools brought with them, they can extract the starch right in the forest. An example of starch extraction is described below (see also Koizumi and Momose 2007). To begin, a family built a platform near a stream, using small trees, robust leaf stalks of

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Table 4 Penan Benalui terms denoting growth stages of leséi (Caryota mitis) Penan Benalui term

Growth stage or plant part, and related ethnobotanical information

Tevangah

Fallen fruit.

Urip tevangah

Seedling.

Tevangah leséi

Stem in the vegetative stage.

Muju

The growth stage just before the inflorescence emerges.

Bue dilem

Inflorescence formed inside the stem.

Bue memurai

Hanging inflorescence.

Bue danak

Inflorescence with young fruit.

Bue nevangah

Inflorescence with immature fruit but after the bue danak stage.

Bue maat

Inflorescence from which some to all the fruit has fallen. The starch content is becoming low.

Muluh

Stem after the fruit has fallen. No more starch remains.

Munguh

Decaying stem after the inflorescences and the leaves have fallen.

Batang unguh

Fallen stem.

palms, and rattans. They cut down an A. undulatifolia palm with an axe, and brought the logs (stems) to the platform, and split the logs down the middle. The pith of the palm logs was pounded with a wooden adze (Fig. 8). (The adze handle was made of the hard wood of Ochanostachys amentacea Mast., and the head was made of the hard wood of E. utilis, fastened together with rattan, Daemonorops sabut Becc.) The ground where they worked was covered with leaves of Etlingera foetens (Blume) R. M. Sm. and tree bark of Mallotus sp. The pounded pith was placed on a rattan mat made of C. caesius, and water from the stream was poured on it to extract the starch (Fig. 9). To catch the starch, a cloth was used, with a plastic sheet under it. Alternatively, a finely woven mat of C. caesius and large leaves of Artocarpus spp. could be used instead of the cloth and plastic sheet, respectively.

4 History of the Relationship Between People and Sago Palms in Borneo Both hunter-gatherer and farming societies have long histories of sago palm usage. Archaeological evidence indicates that sago was used about 40 000 years ago in Borneo (Barker et al. 2007), and that sago palms were probably deliberately grown 2300 years ago (Jones et al. 2016). Rice farmers of Borneo continued to depend on sago as a portion of their staple diet until the middle of last century (Barton 2009, 2012). Following fieldwork conducted from 1949 to 1951 among the Iban rice farmers, Freeman (1955) wrote, “When their crops fail … many—and especially the less well off—take to a diet of sago, eked out by other jungle foods.” Sakuma (2015), who interviewed the Berawan rice farmers about their life in the past, wrote,

180 Fig. 8 Pounding the pith of Arenga undulatifolia

Fig. 9 Filtering palm starch of Arenga undulatifolia

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“Swidden rice farming was not done by all households every year. … households which did not or could not harvest sufficient rice cultivated cassava and collected sago palms and extracted starch for their staple food.” Clearly, sago palms have long played a significant role, even in farming societies. The farmers’ values, however, are now centered on rice (Freeman 1955; Strickland 1986; Colfer 1991; Christensen 2002; Janowski 2003; Barton 2012). Furthermore, they almost always have sufficient rice now, by virtue of modern technologies and cash incomes. I have never observed farmers extracting sago by themselves. According to Sakuma (personal communication), the Berawan farmers sometimes enjoy eating sago purchased from the Penan. However, it is likely that sago palm knowledge will vanish from societies of rice farmers in the near future because younger generations are not exposed to the forests as much as older generations were. Acknowledgements I thank the people of Long Belaka for kindly providing information and hosting me. Fieldwork was supported by Herbarium Bogoriense, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, the Department of Forestry, and State Ministry of Research and Technology of Indonesia. Research funding was provided by KAKENHI (15J40145, 25300045).

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Taro (Colocasia esculenta) in Asia and the Pacific: Models for Domestication as a Food and Fodder Crop Peter J. Matthews

1 Introduction: Edible Aroids The plant angiosperm family Araceae has approximately 106 genera and 2823 species (known collectively as ‘aroids’) in tropical to temperate regions of both hemispheres (Govaerts and Frodin 2002). While few species have been domesticated and cultivated as food crops, many wild aroids are known as food, medicinal, or ornamental plants, and an active global flower industry now develops and promotes ornamental cultivars in genera such as Alocasia and Arisaema (from Asia), Anthurium and Caladium (from South America), and Zantesdeschia (from Africa). Reports of wild aroid use are very scattered and usually limited to brief entries in botanical lists prepared for specific geographical areas (e.g., Mansor et al. 2012; Nguyen et al. 2015; Patale et al. 2015; Plowman 1969). As food sources, wild aroids may provide edible leaves, immature inflorescences, sweet mature fruit, starchy underground stems (corms), starchy above-ground stems (erect stems), and stolons (horizontal rhizomes from which new plants may sprout). The main cultivated genera with one or more domesticated species are Alocasia (Asia and Pacific), Amorphophallus (Africa, Asia and Pacific), Colocasia (global), Cyrtosperma (Asia and Pacific), Leucocasia (Asia; with a single species, formerly known as Colocasia gigantea), and Xanthosoma (tropical America, then to Africa, Asia, and the Pacific in recent historical times) (Chandra 1984; Ivancic and Lebot 2000; Lebot 2009; Matthews 1995; Plucknett 1976). Lasia spinosa is widely known in tropical Asia as a wild vegetable (Tanaka 1976), and is sometimes planted in wet locations; the immature inflorescences and leaves are often collected from wild populations and are occasionally sold fresh in local markets, to be eaten after cooking. It is not yet known if this crop has been domesticated, despite occasional cultivation.

P. J. Matthews (B) National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka 565-8511, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 K. Ikeya and W. Balée (eds.), Global Ecology in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9_11

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Among edible aroids, Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott (taro) is the most important in commercial and non-commercial production systems. Under cultivation, taro is a highly polymorphic species with many different cultivars that produce edible corms, side-corms, or stolons. It is cultivated in tropical to temperate regions of Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas (Chaïr et al. 2016; Matthews 2006; Matthews and Ghanem 2021; Spriggs et al. 2012). The starchy corms are referred to as “tubers” in taxonomic literature, and are commonly known as “roots” (but are not roots in an anatomical sense and are not always underground). Young stolons, leaves (blades and petioles), and inflorescences are all eaten as vegetables, though not from all varieties of taro, and not in all culinary traditions (Matthews 2004). In the Pacific Islands, taro is generally a staple crop; in Southeast Asia, it is usually a secondary and minor crop grown alongside rice, with which it shares a preference for warm and wet environments; it is very widely planted in house gardens, and can be regarded as a crop par excellence for small-holder and community farming globally (Chandra 1984; Plucknett 1976; Rao et al. 2010). In Asia and the Pacific, taro is also often used as fodder for pigs. Before the global ‘post-Columbian’ exchange of crops, taro was the most widely cultivated starch and vegetable crop in the world. In the twentieth century, with modern sea and air transport, taro also entered international trade as the starchy corms can be stored and transported over periods of a few weeks to months, depending on ambient temperature and humidity and processing methods (Matthews 2002). Despite continuing expansion in the geographical range of production and consumption, taro is still not a major commodity crop. In early discussions of the origins and domestication of C. esculenta, wild populations were known to exist (de Candolle 1884; Matthews 1991; Spier 1951) but none were mapped or studied. In recent surveys, wild breeding populations have been found in many regions from Papua New Guinea, northern Australia, and Indonesia, to the Philippines, Taiwan, southern China, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and India (Matthews 2014). In such populations, it is common to see flowering, fruiting, and the production of seeds and seedlings. Genetic evidence for breeding within a single population has also been demonstrated (Hunt et al. 2013). Insect pollinators have been widely observed, and in particular a range of species of Colocasiomyia, fruit flies belonging to the family Drosophilidae and specialized for the pollination of Colocasia and closely related genera such as Alocasia (Sultana et al. 2006). In addition to wild populations of C. esculenta, around 20 wild Colocasia species are now known in Southeast Asia (Li and Boyce 2010; Matthews and Nguyen 2014), and new wild species continue to be found as botanical exploration continues in mountainous regions of Southeast Asia (Matthews et al. 2022). Study of the genetic relationships between wild Colocasia species and C. esculenta has only recently started (Ahmed et al. 2020). In taxonomic, genetic, and agricultural research, relatively little attention has been given to wild taro populations because such populations are mostly not ‘natural’ enough for botanists who wish to study natural floristic diversity, or have been assumed to be weedy or inferior forms of cultivated taro that have escaped from gardens and therefore of little interest for crop conservation and improvement. In this paper I review previous models for the domestication of taro, the definition and

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recognition of wild populations, recent observations of wild taro populations across Asia and the Pacific, and new models for domestication of taro as a multipurpose food and fodder crop. I also comment on future research directions and legal conditions that limit research on crop history and diversity.

2 Taro: Previous Models of Domestication Botanical exploration in Northeast India in the nineteenth century led to an early suggestion that cultivated taro originated there, since other wild species of Colocasia were first found in that region. In the twentieth century, most research on taro was focused on agronomy, the description and conservation of local cultivars, and breeding for disease resistance, with little research on basic biology, domestication history, or culinary uses in different food cultures. Theories regarding the domestication of taro were based on circumstantial archaeological, ethnographic, and botanical evidence. A major finding was archaeological evidence for taro in ancient wetland field systems in the highlands of Papua New Guinea (Golson et al. 2017), and botanical evidence for the presence of wild taro populations in the region (Matthews 1991, 2014), but these findings did not prove that domesticated, cultivated taro was derived from wild progenitors located in Papua New Guinea. To discover the genetic and geographical origins of cultivated taro, much more needs to be known about wild taro populations: their distribution, ecology, uses, management, and their genetic relationships with cultivated taros. Genetic research on taro began with cytological and geographical surveys of chromosome numbers and morphology among cultivars, and these indicated a general origin of triploid cultivars in Southeast Asia, and more specifically in mountainous regions of northern India and southern China (Coates et al. 1988; Kuruvilla and Singh 1981; Rattenbury 1956; Yen and Wheeler 1968; Zhang and Zhang 1990, 2000). Since 1984 the present author has focused on (a) mapping and describing wild populations of taro and its near relatives (other species of Colocasia) across Asia and the Pacific; (b) recording how wild populations are used or not, as the case may be; and (c) attempting to identify naturally-distributed wild populations and the natural geographical range of the species. The diagrams presented in the following sections represent a sequence addressing different aspects of domestication history.

2.1 Estimates of Natural Range, and Single Versus Multiple Areas of Origin In 1984, I began a survey of published botanical records of taro, herbarium specimens in European herbaria, and wild taro populations in northern Australia and Papua New Guinea. From this work it appeared that the natural range of taro might encompass

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a large region from India to China, Papua New Guinea, and northern Australia, and also a range of lowland tropical habitats to montane and subtropical habitats. Observation of temperate-adapted, triploid (2n = 42) cultivars of taro in northern Japan (commonly referred to as C. esculenta var. antiquorum, or ‘eddoe’ types in agricultural literature) led to the suggestion that the unknown diploid (2n = 28) progenitors of such cultivars may have been located in the mountains of the Eastern Himalayas (Matthews 1991, 2014). Cultivated forms of taro present today in tropical and temperate regions are likely to have originated in lowland and mountain regions of Southeast Asia, respectively. Two models were proposed suggesting multiple genetic origins from either (1) one geographical region with topographic diversity (lowlands to mountains) in the vicinity of Northeast India (area bound by solid line in Fig. 1), or (2) multiple geographical regions, from India to northern Australia and Papua New Guinea (grey-shaded area in Fig. 1). Tropical cultivated taros may have originated from observed diploid wild populations that are widely distributed from South, Southeast, and East Asia to the western Pacific. Temperate cultivated taros may have arisen from hypothetical diploid wild populations at higher altitudes in the Eastern Himalayas, before spreading as triploid clones to China, Korea, and Japan. These are merely extremes in a range of possible models that can be proposed, according to the natural vertical (altitudinal) and horizontal (latitude and longitude) distributions of wild taro populations.

2.2 A Range-Limit Model To further develop models for the domestication and dispersal of taro, we must simultaneously consider the range limits of taro following natural dispersal and the range limits in cultivation (Matthews et al. 2017). The need to be explicit about different kinds of range limits arose from my awareness that wild taro populations might have been established outside the natural range limits through introduction by humans and subsequent naturalization, in northern Australia for example (Matthews 2014), or in lowland regions of the Philippines (Matthews et al. 2012). Naturalization certainly follows the spread of taro in gardens, as a cultigen, and its escape into noncultivated (wild) habitats outside the natural range (as noted below for New Zealand), but this is not the only possible route, and might not have been the main route in some regions or time periods. In theory, taro could have been domesticated in any quadrat defined by limits in the range-limit model (Fig. 2), but domestication was most probably within the cultivated range (upper quadrats). The model is expressed in abstract terms that can be applied to any cultivated crop, and can be expanded to include multiple environmental factors for defining range (latitude, longitude, altitude, temperature, humidity, and so on). For any crop, a range-limit model is needed before attempting to propose where and when domestication took place.

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Fig. 1 Map of two possible areas of origin for domesticated taro. One is a restricted natural range defining a single approximate area of origin in the vicinity of Northeast India for temperate and tropical forms of cultivated taro. According to this model, the selection and dispersal of taro by humans began with starchy wild-types that evolved and dispersed naturally within the restricted natural range. The minimum estimate of natural range is also the likely area of natural origin of the species. The larger area defined by tropical and warm temperate rainy climates from India to China, Australia, and Papua New Guinea (light and dark gray shading) is the maximum estimate of natural range. Adapted from Matthews (2014); see also Fig. 5

3 Defining Wild Populations When I first began field studies of taro in the early 1980s, in New Zealand, I soon found that words commonly used to describe where useful plants grow are not well defined or do not accurately describe the interactions between plants and humans or the historical processes of site formation, site abandonment, or changing land use. In northern New Zealand, taro is often found growing wild (self-propagating and without cultivation of the ground) in and around rural settlements, in abandoned gardens, in ditches, on stream banks, and in swampy ground. When describing the

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Fig. 2 Range-limit model, with species origin marked by X and a wide natural range (small and large ovals) extending beyond the cultivated range (lower part of large oval). In this diagram, two natural wild populations (ovals) are disjunct. Adapted from Matthews et al. (2017)

plants and their sites, it was necessary to show how different terms used to describe the plants form non-exclusive, overlapping categories (Fig. 3) (Matthews 1985, 2014). The historical context in New Zealand is relatively simple, as taro is clearly not part of the natural flora (the entire plant family is absent). All wild taros in New Zealand are therefore derived from plants introduced by people at some time in the past, after first colonization around 800 years ago. They are most likely derived from cultivars that have persisted as clones after introduction, whether cultivated or not, because the summers are too cool and short for taro to breed. The summers are not

Fig. 3 Scheme for describing taro sites in New Zealand. Four categories (shaded) were identified under the overlapping terms of ‘garden’ and ‘non-cultivated’. Use of the term ‘wild’ was restricted to non-cultivated plants in locations that were not obviously part of a garden (from Matthews 1985). Note that plants can be intentionally grown in a garden without cultivation of the ground (a non-derelict, non-cultivated garden). The absence of cultivation does not always mean a garden is derelict

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too short for flowering, however, and recently fossil pollen from swamp sediments on an offshore island (Ahuahu) have provided the first direct evidence of early taro production from around 600 years ago. Since flowering most frequently occurs when the plants are not annually harvested, it is thought that taro was grown as a perennial crop on Ahuahu (Prebble et al. 2019). These recent findings from Ahuahu and other islands in southern Polynesia raise the possibility that taro production systems in other subtropical or warm temperate regions (including Japan) have also left traces in the form of pollen.

3.1 Escaping Cultivation A question sometimes asked by colleagues (and grant application reviewers) is how to distinguish “true” wild taro from “escapes from cultivation”? Asking whether a plant is “truly” wild reveals an assumption that “wild” means natural, or without any human influence. The question ignores the fact that people can and do propagate and spread useful plants without cultivating them, or without taking any special care of them after planting, other than to harvest or look at them (in the case of ornamental plants). An important ethnographic observation made in New Zealand in the early 1980s was that Maori communities regarded wild taro populations as useful sources of food or fodder for pigs, and that taro can spread along water courses spontaneously after introduction by humans, without ever setting seeds. In New Zealand, plants that are “wild” and “non-cultivated” (Fig. 3) may nevertheless be a standing, perennial crop that is occasionally harvested over many seasons. “Escape from cultivation” is just one of many ways that plants can spread and become wild. In regions where taro is part of the natural flora, escape may be a minor contribution to a particular wild population. Wild taros originating in natural habitats (or largely natural habitats) can easily invade the open, disturbed habitats created when making foot trails, roads, fish ponds, ditches, canals, water reservoirs, or when fields and gardens are abandoned or fallowed. All of these are places where I have seen wild taro populations, in addition to apparently natural habitats on stream and river banks, in forest swamps, around waterfalls, and on wet, exposed (fresh or recently formed) slip faces in forests. Taro thrives as a pioneer plant in these open, edge, or gap habitats with abundant water and light. For wild taro, but not for all wild species of Colocasia, a general consequence of lowland forest disturbance or clearance has been to expand the area of suitable habitat.

3.2 What We Can See: A Simple Definition of ‘Wild’ In the eyes of most informants encountered by the present author, a “wild” taro plant is a plant that grows by itself, without direct or intended assistance. The plant grows, propagates, and spreads by itself, regardless of how it first arrived in a given

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location. The common, and most useful meaning of “wild” is simply a description of habitat (not cultivated, or not specifically established for the plant in question), coupled with the ability of the plant concerned to grow and spread in that habitat without deliberate cultivation or propagation. The original source of an established population is irrelevant to its present status as “wild”. Usually, we can easily see, or learn from local informants, whether a population is wild, but not how the population was established. The original founding plant or plants might have “escaped” from a garden through vegetative self-dispersal (spread of stolons or corms), but there are several other ways of becoming wild: (a) discarding of vegetative parts into a ditch, roadside, canal, or stream (in Southeast Asia, bridges appear to be popular locations for dumping rubbish, and may be the starting point for many wild taro populations; bridge construction often creates open ground that is next to water and well suited for colonization by wild taro), (b) deliberate planting in a modified, ruderal habitat, followed by neglect or perhaps occasional harvesting for food, fodder, or planting materials, (c) natural spreading of vegetative parts (corms, side-corms, or stolons) from other wild populations upstream, by water, (d) natural dispersing of seeds by birds and other animals that are attracted to the ripe fruit of taro in wild populations or occasionally in gardens or fallow fields. In common usage, “wild” denotes a broad social-cultural category defined from the perspective of farmers or agriculturalists. “Agriculture” itself is a term that is etymologically equivalent to “cultivation of the wild”. What appears “wild” to farmers and gardeners is often—but not always—a culturally managed landscape that is neither cultivated nor unfamiliar or independent from human intervention or influence. Defining “wild” as a theoretical category is easy, but recognizing natural wild populations that have existed in a particular landscape since before human intervention is not easy.

4 Recognizing Natural Wild Populations To recognize a wild taro population in any given area as possibly of natural origin, the plants should meet the following criteria: (a) flower, fruit, and produce seeds (though plants might, in theory, persist in a clonal state after climatic changes that prevent seed production), (b) be visited by known specialist insect pollinators, namely Colocasiomyia spp. (though these may also pollinate closely related wild aroids that are also present), (c) be more-or-less phenotypically uniform in similar wild habitats nearby, and (d) be present over a significant geographical range, namely between watersheds, since dispersal over ridges requires seed dispersal, thus indicating that natural dispersal processes are effective in the area.

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A further clue is if the wild population is considered inedible or of very limited edibility. Commensal wild taros that are considered a good wild vegetable, and that can be prepared for eating with little trouble, are quite likely to have been spread by human activities and may be deliberately maintained by leaving shoots in the ground when harvesting them. Commensal wild taros that originate from wild populations in natural habitats are more likely to be inedible. Even if all these observations can be made, they only provide circumstantial evidence for a natural origin of a given population. They are clues that can be used to guide collection of wild taro samples for genetic analysis. Proof will only be possible when the genetic diversity of cultivated taros is more-or-less completely known. At that point, genetic testing of a wild population may show that it is too different from any known cultivar to be derived from cultivars (or vice versa). In many areas, it is likely that wild populations will be found to be mixed, with some clones derived entirely from cultivars, some from a natural wild population, and some from the progeny of crosses (cultivated × natural wild). It is not easy to identify natural wild populations of any plant that has been widely cultivated since before the existence of accurate written records. Criteria like those above are needed to identify natural populations for any useful plant that can spread in wild habitats following introduction by people. For example, the wild teosinte (Zea mays ssp. parviglumis) that is now considered the progenitor taxon for cultivated corn (Zea mays ssp. mays) (Matsuoka et al. 2002), must have been used in the past for selection and domestication to occur. Any wild teosinte population present today could in theory be derived from early human introduction of harvested seeds into wild habitats, or by “escape” from a cultivated population that no longer exists. Today, only the domesticated subspecies is cultivated, and the geographical position of what is currently known as the most closely related wild population is not necessarily the position of the ancestral wild population when domestication took place. The reported findings did not prove the exact genetic and geographical origins of corn, but did support a good working hypothesis that can be tested by further comparison of wild and cultivated populations, and further archaeology in the regions of possible early corn use and cultivation (Matsuoka et al. 2002). Another example that illustrates the difficulty of identifying natural wild populations is the edible sacred lotus, Nelumbo nucifera (Matthews 2017). Wild populations of this plant are widespread in seasonal wetlands across northern Australia, and are treated in floristic accounts as native to the continent. The plants are also widely used by Aboriginal communities as a food source. Although sacred lotus is not known to have been cultivated in Australia, it may have been introduced from Southeast Asia long ago, and planted in natural wetlands to provide food. This suggestion is based on the observation that the plant cannot spread naturally across salt water, and therefore cannot have crossed Wallacea without human assistance (even during ice ages, when sea levels were lower, there has always been an ocean gap between Sunda and Sahul, the continental regions of Southeast Asia and Australia/New Guinea). The seed capsules of the lotus float in water with their seed holes facing downwards, ensuring that seeds are scattered as the capsule is blown by wind over water, or moved by waves or currents. The fallen seeds settle in the mud of shallow freshwater

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ponds and seasonal wetlands, where they eventually germinate and grow underwater. In the mountainous regions of mainland Southeast Asia, the spread of N. nucifera between natural watersheds is not easily explained unless animals carry the seeds, or geological uplift and changes in the courses of rivers are involved. Since elephants and wild boar forage in the mud of seasonal ponds, it is possible that such animals (including extinct megafauna) have dispersed sacred lotus after incomplete digestion of the seeds. This speculation can be partially tested by feeding the fruit or seeds to extant herbivores such as the elephant, pig, and rhinoceros, and looking for the germination of undigested seeds that may pass through the animal (such studies appear entirely lacking). To begin recognizing the natural range of any cultivated plant, there should be at least some circumstantial evidence for the existence of wild populations with possible natural origins. The proposed area of natural range, including perhaps minimum and maximum estimates like those suggested in Fig. 1, can then be tested or confirmed through genetic comparison of wild and cultivated lineages, analysis of local population structure and diversity, absence of utility for human use, or a nearby pollen record that predates any known human occupation of the area.

5 Observing Wild Taro Populations In previous papers (Matthews 1991, 1995, 1997, 2003, 2014; Matthews and Naing 2005; Matthews et al. 2015), my colleagues and I have reported efforts to identify wild taro populations of natural origin, and their geographical range. Wild populations of taro exist over a wide range within the Asia–Pacific region—from Australia and Melanesia to Southeast Asia, India, and along the Himalayan mountain arc, from northern India to Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, and southern China. In warm lowland to cool mountain environments throughout this range, they grow along roadsides, ditches, and canals, and on the banks of ponds, streams, and rivers. These rarely studied wild populations are widely and often used as free sources of food for local people and fodder for domestic pigs (Masuno et al. 2012; Matthews et al. 1992, 2012) and also for semi-wild native pigs in Bangladesh (Ikeya 2014). The plants actively invade the open habitats created by human activities, spreading vegetatively and by seed. Footprints and feeding damage by wild pigs (wild boar) can occasionally be seen in wild taro populations (author’s observation), and the attractiveness of taro for wild boar is further demonstrated by the fact that farmers often need to defend their taro gardens against wild boar, which tend to attack young shoots (Fig. 4). In Japan, taro is widely cultivated in places surrounded by forests with large wild boar populations. From my observation, wild taro populations may represent the most abundant wild vegetable food in Southeast Asia. They are abundant in many floodplain regions that are hundreds of square kilometers in extent. However, not all wild taros are used as food and fodder. They are sometimes known as inedible or difficult to prepare for eating. This may reflect the existence of different ecotypes and evolutionary

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Fig. 4 Young wild boar feeding in taro garden at night, under an Autumn full moon (woodblock print by Kohno Bairei, 1891; author’s collection)

lineages among the wild populations (Ahmed et al. 2020; Matthews et al. 2015, 2017). Observing the ecology, uses, and management of wild taro populations is critical for understanding the domestication pathways of this crop. As the natural range and genetic diversity in wild populations become better known, we will be able to compare cultivated varieties with wild populations, identify the genetic and geographical origins of cultivated lineages, and refine domestication models more effectively. From India to southern China and Papua New Guinea, wild breeding populations display regionally uniform phenotypes, and are accompanied by specialist insect pollinators; these observations support a prima facie case for identifying the approximate natural range of the species. Exact boundaries of the natural range—in the maximum estimated extent—are still not known, and can only be determined by more focused fieldwork in areas that represent the approximate boundaries: in eastern Melanesia (from the Solomon Islands to Vanuatu and New Caledonia), the wet regions of southern India and Sri Lanka, the western foothills of the Himalayan ranges, the eastern Himalayan arcs in southern and central China, and many other areas of mainland and island Southeast Asia. These regions all lie within the Asian monsoonal climate zone. The proposed natural range corresponds largely to the tropical rainy climate area (Fig. 5), but the northern boundary extends across the subtropical or warm temperate zone in northern India and eastern China. If the wild species C. formosana Hayata is regarded as an ecotype of C. esculenta (Matthews

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et al. 2015) then the natural range of taro extends to Taiwan and the Philippines, the two areas where this wild species is known. Examples of wild taro populations across the possible natural range of the species (Australia–India–southern China) are shown in Figs. 6 and 7. Also shown are commensal wild taros that appear to be naturalized after introduction in southern Japan (Fig. 7c) and northern Philippines (Fig. 7d). Recent research carried out under the project name “Mapping genetic diversity in wild taro to test domestication theories” is partly focused on commensal wild taros in wetlands across Southeast Asia to India, and their possible interactions with natural wild taros and other Colocasia species (Matthews et al. 2022). Although initial field observations have been made in many areas, sample collection and analysis of genetic diversity in these populations is just beginning. Legal procedures for cross-border transport of samples have

Fig. 5 Climate areas and natural range estimates for wild taro (C. esculenta) in Asia and the Pacific. The origin of taro as a natural species may be in the smaller, partly circled area (a weakly defined region of high species diversity for Colocasia). Although the maximum estimate of natural range is largely defined by the tropical rainy climate (monsoon) zone, botanical records suggest that the northern limits extend into the warm temperate zone. Photographs at locations 1–12 (numbered circles) are shown in Figs. 6 and 7

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been one of the biggest limitations for international collaborative research on this species. Reasons for this are discussed later. Although taro has moved freely around the world for thousands of years, the long-term historical and traditional process of free movement and selection of this commensal plant is now prevented. This helps to limit the spread of pests and diseases with living taro plants, but for nonliving research samples, there is no obvious benefit for the global community of taro growers, consumers, and researchers. a

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Fig. 6 Wild taro populations across Asia and the Pacific: a Among rocks around a waterfall in a Queensland rainforest, NE Australia; b On a streambank near the source of a natural spring, East New Britain, Papua New Guinea; c On the banks of canals raised by dykes along the Kochi backwaters, southern India; d In a natural spring at the foot of the Himalayas in Manas National Park, northern India; e In vacant land of a rural town, Sylhet, Bangladesh; f In a ditch next to a village in Myanmar, with cows avoiding the taro while grazing; g On a canal bank in the Chao Praya delta, Bangkok, Thailand; h Leaves being harvested as fodder for pigs, Hue city, central Vietnam. Approximate positions for a–h are shown as circles 1–8 in Fig. 5

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Fig. 7 Wild taro populations cont’d (a–d) and closely related wild Colocasia species (e–h): a In a swamp surrounded by a rubber plantation, Yunnan, China; b On a stream bank at the edge of hills and farmland, Hainan, China; c Naturalized along a roadside, Motobu Peninsula, Okinawa (no breeding has been seen or reported in southern Japan); d Naturalized along a roadside, Luzon, Philippines (breeding has been seen, but C. esculenta is not generally seen in natural wild habitats); e C. formosana in Taiwan, wild population on a wet road bank with moss cover; f C. formosana in Taiwan, seedling on wet mossy surface near (e), and fruiting head; g C. lihengiae Long and Liu at Ba Vi, northern Vietnam; h C. lihengiae near Sapa, northern Vietnam, with open outer spathe (left) and spadix (right). Colocasia formosana is only known from Taiwan and the northern Philippines. Colocasia lihengiae has been reported in southern China, northern Vietnam, northern Thailand, and northeastern India. Approximate positions for a–d are shown as circles 9–12 in Fig. 5

6 New Models Empirical observation and mapping of wild taro populations is a necessary starting point for study of their diversity, management, utilization, genetic relationships with other Colocasia species, and the origins of cultivated, domesticated forms of taro. To study these origins, new models are needed.

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6.1 Hybridization and Introgression Although the range-limit model (Sect. 2.2) is primarily concerned with geographical origins, it is also useful for thinking about the genetic origins of taro (or any crop). In most literature on the genetic origins of crops, including taro, it is assumed, implicitly or explicitly, that domestication must have taken place within the natural geographical range, from natural, wild source populations (Fig. 8, Model I, simple). Since the later twentieth century, the importance of inter-specific hybridization in the natural origins of plant species has been recognized (Arnold 1997), and evidence for past hybridization has been found in studies of the domestication of many crops (Kingsbury 2009; Motley et al. 2006; Smartt and Simmonds 1995). Hybridization may have stimulated the evolution of invasiveness in many plants (Ellstrand and Schierenbeck 2000), including (in theory) wild taro. Taro is often regarded as an invasive, wetland weed in countries where it is not appreciated as a wild food plant (Australia, USA, southern Europe), so the ‘floodplain weed theory’ of domestication (Smith 1995) might also apply in the case of taro. Hybridization followed by introgression might also have introduced useful traits into wild populations utilized as sources of food and fodder. In open lowland habitats, C. esculenta and its (hypothetical) hybrids may have been harvested, selectively propagated, and eventually taken into cultivation (Fig. 8, Model II, complex). Hybridization often results when two previously separated species come into contact through either natural environmental change, or because humans have moved

Fig. 8 Old, simple (I) and new, complex (II) domestication models. I. Domestication involving just one species, with no hybridization or introgression. II. Hybridization and introgression between two or more lower-montane species, then spread to lowlands, use, selection, and domestication

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plants and created opportunities for cross-breeding, or because human modifications of habitat (e.g., forest clearance or the redirection of water) have created opportunities for wild populations of a closely related species to invade and mix with cultivated populations. It thus matters, for models of genetic origins, whether wild populations of the domesticated species and its near relatives are located inside their natural range, and whether a useful wild species is able to spread into new environments as a commensal wild plant outside the natural range. Hybridization is also significant as a driver for polyploidization, as the doubling of chromosomes from at least one parent can make otherwise incompatible genomic combinations viable. Addition of a single extra set of chromosomes in triploids is compatible with regular mitotic cell division and plant growth, and is seen in clonally propagated triploid crops (including triploid taro, 2n = 3x = 42), but triploids are effectively sterile as they rarely produce viable gametes and seeds. In higher, even-numbered polyploids, meiosis and gamete production are regular, leading to viable seeds and perhaps favoring selection of higher polyploids more in seed-propagated crops than clonally propagated crops. Since seeds are not used for its propagation, the sterility or otherwise of a clonally propagated polyploid is not important for its production (though it is important for breeding new clonally-propagated varieties). When the natural range of a species is wide, populations may diverge genetically over long periods of time. In the case of taro, a wide natural range appears likely, as does human-generated mixing of divergent wild populations. At the same time, various recently described wild species must now be considered as possible candidate partners for breeding with taro to form hybrids. Of special interest will be wild species that may have been diploid progenitors (along with diploid wild C. esculenta) for the triploid taro cultivars that predominate in montane regions of Southeast Asia and the northern regions of East Asia. In taro, the predominance of triploids in temperate adapted cultivars of taro may mean that hybridization has been more significant for domestication in mountainous regions of Southeast Asia, where most wild species of Colocasia are located. The possible role of hybridization in the genetic origins of domesticated, cultivated taros (Fig. 8, Model II, complex) is now under investigation, using genetic tests that allow us to distinguish and compare the chloroplast and nuclear genomes of different lineages of cultivated taro, and different wild Colocasia species. Wild taro populations in lowland to lower montane regions in Southeast Asia are sympatric with a range of other wild Colocasia species. Of particular interest for possible hybridization and introgression during the domestication of taro are wild relatives that appear very closely related (e.g., C. formosana, C. lihengiae) (Fig. 7), or that may have contributed to bamboo-like cultivars (with erect stems) currently classified as C. esculenta (e.g., C. oresbia Hay, which has erect stems without producing stolons or side-corms).

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6.2 Genetic Diversity in Convergence Zones The survey of wild taros is also aimed at testing whether or not populations display high genetic diversity, and perhaps hyper-diversity, in physical convergence zones (where tributary rivers meet and form broad confluences or deltas) (Matthews 2017). Hyper-diversity in the genetic structure of a population might exist if there has been outcrossing between different Colocasia species and different lineages of C. esculenta, physical convergence of clones washed downstream into large delta regions from genetically diverse tributary populations, and frequent breeding between ancestral and descendant clones within a convergence zone. In a simple convergence zone (Fig. 9a), only Model I (Fig. 8) wildtype populations are involved. Long distance dispersal is vegetative, wild taros may be harvested as food or fodder, and the main impact of human activity is modification of the environment, creating opportunities for the spread and establishment of clones in open landscapes. In a complex convergence zone (Fig. 9b), clones are washed downstream from tributary Model II (Fig. 8) populations where previous domestication has already involved hybridization. In this complex convergence zone, intergenerational breeding among diverse clonal lineages may (in theory) produce a cumulative, endlessly compounding, exponential increase in combinatory possibilities for parent and offspring generations—a “double exponential function of maximum clonal diversity” that leads to “hyper-diversity” in some wild populations (Matthews 2017).

Fig. 9 Simple a and complex b convergence zones. Natural dispersal of vegetative propagules is downstream to a lowland convergence zone. In (a), a lowland wild population is composed of wildtypes derived from upstream wild populations that are also composed of wildtypes. In (b), the upstream and downstream wild populations include diverse wildtypes, hybrids, polyploids, naturalized cultivars, forms that have ‘reverted’ to wildtype from domesticates, and deliberately planted wild forms, and there is also near neighbor exchange (gray double arrow) across the lowland of vegetative parts (during floods), pollen and seeds

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6.3 Domestication as a Food and Fodder Crop Generally, in discussions of crop domestication, it is assumed that the main modern use of a crop species reflects first use of the same species; thus, it is assumed that cereal crops were initially domesticated as sources of starchy seeds, and that starchy root crops were initially domesticated as sources of starchy roots (i.e., tubers or corms). This assumption becomes difficult when it is learned that a crop is multifunctional, raising the possibility that initial selection for one use led to interactions in which a secondary use gradually became the dominant, primary use seen today. Smith (2001, 2006) has explained very well the need to avoid creating theories of past plant use that depend too closely on what we know about dominant crops and their dominant uses today. Use of wild taro as a medicinal plant or leaf vegetable might also have been a starting point for selection and propagation by people (Matthews 1991), while the widespread use of more-or-less acrid wild taros as fodder for pigs (see Sect. 5) suggests that catching and fattening wild pigs in the past could have been facilitated by (a) setting traps in wild taro populations visited by the animals, and (b) feeding wild taro corms and shoots to wild pigs held in temporary captivity. Today in Southeast Asia (and until recently in southern Japan), wild taros are harvested for domestic, household pigs that are bred and raised entirely in captivity. The use of wild taro as fodder could be a practice that started in the early stages of domestication, for taro and pig, and which may have been more important when rice or other cereal starches were less abundant, or not available for use as a starchy fodder. Because wild boar feed on wild taros, hunters would have easily seen that taro could be used to attract the wild boar (e.g., for trapping) and to fatten them for eating (after trapping). Such practices may have led early hunter/farmers in Southeast Asia to encourage the spread and growth of wild taro populations, without any initial intention of cultivating them. As interactions intensified, for food and fodder purposes, any discovery of less acrid forms of taro might have encouraged cultivation and protection against attack by wild boar. At the same time, the harvest of relatively young plants for food purposes may have helped reduce human exposure to the acridity of taro, leading to further interest and selection within cultivation systems, and in particular, selection for rapid bulking of starchy corms, reduced acridity, changes in other culinary properties, and delayed flowering. Regardless of whether “fodder first” or “food first” models reflect what actually happened, any interaction that led to human selection and dispersal of taro over long distances may have increased the chances for previously allopatric populations to become sympatric and hybridize, generating new mixed gene pools in which human selection could continue to act and eventually generate the highly polymorphic cultivars found today. Across Asia and the Pacific, in many lower montane valleys and coastal flood plains with converging wild taro populations, there may have been genetic mixing between natural wild populations and introduced, naturalizing lineages.

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In regions where taro is not naturally present but has naturalized and become abundant, all mixing may have been between different lineages selected and introduced by people. This raises the possibility that human selection and domestication may have been most effective in locations or regions not far outside the natural range of taro, where the wild plants could still breed but did not mix with very acrid or otherwise undesirable natural wildtypes. In these ecological boundary regions, introductions are likely to have been diverse because of geographical proximity to source regions within the natural range. Wild taro populations in such regions may have the most value as resources for future plant breeding, if they were preselected for useful qualities; these populations may have undergone continuous natural and human selection as commensal wild populations. All these possibilities provide academic and practical incentives to explore the diversity of wild taro populations both inside and outside the likely natural range limits.

7 Future Directions and Multilateral Research 7.1 Future Directions To study taro and develop domestication models, I have been supported by numerous colleagues in Asia and the Pacific. I mention them here, in country alphabetical order, as their support over the last 38 years has made it possible to explore wild taros in very diverse social and physical environments: Australia (R. Appels, D. Coates, J. Golson, D. Shaw, K. Thiele, D. E. Yen), Bangladesh (Md. A. Hossain, M. Hasanuzzaman), China (Q. Fang, C.-L. Long), Germany (P. Müller), India (A. Dasgupta, D. K. Medhi), Japan (T. Akimichi, M. Hirai, K. Ikeya, S. Koyama, T. Masuno, Y. Sato, E. Tabuchi, R. Terauchi, S. Yoshida, E. Takei, K. T. Takano, K. Watanabe), Myanmar (K. W. Naing, T. Thut), New Zealand (P. J. Lockhart, M. Prebble), Pakistan (I. Ahmed), Papua New Guinea (N. Araho, H. Mandui, G. Summerhayes, J. Waki), Philippines (E. M. G. Agoo, D. A. Madulid, M. Medecilo, D. Tandang), Taiwan (K. Tsai), Vietnam (D. V. Nguyen, K. Nguyen), and many others. Our joint efforts have required diverse bilateral agreements, each according to the circumstances of time, place and purpose (see also Sect. 7.2). Important areas for future research related to the natural dispersal and distribution range of taro include the study of insect associates, the consumption of fruit and dispersal of seeds by animal vectors (birds and mammals), and the natural history and spread of associated disease organisms (fungi and viruses). Of special interest among the insects are Colocasiomyia pollinators (Sultana et al. 2006; Takano et al. 2021), Tarophagus plant hoppers (Matthews 2003), and Gesonula taro “grasshoppers” (Matthews et al. 2012). There are many potential research projects that can be conceived in the future to investigate these biological associations, not just for taro (C. esculenta), but also for the many wild relatives within Colocasia.

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7.2 An “Expedited Nagoya Protocol for Multilateral International Collaboration” (Proposal) One aim of recent work on wild taro and wild Colocasia species has been to establish an international “Wild Taro Working Group” composed of researchers and students with varied but relevant expertise and interests. Ideally, the group will be multidisciplinary (with anthropologists, archaeologists, and biologists, for example), and will provide a focus point for the design of projects that can be funded and carried out independently or in collaboration in many different countries. At present, one of the biggest hurdles for international collaborative research on a widely distributed genus such as a Colocasia is the need to establish bilateral collaborative research agreements before permissions to collect and transport samples across national boundaries can be obtained. This need derives largely from the 2014 Nagoya Protocol for Access and Benefit Sharing and related international treaties. In the Nagoya Protocol, many valuable principles are established for conducting international research. Unfortunately, the Protocol and related treaties establish blanket legal restrictions that seem to apply regardless of project size (e.g., the number of samples to be handled, number of people to be involved), sample types (living or non-living), research aims (commercial or non-commercial), funding level, or time available for the individual researchers and students involved in a project. The permissions required to obtain four samples for a student project with a 6-month research period are the same as for a major collaboration that requires 400 samples and multiple years. Funding and available time are critical and connected issues. Establishing agreements at institutional levels, rather than between individual collaborating researchers, requires travel, finances and time that are beyond the capacity of most researchers, research departments, or universities. The resulting overall slowdown in research process makes it difficult for researchers and students to do research that may be critical for responding to rapid changes in the conservation status of wild species and populations, new and emerging disease and pest problems, and many other issues that are affected by rapid climate warming. The need for multilateral access to plant genetic resources that belong to the “global commons” is already internationally recognized, and Colocasia is specifically listed as being covered by the multilateral system in Annex I of the International Treaty on Plant and Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (Santilli 2017). This is reasonable, as taro is a crop known and used by billions of people in tropical to temperate regions of Asia, Africa, and the Americas (Matthews and Ghanem 2021), and has many wild relatives that occupy endangered habitats across Asia and the western Pacific. Unfortunately, the Nagoya Protocol does not practically operate in a multilateral manner. Instead, bilateral approval for access to plants in the global commons (or that are already very widespread and common) is mediated through procedures that have to be implemented at multiple administrative levels in each country involved in a particular research project.

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Since every agreement for collaboration has to be made in a bilateral manner, and regardless of project size, it is difficult in practice (with a relatively small budget and short project period) to assemble an international “Wild Taro Working Group” whose members can more easily (within usual limits) cross borders or share samples to effectively study the transnational genus Colocasia and its many transnational species. The costs of case-by-case implementation of the Nagoya Protocol also contribute to inequality in how research gets carried out: only researchers from countries with sufficiently large and long-term funding can practically conceive and lead projects that require elaborate negotiations above the level of the active participants. This is actually contrary to an important aim of the Protocol itself, which is to spread the benefits of research more equitably. Ideally, a legal mechanism would exist to allow individual researchers and graduate students to join internationally recognized projects, networks, or groups created specifically to support cross-border research in all countries participating in the Nagoya Protocol. For taro, an “International Network for Edible Aroids (INEA)” was established for a period (Lebot et al. 2018). This had a strong center and periphery structure that facilitated collection and dissemination by the center, but had no legal mandate that could overcome administrative hurdles for direct horizontal exchange between network members in different countries. What I am suggesting here is an “Expedited Nagoya Protocol for Multilateral International Collaboration”. This would not exclude case by case, bilateral approaches, but would provide an alternative pathway to promote research that has value for many countries. For example, research students from Indonesia, India, Malaysia and Thailand would be able to join a network, and collaborate with each other without any of them needing to belong to institutions that have bilateral MoUs with other institutions in the countries involved. By reducing administrative friction within the Nagoya Protocol process, many low-budget and creative short-term projects could be carried out by young researchers, while preserving academic and legal oversight under the umbrella of a “multilateral network” employing the expedited protocol. This would need minimal funding, being essentially a statement of purpose, with an official website for registration of participants, and an international team of qualified moderators to encourage, approve, and mentor participation. This would help to reduce administrative costs for countries that have joined the Nagoya Protocol and have already recognized Colocasia and other taxa as being part of a global resource commons. The need for researchers to repeatedly request permissions that could be assigned a priori for relevant, common-good research forces redundant administrative decision-making on all parties. Taro is a heat-loving and flood-tolerant crop that may prove important as part of the agricultural response to rapid climate warming. The need for fundamental historical and biological research on this crop and its wild relatives would justify the development of a new multilateral procedure to expedite multilateral international collaboration, lower administrative costs, and reduce the time needed to carry out common-good research. This could be a model for many other areas of critical

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biological, ecological, and agricultural research, where events on the ground are happening faster than our ability to study, understand, and respond to them. Acknowledgements This work has been supported by JSPS Kakenhi projects 17H01682 (Tsukuba University, Japan) and 17H04614 (National Museum of Ethnology, Japan). Sincere thanks also to all my colleagues, local informants, and guides, in many countries.

References Ahmed I, Lockhart PJ, Agoo EMG et al (2020) Evolutionary origins of taro (Colocasia esculenta) in Southeast Asia. Ecol Evol 10:13530–13543 Arnold ML (1997) Natural hybridization and evolution. Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford Chaïr H, Traore RE, Duval MF et al (2016) Genetic diversification and dispersal of taro (Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott). PLoS One 11(6):e0157712 Chandra S (ed) (1984) Edible aroids. Oxford, Clarendon Press Coates DJ, Yen DE, Gaffey PM (1988) Chromosome variation in taro, Colocasia esculenta: implications for origin in the Pacific. Cytologia 53:551–560 de Candolle A (1884) Origin of cultivated plants. Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., London Ellstrand NC, Schierenbeck KA (2000) Hybridization as a stimulus for the evolution of invasiveness in plants? PNAS 97:7043–7050 Golson J, Denham T, Hughes P, Swadling P, Muke J (eds) (2017) Ten thousand years of cultivation at Kuk Swamp in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Terra australis 46. Canberra, ANU Press, The Australian National University Govaerts R, Frodin DG (2002) World checklist and bibliography of Araceae (and Acoraceae). Kew, Royal Botanic Gardens Hunt H, Moots H, Matthews PJ (2013) Genetic data confirms field evidence for natural breeding in a wild taro population in northern Queensland, Australia. Genet Resour Crop Evol 60:1695–1707 Ikeya K (2014) Biodiversity, native domestic animals, and livelihood in Monsoon Asia: pig pastoralism in the Bengal Delta of Bangladesh. In: Okamoto K, Ishikawa Y (eds) Traditional wisdom and modern knowledge for the earth’s future. Springer, Japan, pp 51–77 Ivancic A, Lebot V (2000) The genetics and breeding of taro. Monpellier, CIRAD Kingsbury N (2009) Hybrid: the history and science of plant breeding. Chicago University Press, Chicago and London Kuruvilla KM, Singh A (1981) Karyotypic and electrophoretic studies on taro and its origin. Euphytica 30:405–413 Lebot V (2009) Tropical root and tuber crops: Cassava, sweet potato, yams, and aroids. CABI, Wallingford and Cambridge MA Lebot V, Tuia V, Ivancic A et al (2018) Adapting clonally propagated crops to climatic changes: a global approach for taro (Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott). Genet Resour Crop Evol 65:591–606 Li H, Boyce PC (2010) Colocasia. In Wu ZY, Raven PH, Hong DY (eds) Flora of China, vol 23 (Acoraceae through Cyperaceae). Science Press and Missouri Botanical Garden Press, Beijing and St. Louis, pp 73–75 Mansor M, Boyce PC, Othman AS, Sulaiman B (2012) The araceae of Peninsular Malaysia. Universiti Sains Malaysia, Pulau Pinang Masuno T, Nguyen LD, Nguyen VD, Matthews PJ (2012) Fodder sources and backyard pig husbandry in BaVi, Hanoi province, northern Vietnam. In: Anon (ed) Proceedings of the 1st international conference on animal nutrition and environment. Khon Kaen University Press, Khon Kaen, pp 657–660

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Matsuoka Y, Vigouroux Y, Goodman MM, Sanchez JG, Buckler E, Doebley J (2002) A single domestication for maize shown by multilocus microsatellite genotyping. PNAS 99(9):6080–6084 Matthews PJ (1985) Nga Taro O Aotearoa. J Polynesian Soc 94:253–272 Matthews PJ (1991) A possible tropical wildtype taro: Colocasia esculenta var. aquatilis. Indo-Pacif Prehist Assoc Bull 11:69–81 Matthews PJ (1995) Aroids and the Austronesians. Tropics 4:105–126 Matthews PJ (1997) Field guide for wild-type taro, Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott. Plant Genet Resourc Newsl 110:41–48 Matthews PJ (2002) Taro storage systems. In: Yoshida S, Matthews PJ (eds) Vegeculture in Eastern Asia and Oceania. The Japan Center for Area Studies, Osaka, pp 135–163 Matthews PJ (2003) Taro planthoppers (Tarophagus spp.) in Australia and the origins of taro (Colocasia esculenta) in Oceania. Archaeol Ocean 38:192–202 Matthews PJ (2004) Genetic diversity in taro, and the preservation of culinary knowledge. Ethnobot Res Appl 2:55–71 Matthews PJ (2006) Written records of taro in the Eastern Mediterranean. In Ertug F (ed) Ethnobotany: At the junction of the continents and the disciplines. Yayinlari, Istanbul, pp 419–426 Matthews PJ (2014) On the trail of taro: an exploration of natural and cultural history. National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka Matthews PJ (2017) Evolution and domestication of clonal crops. In: Hunter D, Guarino L, Spillane C, McKeown PC (eds) Routledge handbook of agricultural biodiversity. Routledge, Oxford, pp 168–191 Matthews PJ, Ghanem ME (2021) Perception gaps that may explain the status of taro (Colocasia esculenta) as an “orphan crop.” Plants People Planet 3:99–112 Matthews PJ, Naing KW (2005) Notes on the provenance and providence of wildtype taros (Colocasia esculenta) in Myanmar. Bull Natl Museum Ethnol 29:587–615 Matthews PJ, Nguyen DV (2014) Origins and development of taro. In: Smith C (ed) Encyclopedia of global archaeology. Springer, Berlin, pp 419–426 Matthews PJ, Nguyen DV, Fang Q, Long C-L (2022) Colocasia spongifolia sp. nov. (Araceae) in southern China and central Vietnam. Phytotaxa 541(1):1-9 Matthews PJ, Takei E, Kawahara T (1992) Colocasia esculenta var. aquatilis on Okinawa Island, southern Japan: the distribution and possible origins of a wild diploid taro. Man Cult Oceania 8:19–34 Matthews PJ, Agoo EMG, Tandang DN, Madulid DA (2012) Ethnobotany and ecology of wild taro (Colocasia esculenta) in the Philippines: implications for domestication and dispersal. In: Spriggs M, Addison D, Matthews PJ (eds) Irrigated taro (Colocasia esculenta) in the Indo-Pacific: biological, social and historical perspectives. National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, pp 307–340 Matthews PJ, Nguyen DV, Tandang D, Agoo EM, Madulid DA (2015) Taxonomy and ethnobotany of Colocasia esculenta and C. formosana (Araceae): implications for evolution, natural range, and domestication of taro. Aroideana Suppl 38E:153–176 Matthews PJ, Lockhart PJ, Ahmed I (2017) Phylogeography, ethnobotany, and linguistics: issues arising from research on the natural and cultural history of taro Colocasia esculenta (L) Schott. Man India 97:353–380 Motley TJ, Zerega N, Cross H (2006) Darwin’s harvest: new approaches to the origins, evolution, and conservation of crops. Columbia University Press, New York Nguyen VD, Tran VT, Masuno T, Matthews PJ (2015) Useful aroids and their prospects in Vietnam. Aroideana Suppl 38E:130–142 Patale CK, Nasare PN, Narkhede SD (2015) Ethnobotanical studies on wild edible plants of Gond, Halba and Kawar tribes of Salekasa Taluka, Gondia district, Maharashtra state. Int Res J Pharm 6:512–518 Plowman T (1969) Folk uses of new world aroids. Econ Bot 23:97–122 Plucknett DL (1976) Edible aroids: Alocasia, Colocasia, Cyrtosperma, Xanthosoma. In: Simmonds NW (ed) Evolution of crop plants. Longman, London and New York, pp 10–12

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Prebble M, Anderson AJ, Augustinus P et al (2019) Early tropical crop production in marginal subtropical and temperate Polynesia. Proc Natl Acad Sci 116:8824–8833 Rao VR, Matthews PJ, Eyzaguirre PB, Hunter D (eds) (2010) The global diversity of Taro: ethnobotany and conservation. Bioversity International, Rome Rattenbury JA (1956) Cytotaxonomy and the migration of primitive peoples. Nature 178:545–546 Santilli J (2017) Law, policy and agricultural biodiversity. In: Hunter D, Guarino L, Spillane C, McKeown PC (eds) Routledge handbook of agricultural biodiversity. Oxford, Routledge, pp 419–434 Smartt J, Simmonds NW (1995) Evolution of crop plants. Longman Scientific and Technical, Harlow Smith BD (1995) Seed plant domestication in Eastern North America. In: Price TD, Gebauer AB (eds) Last hunters, first farmers. School of American Research, Santa Fe, pp 193–213 Smith BD (2001) Low-level food production. J Archaeol Res 9:1–43 Smith BD (2006) Human behavioural ecology and the transition to food production. In: Kennett DJ, Winterhalder B (eds) Behavioural ecology and the transition to agriculture. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, pp 289–303 Spier RFG (1951) Some notes on the origin of taro. Southwest J Anthropol 7:69–76 Spriggs M, Addison D, Matthews PJ (eds) (2012) Irrigated taro (Colocasia esculenta) in the IndoPacific: biological, social and historical perspectives. National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka Sultana F, Hu Y-G, Toda MJ et al (2006) Phylogeny and classification of Colocasiomyia (Diptera, Drosophilidae), and its evolution of pollination mutualism with aroid plants. Syst Entomol 31:684–702 Takano KT, Gao J-J, Hu Y-G et al (2021) Phylogeny, taxonomy and flower-breeding ecology of the Colocasiomyia cristata species group (Diptera: Drosophilidae), with descriptions of ten new species. Zootaxa 5079(1):1–70 Tanaka T (1976) Tanaka’s cyclopedia of edible plants of the world. Keigaku, Tokyo Yen DE, Wheeler JM (1968) Introduction of taro into the Pacific: the indications of the chromosome numbers. Ethnology 7:259–267 Zhang G, Zhang D (1990) The relationship between geographic distribution and ploidy level of taro, Colocasia esculenta. Euphytica 47:25–27 Zhang D, Zhang G (2000) Preliminary studies on evolution and classification of taro (Colocasia spp.) in China. In: Zhu D, Eyzaguirre PB, Zhou M, Sears L, Liu G (eds) Ethnobotany and genetic diversity of Asian taro: focus on China. IPGRI Office for East Asia, Beijing, pp 32–45

Indigenous History and Global Ethnobiology on Water and Land

Historical Changes in Human Relationships with Whales: Historical Ecology of Iñupiat and Bowhead Whales in Alaska, USA Nobuhiro Kishigami

1 Introduction Anthropological research suggests that Homo sapiens emerged in Africa approximately 300,000 years ago and subsequently began to spread out of Africa to Eurasian continent by 60,000 years ago (Rito et al. 2019). Humans have adapted to diverse environments and have survived by using wildlife as food and other resources. Over these millennia, wildlife has been essential for human existence. When the human population was very small and dispersed, intensive exploitation of various wildlife species usually did not lead to extinction of particular species or severe destruction of the environment. Nevertheless, over time the activities of an increasing human population began to cause the extinction of several kinds of wildlife, with dramatic alteration of environments circumjacent to human habitats (Meadows et al. 1972). Accordingly, the drastic increase and extension of human populations and their activities have had a considerable influence on and caused various changes in human relationships with wild animals. This chapter discusses changes in human relationships with wild animals. Through the perspective of historical ecology, the author describes historical changes and continuities in the relationship between the Iñupiat people and bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) in the Alaskan region. This perspective explores historical changes in the interactions between human societies and ecological environments over time, considering not only the ecological environmental impacts on human societies but also the effects of societies on ecosystems. Therefore, this chapter examines not only how the Iñupiat have influenced bowhead whales across history but also how the whales have changed Iñupiat society.

N. Kishigami (B) Center for Cultural Resource Studies, National Museum of Ethnology, 10-1 Senri Expo Park, Suita 565-8511, Osaka, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 K. Ikeya and W. Balée (eds.), Global Ecology in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9_12

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In the following sections, the author first provides a classificatory framework for understanding human–animal relationships. Next, he describes the relationship between Iñupiat and bowhead whales in three epochs: (1) a period when humans seldom hunted whales (up to the tenth century), (2) a period when humans hunted and used whales as domestic and industrial resources (from the 10th to late twentieth century), and (3) a period when humans tended to protect the whales (the late twentieth century and after). Finally, he discusses several cases from the perspective of historical ecology.

2 Classification Framework for Human Relationships with Animals Human relationships with living creatures can be classified in various ways. For example, one could classify animals into edible or inedible ones, tame or wild ones, or pets or non-pets from a human perspective. Here, human–animal relationships are considered along two axes: (1) use–non-use and (2) fatal use–non-fatal use. In this classification scheme, “use” refers to whether humans use the animal as a resource, and if so whether the animal is killed for use. By combining the two axes, human relationships with animals can be classified into four types (Table 1). Type I represents the fatal use of the animals by humans. This type includes relationships in which humans kill animals, either tame or wild, to eat. Examples are human relationships with cattle, pigs, fishes, and whales, among others, for human consumption. Type II represents the non-fatal use of the animals by humans. In this type, humans use tame and wild animals without killing them. Examples are human relationships with pet animals such as cats and dogs, elephants and tigers in zoos, sea lions and sea turtles in aquaria, and whales as an object of worship or whales and dolphins in whale watching tourism, in addition to dairy cows used for milk and alpacas that are used for wool. Type III represents the fatal non-use of animals by humans. In this type, humans kill particular animals but do not use them. For example, such relationships include cases in which humans kill dangerous venomous snakes that might threaten their life in living quarters or cases in which they kill boars or deer that harm agriculture but do not consume the animals. Table 1 Classification of the types of human relationships with animals

Use

Non-Use

Fatal

Type I. Fatal use

Type III. Fatal non-use

Non-fatal

Type II. Non-fatal use

Type IV. Non-fatal non-use

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Type IV represents the non-fatal non-use of animals by humans. This type includes a relationship in which humans intentionally avoid killing a particular animal for conservation and protection of endangered species, such as blue whales, or driving away harmful animals such as monkeys that eat crops. In addition, this type involves cases in which humans do not use animals as a resource. This classification system allows us to more closely consider specific human relationships with particular animals. In the following, the historical continuity and changes in the Iñupiat relationship with bowhead whales in the Alaskan region are analyzed.

3 Historical Changes in the Iñupiat Relationship with Bowhead Whales in the Alaskan Region Adults of Balaena mysticetus, a species of baleen whale, attain a length of about 15 m and weight of 50 tons. According to the Red Data Book, this whale was classified as an endangered species in 1986. The population rebounded, however, and it was reclassified as a low risk species in 2008. Nevertheless, some marine biologists insist that the whale be regarded as endangered (ex. Hearther 2018). Several indigenous Alaskan groups, such as the Iñupiat and Yupiit, harvest them as an important food and as an important socio-cultural resource (Kishigami 2013a, b). Archeological research has revealed that indigenous people along the Bering Strait, Chukchi Sea, and Beaufort Sea vigorously harvested the whales approximately 1000 years ago (Fitzhugh 2016; Savelle 2005). In addition, these people left traces of having used beached whales and hunted them even earlier. Although it cannot be said for certain when the Iñupiat and Yupiit began to hunt the whales, research suggests that several indigenous peoples began to harvest them along the Siberian coast of the Bering Strait approximately 2500 years ago (Fitzhugh 2016). Based on this longstanding relationship between people and whales, the Iñupiat and Yupiit have gradually come to establish their special views of them. The group of bowhead whales that winters in the Bering Sea spends the spring to fall period in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas of the Arctic Ocean. They migrate northward in the spring and southward in the fall. The Iñupiat in Utqia˙gvik (Barrow), Alaska, hunt bowhead whales in spring (around early May) and fall (around early October), when the whales migrate along the coast near the town. At present, this whaling activity is conducted in a newly created Arctic landscape under a warming climate regime, which has been caused primarily by the economic activities of contemporary civilization. Bowhead whaling is facing many severe interruptions as a consequence (Kishigami 2010, 2014). From an Iñupiat perspective, the historical relationship between the Iñupiat and bowhead whales can be divided into three epochs: (1) a period when humans seldom hunted whales (up to the tenth century), (2) a period when humans hunted and used

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whales as domestic and industrial resources (from the 10th to the late twentieth century), and (3) a period during which humans tended to protect the whales (in the late twentieth century and after).

3.1 Period When Humans Seldom Hunted Whales (Up to the Tenth Century) One bowhead whale can provide people with a huge quantity of meat and other edible parts used as food. Moreover, it can provide large quantities of whale oil used as fuel and baleen and bones used as raw materials for making tools and dwellings. However, certain technological and social conditions must be fulfilled to hunt a large whale intentionally, because whaling requires a certain proficiency with water vessel construction technology, hunting techniques, and social organization to be successful (Savelle 2005: 54). Before such means were available, people used dead whales that had beached. Although many whale bones found at several archaeological sites in the Bering Strait and North Pacific rim regions were dated to around 8000–6000 years ago, it is most probable that these were from stranded whales and not from hunted whales (Savelle 2005: 53). Marine resources began to be used by a specialized hunting group in a much later period of human history, and the origin of whaling is much more recent in the Alaskan region. Although the Cape Krusenstern site (approximately 3400–3300 years ago) in Alaska was regarded as a whaling site, it is now presumed by many archaeologists to be a place where stranded whales were used (Savelle 2005: 53–54). Daniel Odess has proposed that the origin of whaling extends back to about 3000 years ago in the Bering Sea and Bering Strait regions (University of Alaska Fairbanks 2008), but that hypothesis has yet to be proven. At this time, evidence suggests that Arctic whaling began about 2500–2000 years ago in the Bering Sea and Bering Strait regions and that it had spread northward and eastward by about 1000 years ago (Fitzhugh 2016; Savelle 2005: 55; Stoker and Krupnik 1993). In other words, although many Arctic people used stranded whales or hunted whales in special situations before the tenth century, except those in the Bering Sea and Bering Strait regions, they did not use bowhead whales as an important resource. Human relationships with the bowhead whales began to change around the tenth century, when climate warming occurred in the Arctic region. Because people along the Alaskan coast either used beached whales or harvested whales occasionally and opportunistically, they used whale meat and other body parts as food, feul, and house construction resources sporadically. Consequently, their relationships with the whales were not particularly special or important for human life.

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3.2 Period When Humans Hunted and Used Whales as Domestic and Industrial Resources (Around the 10th to the Late Twentieth Century) Approximately 800 years ago, during the medieval warming period, what we call the Thule People migrated with their whaling techniques rapidly into the Canadian Arctic and Greenland from Alaska. Whaling by the Thule people spread widely across the Arctic region, but then declined gradually during the Little Ice Age, which started around AD 1300 or 1400 in the Canadian Arctic and Greenland. Furthermore, commercial whaling activities conducted by Europeans and Americans accelerated this decline. Commercial whaling began in the eastern Canadian Arctic in the sixteenth century and in Alaska and western Arctic of Canada in 1848. Mainly American whalers engaged in bowhead whale hunts from 1848 to about 1914 offshore along the northwestern coast of Alaska and western Arctic of Canada. Whale fat (whale oil) was used as the raw material for lamp fuel and soap, and whale baleen was used for items such as corset busks, buggy whips, springs, and umbrella ribs in contemporary Euro-American society. American and European commercial whalers are estimated to have taken 16,594 whales (Bockstoce et al. 2005: 4, 6) or more than 18,000 whales (Krupnik 1993: 80) around northwestern Alaska during 1848–1914. In any case, commercial whaling led to a drastic decrease in the number of whales and had a severe effect on indigenous subsistence whaling in the Alaskan region. During the commercial whaling period, many indigenous people in Alaska worked as crew on American whaling ships or as suppliers of food and furs to the ships. Over time, American whalers caught increasingly fewer whales and became increasingly less able to profit from the enterprise, and they stopped hunting whales in Alaskan waters by approximately 1914. Even after the end of commercial whaling in the Alaskan region, the Iñupiat and Yupiit whalers continued hunting bowhead whales. They caught a total of 11 bowhead whales a year, on average, from the early twentieth century to around 1970. However, the resultant whale products were able to fulfill only a part of their food demand. Furthermore, when the quota system was introduced for Alaskan indigenous whaling by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) around 1980, the Alaskan Yupiit and Iñupiat became unable to harvest as many whales as they required. The IWC became concerned about overhunting and the increasing size of the catch by indigenous people in Alaska and the resulting loss of bowhead whales, and it interrupted their whaling temporarily in 1977. However, the IWC agreed to the resumption of indigenous whale hunts in 1978 on the condition that the maximum number of the whales harvested each year stayed below a level set by the commission. The joint management of whale resources by indigenous whalers of Alaska (Alaskan Eskimo Whaling Commission) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was introduced around 1980. In addition, indigenous whaling came to be classified by the IWC as Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling in the 1980s. For those reasons, indigenous peoples were not able to hunt as freely as they had in the past.

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From around the 10th to the late twentieth century, the Iñupiat and Yupiit established their distinct views on bowhead whales and their special relationships with them (Bodenhorn 1990; Kishigami 2014, 2018a; Sheehan 1997; Turner 1990). The whales were their staple food and remained symbolically important as food for them. The Iñupiat believe that whales have a special ability to understand human words and observe human behavior from far away. Additionally, they believe that the whales themselves come to Iñupiat hunters or their wives to be harvested (Bodenhorn 1990). Because their success in whaling is thought to depend on a whale’s decision, the Iñupiat consider that keeping good relationships with whales is crucially important for harvesting them. Whaling captains, hunters, and their wives should always have a “good mind” and high morals toward the whales. The hunters must kill whales with respect as they come to the hunters to be harvested and to have their souls sent back to their home. Therefore, the Iñupiat thank the spirit that controls whales and thank the whales themselves. They send their souls back to the land of whales after entertaining them through Iñupiat’s dancing and feasting ceremonies for them. Furthermore, the whaling captains and hunters must share the whale products with other people. If a hunter speaks and conducts himself in a manner that a whale dislikes, then all whales are believed to keep away from the hunter and will refuse to be harvested. The Iñupiat believe that as long as whaling captains and hunters and their wives maintain good relationships with whales, the same whales, their souls reincarnated, will come back to the same hunters to be harvested. Through the Iñupiat’s long-term relationships with bowhead whales, they have developed several distinct religious practices and taboos to keep the relationships appropriate (Bodenhorn 1990; Kishigami 2013a; Turner 1990). For example, hunters may not verbally express whatever makes bowhead whales fearful. Therefore, they should refrain from saying “We will go on whale hunts” or “We will catch a whale.” Because whales hate the color of blood or dirty places, Iñupiat whalers should avoid using a hunting tool soiled with blood and avoid wearing hunting clothes with blood on them. In addition, the whalers must clean the ice cellar in which they keep whale meat and put fresh snow on the bottom of the cellar before the beginning of the spring whale hunting season. Soon after killing a whale and before towing it toward a butchering place, several umiaks (large skin boats) surround the whale to express thanks to it for being caught. Whaling captains and hunters must keep silent and not express their joy by facial expression, attitude, or words until they finish their prayer. During spring whaling, the whaling captain and his crew put the whale skeleton, wherein the Iñupiat believe the whale’s soul lies, back into the sea to wish for its revival. The Iñupiat believe that whales come willingly to a person who shares their whale meat generously and who lives collaboratively and peacefully with others. For that reason, Iñupiat whalers share whale meat with others and give it to persons in need. They also make efforts not to speak ill of others or resort to force. Furthermore, the Iñupiat strive to avoid socially bad influences such as alcohol and drugs, such that their relationship with the whales greatly affects their daily behavior. Furthermore, their image of an idealized person is constructed based on a rapport with the whales. Iñupiat

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whaling captains and their crew members always speak and behave carefully, taking whaling matters into consideration (Brewster 2004; Kishigami 2014: 111–116). The Iñupiat of coastal Alaska developed a traditional value system that forms the basis of idealized Iñupiat ways to sustain their good relationships with bowhead whales. They emphasize the following matters related to their life: respect for elders, respect for nature, knowledge of family and kinsmen and their roles, sharing, knowledge of language, cooperation, humor, knowledge of hunting activities, humility, avoidance of conflict, and spirituality, among others (Kishigami 2014: 117). Around 1900, Iñupiat in the Barrow region of northwestern Alaska began to convert to Christianity (Burch 1994), and today almost all Iñupiat are Christians. Many devout Christian whaling captains take a bible with them to whaling camps and pray to God while looking out for whales. Although contemporary Iñupiat whalers believe that the Christian God sends whales to the whalers, they never forget to give respect and gratitude to the whales that they catch, retaining their traditional views on the whales and mixing them with Christian ideas. Thus, whaling is not only a subsistence activity but also a sacred activity for the Iñupiat, based on their good relationship with the whales. A whaling captain and crew hold several feasts, such as Apugauti and Nalukataq, to share whale meat and other whale parts among villagers after a successful hunt. These feasts provide Iñupiat with special occasions to thank God and the whales and to reconfirm social bonds among the whaling crew and their social relationships with other villagers (Kishigami 2013a, b, 2021). Although the Iñupiat maintain traditional ideas about bowhead whales, as is clear from examinations of their whale-related viewpoints and religious practices, they themselves consider their contemporary whaling activity to be based on Christian ideas. As described above, the Iñupiat historically established special social relationships with whales as social beings. Victor (1987) emphasized that whales and human beings are not mutually antagonistic, but are instead partners that respect each other’s lifeway, according to the Iñupiat worldview. During this period when humans hunted and used whales as domestic and industrial resources (around the 10th to the late twentieth century), the Iñupiat historically maintained whaling activity, festivals with feasts and drum dances after successful hunts, and worldviews and taboos associated with whales, which were the basis for Iñupiat behavior, social relationships, and culture. Over a millennium, Iñupiat established symbolically reciprocal relationships with bowhead whales through whaling activities. While the Iñupiat always take symbolic care of whales, the whales respond to the people’s expectations as long as good human–whale relationships are maintained.

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3.3 Period of Whale Protection (Since the Late Twentieth Century) The drastic worldwide decrease in the number of large whales that occurred because of a century of highly competitive commercial whaling activities caused many European and North American countries to withdraw from commercial whaling after World War II. In 1972, a 10-year moratorium on commercial whaling of large whales was proposed at the UN Human–Environment Conference in Stockholm (Ohsumi 2003). Although the meeting members agreed to the proposal, it was not approved by the IWC that year. However, a moratorium on harvesting 13 species of large whales was agreed upon in 1982 by a majority of whaling countries in the IWC. Since then, the moratorium has continued. Although the IWC has allowed several indigenous groups or countries to conduct aboriginal subsistence whaling (Hamaguchi 2013), research whaling, or commercial whaling under specific conditions, many indigenous groups and local hunters catch whales and dolphins in several places under the management of the national government rather than the IWC. For example, the Inuit of Canada hunt bowhead whales under the supervision of the government of Canada. Furthermore, dolphins and other small cetaceans are harvested by indigenous and non-indigenous people in many places outside the IWC system. In contrast, several indigenous groups in Russia, the United States, Greenland, and St. Vincent and Grenadines are harvesting several species of large whales as aboriginal subsistence whaling under the IWC regime. However, anti-whaling activities conducted by global environment and animal protection non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Greenpeace, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Environment Investigation Agency, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, the Humane Society of the United States, and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, have made the reopening of commercial whaling of the 13 species of large whales and the continuation of indigenous and local whaling activities increasingly more difficult. As a result of such activities, human relationships with whales in general began to change in the late twentieth century from one based on resource use to one based on protection. Through their anti-whaling campaigns, these international environmental and animal protection NGOs have had a considerable influence on many national governments and the general public. As the number of countries and people supporting the anti-whaling position has grown, the negative influence of this movement on indigenous whaling and local small-scale whaling has gradually expanded worldwide. Several animal rights groups oppose any kind of whale hunting and the consumption of whale meat, even if such uses are biologically sustainable. Therefore, the human relationship with whales has drastically changed since the late twentieth century. This change has created problems for contemporary indigenous people such as the Iñupiat and relationship with whales. As described earlier, the Iñupiat established a special relationship with a distinct view of bowhead whales through whaling activities. However, Iñupiat whalers have conducted harvesting activities under the quota

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system of the IWC since the 1980s. Although whale meat has gradually become a symbolic food among the Iñupiat, bowhead whale hunts, feasts after the successful hunts, and sharing of whale products among the community members are still a basis of socio-cultural identity and relationships among the Iñupiat. The cessation of whale hunts suggests drastic changes in identities and relationships (Kishigami 2013a, b). If contemporary socio-cultural, political, and environmental conditions continue, then it is anticipated that the Iñupiat–bowhead whale relationship will be dramatically altered. Although the numbers of several whale species may likely increase in the future, indigenous whalers will face increasingly greater difficulties in maintaining their ways of life, cultural values, and social relationships. Social movements against using whales as food and industrial resources under any circumstances are expanding around the world (Kishigami 2017). This social trend is deeply connected to the development of international social movements related to animals based on ideas of animal welfare and animal rights. In 1975, Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher, published a book titled Animal Liberation: Toward an End to Man’s Inhumanity to Animals in which he objected to exploiting animals for human convenience and benefits and examined in detail several cases of cruel treatment of livestock and experimental animals by human beings. Singer defined speciesism as “an attitude of bias against a being because of the species to which it belongs” and aimed to abolish human speciesism toward other animals to promote the well-being of the animals. This idea became an ideological pillar of the contemporary animal protection movement. Major animal and environmental protection NGOs began to use whales and elephants as symbols of their efforts and developed effective antiwhaling campaigns using mass media. Consequently, whales came to be deified among many people in Europe and North America (Kalland 1993; Morita 1994). The Sea Shepherd is especially a well-known anti-whaling organization (Kawashima 2013). It is noteworthy, however, that some anti-whaling groups oppose only commercial whaling while others oppose any use of whales. Ishii and Sanada (2015: 79–86) classified animal and environment protection organizations into three categories in terms of animal welfare, animal rights, and precautionary principles. The first category includes animal and environment protection organizations whose activities are based on an idea of animal welfare that holds that humans should not kill, injure, or torture experimental animals and livestock without good reason and that they should be treated properly. Examples of this category are the Humane Society, Society for the Protection of Animals, Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, and the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Because these organizations assert that killing whales without causing them pain is impossible, they oppose any whaling activities except indigenous whaling for subsistence (Ishii and Sanada 2015: 82). The second category includes organizations whose activities are based on the ideas of animal rights and liberation. The concept of animal rights holds that animals are not things owned by humans; instead, have the same rights as human beings.

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Therefore, a group in this category, such as the Sea Shepherd, objects to any whaling activity (Ishii and Sanada 2015: 83). The third category of organizations comprises those whose activities are based on the precautionary principle. According to this principle, we should take measures whenever severe environmental or similar damage is predicted even if solid scientific proof is lacking (Ishii and Sanada 2015: 84). Greenpeace, WWF, and other organizations take action on this basis. Although these groups generally oppose commercial whaling, they do not oppose non-commercial indigenous whaling carried out under a rigid scientific management system. Several animal and environment protection organizations in Europe and the Americas have developed extensive anti-whaling campaigns to mold public opinion globally, based on special images of a whale (e.g., Barstow 1991). These anti-whaling organizations have exerted political influence in the development of national whaling policy in EU countries, the United States, South American countries, New Zealand, and Australia (e.g., Maekawa 2017). If the IWC regulates aboriginal subsistence whaling more severely and extensively, then it might cause more difficulties for the Iñupiat and other peoples to hunt and eat whales. The contemporary anti-whaling movement is strongly influencing the existing relationship between the Iñupiat and bowhead whales in Alaska. Furthermore, climate warming is unexpectedly affecting Iñupiat whaling activities in the Arctic, because the effects of climate change are altering bowhead whale migration patterns and routes and allowing both increased development of oil and gas extraction in the Arctic Ocean and the use of the Northwest and Northeast Passages as transportation routes. By affecting the ecological conditions associated with bowhead whale behavior, these changes are also affecting indigenous whaling activities (Kishigami 2010). Contemporary climate change, likely caused by human economic activities in modern civilization, is influencing bowhead ecology and indigenous whaling activities directly and indirectly through the creation of a new Arctic cultural landscape.

4 Historical Changes in the Human Relationship with Whales Here, historical changes in Iñupiat relationships with bowhead whales in Alaska are analyzed based on the classification framework proposed in Sect. 2. In the first period of rare human use of whale resources, until the tenth century, the Iñupiat generally did not regularly hunt bowhead whales, but used beached whales and performed occasional opportunistic whaling. Therefore, the Iñupiat–bowhead whale relationship is classified as Type IV (non-fatal non-use) generally and Type I (fatal use) occasionally (Table 2). Because Iñupiat hunted bowhead whales actively in the second period, from the 10th to the late twentieth century, the relationship during that period is classified as Type I (fatal use). The Iñupiat have continued hunting bowhead whales in the third period, since the late twentieth century (Type I). Since

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Table 2 Major types of human–whale relationships in human history Historic period

Major human–whale relationships

First period (until the tenth century)

Type IV (non-fatal and non-use)

Second period (from the tenth century to the late twentieth century)

Type I (fatal use)

Third period (since the late twentieth century) Type II (non-fatal use) and Type IV (non-fatal non-use)

the 1980s, however, they have co-managed and protected them with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, so the third period is classified in part as Type IV (non-fatal non-use) (Table 2). During this third period, whaling activities of various types around the world have been conducted both within and outside the IWC management system (Hamaguchi 2016; Savelle and Kishigami 2013). However, non-fatal uses of whales, such as whale watching, are increasing (Kishigami 2018b). Many IWC member countries, anti-whaling organizations, and anti-whaling governments are insisting on or implementing laws to protect and conserve whales (Kishigami 2017). Thus, Type II (nonfatal use) and Type IV (non-fatal non-use) human relationships with whales are now becoming the dominant types of relationships. In most places in the world during the third period, a minority of relationships have been Type I (fatal use) relationships. Whereas Type I relationships are dominant in Iñupiat society, Type II and Type IV relationships are dominant in many countries as a global trend (Table 2). Recently, some political philosophers and ethicists have argued that even traditional hunting activities of indigenous people should not be automatically approved. Because society, culture, and economic issues have been continuously changing since the beginning of human development, Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, for example, insist that recognition of indigenous rights and respect for indigenous cultures should not lead to automatic approval of hunting activities by contemporary indigenous people that might threaten animal rights. Therefore, they argue that indigenous people and the other stakeholders should discuss hunting carefully as to whether a particular type of hunting might be allowed, how to carry out it, and so on (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011). Because this argument applies to current whaling by indigenous peoples, criticism may increasingly mount against such whaling.

5 Conclusion The human–whale relationship provides a good example for considering human relationships with other animals in the Anthropocene, the epoch dating from the beginning of considerable human effects on the Earth’s environments. Humans who initially had little contact with whales in the oceans later, following climate changes and advancements in technology and social institutions, began to hunt whales and

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use them as resources. In the beginning and throughout most of its history, whaling was characterized by exploitive use. Later, as whale numbers decreased drastically, humans attempted to use whales in a more sustainable manner. However, as a result of climate change, overharvesting of large whales, and the changes in human thought, such as the active expansion of the animal welfare and animal right movements, whales have become objects to be protected. Although the Iñupiat and some other people today conduct whale hunts under specific international and domestic regulations, contemporary climate warming and the expansion of human economic activities in Arctic regions under its effects are strongly influencing the ecology and migration pattern of bowhead whales, as well as Iñupiat whaling activities. Thus, human relationships with whales have been shaped by interactions among whales, global environmental changes such as climate change, and local and global changes in human societies. The relationships shared by humans with other animals as well as the relations among actors and factors related to these indigenous whaling issues have become increasingly complex over time. Whales have been transformed from a non-resource for human use to a resource for human use and then to a symbolic object to be protected as a general trend in human–whale history. However, attention must be devoted to the fact that many indigenous peoples and local hunters still harvest various whales in many places. The case of historical changes in the Iñupiat relationship with bowhead whales is a good example for considering human relationships with wild animals in the contemporary world. Notes 1. Dolphin hunting was carried out about 5000 years ago at several Jomon Culture sites, such as the Mawaki site in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan (Hiraguchi 1989, 2003, 2009). 2. The revival ritual differs from village to village and among whaling captains, even in a single village. Exploration of this variation is an important topic for future research in this area. Acknowledgements This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP15H02617: “An Anthropological Study of Whaling Cultures in the Globalizing World: Conflicts between the Succession of Whaling Tradition and Anti-Whaling Movement.” Also, this chapter is based on a paper written in Japanese (Kishigami 2019).

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Historical Ecology of Sea Turtle Fishing by the Indigenous Lowland Peoples of Eastern Nicaragua: A 40-Year Record Hitoshi Takagi

1 Introduction The northern Caribbean coast of eastern Nicaragua, known as the Mosquito Coast, has the most extensive continental shelf in Central America and is also characterized by extensive coral reefs and seagrass beds. The shelf stretches northeast toward Jamaica and the Cayman Islands (formerly Las Tortugas, “the turtles”) and south along the southern Nicaraguan coast to the northern Costa Rican coast known as Tortuguero. Large numbers of green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) live in these waters, and they have long been used by humans as a food resource. This unique environment has been intensively investigated since it was first encountered by European explorers in the sixteenth century, and it still attracts researchers from multiple fields (Fig. 1). There are several obstacles, however, to understanding the interaction of humans and sea turtles along the Mosquito Coast. One difficulty is that the area is inhabited by several indigenous populations. Among these, the Miskito people have attracted the most attention from researchers since the first European contact (Conzemius 1932; Dampier 1970; M. W. 1732; Nietschmann 1972, 1973, 1979; Takagi 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019a, 2019b; von Oertzen et al. 1990). Another difficulty is that, in this unique environment, it is difficult to understand people’s behaviour toward the sea turtles (Nietschmann 1972, 1973, 1979). Recent scholarly analyses of historical records have revealed that green sea turtles have been exploited at least since the time of the first European contact (von Oertzen et al. 1990), and sea turtle exploitation strengthened after contact with the British. The new settlers, merchants, and buccaneers were all extremely eager to catch sea H. Takagi (B) Ocean Nexus Program at Washington University, Seattle, Washington, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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Fig. 1 Three economic zones of the mosquito coast

turtles not only because they were a high-protein food resource but also because they provided opportunities for people on newly settled Caribbean island to accumulate wealth. The most severe exploitation occurred during the Victorian era (xxxx–yyyy). In particular, the tiny British Cayman Islands, unlike Jamaica and other nearby islands, required substitutes for Caribbean sugar cane. Instead, the islands thrived by developing shipbuilding, hemp rope making, and sea turtle fishing industries. Thus, thousands of sea turtles were shipped to Great Britain and North America during this period (Ingle and Smith 1938; Rebel 1974; Parsons 1962). The popularity of sea

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turtle in British cuisine became so high at that time that shortages led a fake soup, known as “mock turtle” soup, to be invented. Instead of containing sea turtle flesh, mock turtle soup is made by cooking calf’s head and beef with lemon. The Caymanian turtle fishing industry lasted until 1966 and ended when the Nicaraguan government raised the fees for fishing on the Nicaraguan continental shelf. The Caymanian government refused to pay. Because of the high productivity of the Nicaraguan continental shelf and its location near the strategic base island of Jamaica, its use has been controversial throughout the history of the West Caribbean Sea. After Caymanian fishermen left Nicaraguan waters, the United States intensified its exploitation of sea turtles on the Nicaraguan continental shelf and built a canning factory on the coast, which ceased operations in the late 1970s. Around that time, the cultural geographer Bernard Nietschmann published detailed monographs on the subsistence ecology of the Miskito people, which was based primarily on the sea turtle as a source of animal protein (Nietschmann 1972, 1973, 1979). Surprisingly, they depended on the sea turtle for more than 70% of the total animal protein in their diet. In 1977, Nicaragua ratified CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), and the United Kingdom and the United States withdrew from sea turtle fishing operations in Nicaraguan waters along the Mosquito Coast. The aim of this study was to provide a detailed description of sea turtle fishing by the Miskito people since then and to examine their current fishing practices.

2 Geographical Setting and Methods Several groups of small islands known as cays are located off the Mosquito Coast, among which the Miskito Cays are the most important. “Cays” are small, low-elevation, sandy islands where a coral reef emerges above the ocean surface. They are distinctive landmarks because they are primarily only found as objects above water. The Miskito Cay archipelago consists of 50 or more cays; thus, it is larger than other groups of cays in the region, such as the Pearl Cays and the Corn Island groups off the south coast (Fig. 1). The Miskito people carry out many turtle fishing activities in the Miskito Cays, and their use of those cays is key to understanding these activities. I have been investigating current indigenous fishing activities there for around 14 months. To understand current sea turtle fishing practices around the Miskito Cays, it is important to know the relative fishing places along with the locations of community lobster fishing territories of the coastal villages. The lobster fishery is booming, and possession rights around the Miskito Cays are based around the cays and coral reefs where these highly valued lobsters can be found. The local residents recognize more than 15 collective communities that claim territories in the Miskito Cays, including Bilwi (the regional capital, also known as Puerto Cabezas), Towapi, Kulkira, Awas Tara, Dakra, Pahara, and Sandy Bay.

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Fig. 2 Mosquito cays (The Lobster territories with maritime traffics are shown)

Additionally, there are 10 smaller communities, including Tawasakiya, Li Dakura, and Nina Yari. The population of these communities ranges from a few hundred to about 2000. In particular, Awas Tara, located midway along the north coast, has developed a unique local fishing production strategy and currently accounts for most of the turtle catch around the Miskito Cays (Fig. 2). The capture and distribution of green sea turtles (C. mydas) are now highly regulated to meet regional conservation criteria for endangered species. In addition, the coastal Miskito people have developed unique adaptations under newly established management regimes.

3 Results 3.1 Adopted Caymanian Fishing Techniques In the past 40 years, fishing adaptations of the Miskito people to the current economic situation have taken several forms. In particular, improvements based on historical British Caymanian fishing techniques have been adopted.

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After the British withdrawal from Nicaraguan waters, a boatbuilder from the Cayman Islands immigrated to Nicaragua and resettled in Sandy Bay, an indigenous community on the Mosquito Coast. This boatbuilder shared his wooden boat building techniques with the local Miskito people. These techniques then gradually spread among the northern coastal communities and the Miskito Cays. In 1968, a type of small wooden boat known as a “sea duri” was being used around the southern cays; it was 18–21 ft long with a 3-foot beam, very close in size to a Caymanian catboat (Nietschmann 1973; (Fig. 3, top; see also Smith 1985). Over time, larger boats, called duri tara (tara means big), gradually came to be used in the northern coastal communities. A duri tara can be up to approximately 36 feet long with a 6- to 7-foot beam, almost twice the size of the original sea duri, and it can carry as many as 20 sea turtles. A crew of at least three people (a captain and two sailors) is required to sail it (Fig. 3, bottom; see also McSweeney 2004; Takagi 2015). I recorded the dimensions and characteristics of one boat being used along the coast. It was about 12 m long and 2 m wide, and the hull depth was about waist high against an adult male. The entire boat was made of wood, including the keel, bow, and sternpost. It had 24 ribs, and approximately 48 planks fastened to the frame created by the ribs. The mast was set in the middle front. To sail the boat, one sailor handles the jib, and another sailor operates the lines and the rudder. At least two people are needed to rotate the mainsail and the jib at the same time (Photo 1). The boat must turn and maneuver in complicated patterns as the fishermen seek the turtles in their resting places. After several voyages, the boat is repaired at the village wharf. Wood for boatbuilding is very expensive in the coastal communities, and the cost of building a duri tara is very high. The usual subsistence activities of the villagers do not provide funds for the construction or purchase of a duri tara. Instead, villagers must engage in some sort of commercial activity or obtain a wage-paying job. Funds from remittances from overseas or drug smuggling activities along the coast are also sometimes used. Sea turtle fishing around the Miskito Cays also made a complete shift from spearfishing to drift net fishing under the influence of British Caymanian fishers. During the period of Caymanian intensive fishing along the Mosquito Coast, the Caymanians employed local Miskito fishermen. One of the villagers employed by the Caymanians recalled that Caymanian fishing excelled in comparison with the spearfishing practiced by the Miskito people at that time. Spearfishing was done near the shores of several large cays, where they could rest. In contrast, the Caymanian fishermen used an elaborate system where they drew white lines at the surface of the open sea. As a result, the British Caymanians could cast their nets anywhere they desired. The villager was quite surprised by the number of turtles that the Caymanians were able to catch in their drift nets in one night (Takagi 2016; see Appendixes 1 & 2). In addition to larger boats and the drift net fishing method, the Miskito fishermen adopted other practices from the British Caymanians. For example, they adopted the requirement that two crewmembers control the mainsail and jib whenever the boat needed to turn. “British ways” of rigging and knotting ropes and fastening the line to the anchor were also adopted. Most of these practices need further study.

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Fig. 3 Current Miskito “Duri Tara”

3.2 Specialized Village and Extended Family-Oriented Businesses The adoption of European fishing techniques required some changes to the social economies of the coastal people. Consequently, one regionally specialized fishing village was created. Nietschmann (1973), who conducted research along the southern coast and around the Pearl Cays, described just two skilled practitioners of spear turtle fishing who were father and son. In contrast, the current commercialized indigenous

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turtle fishing industry around the Miskito Cays is based on a much larger kinship group and also includes neighbors and outsiders. Sailing a duri tara is now a job for four crew, and young extended family members are also flexibly employed as sailors and cooks. Figure 4 shows an example of the extended family of a duri tara owner couple (the duri dawanka). Notably, relatives on the wife’s side rather than those on the husband’s side are employed as crew members, although they include relatives on both her father’s and mother’s sides. The captain was a relative on her father’s side (the name Shiperino is often used for a captain). He was short but muscular and was a heavy cigarette smoker. Dennis (2004) has also pointed out the importance of blood relationships in a Miskito village. The importance of connections among blood relations in subsistence activities and many commercial activities in the village has been fading in recent years, but they have maintained their importance in the sea turtle fishing industry around the Miskito Cays. Thus, close relatives of the wife are naturally involved in this boat owner’s fishing business because the captain often brings his close family members to sea with him. In addition to extended family members, neighbors and outsiders who come to the village seeking work are recruited for indigenous sea turtle fishing activities. The Miskito Cays are currently flourishing economically because of a boom in lobsters, which are exported to North America. The lobster boom has attracted opportunists from other regions of the Mosquito Coast, including the northern border region, around the Rio Coco, and the mountainous gold mining region. Thus, some fishing crew members may come from these regions. At present, there are at least 40 extended-family-based sea turtle fishing businesses in the village. These business have also created other job opportunities in the village. For example, fishing boats require constant maintenance and repairs. These activities

Fig. 4 An example of large family-based productions

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keep several skilled carpenters who reside in the village busy, especially during the off season. Laborers for hauling fishing gear, mainsails, jibs, masts, anchors, and turtles, as well as net weavers, sail makers and menders, and merchants who buy and sell sea turtles are also needed. There is even a moneylending business that supports sea turtle fishing operations. Thus, this village has been changing to meet the current sea turtle production demands on the Mosquito Coast (Fig. 4).

3.3 Current Fishing Practices Before they sail to the Miskito Cays, crew members must carry out various chores ordered by the boat owner. The nets, about 20 or more, which have been stored loose since the last day of the previous voyage, must be carefully untangled. Sometimes, it takes an entire day to complete this process. The two sails and the rigging also need to be prepared. The mast is sometimes lowered between trips to prevent damage to the hull. Three people are needed to raise the mast. After the mast is raised, the boat is rigged. Other materials required for the voyage such as oars and a water tank are also prepared. After the rigging is completed, foodstuffs and firewood necessary for the voyage are collected. Firewood is obtained from the forest, and food is purchased from the grocery store in the village. After all of the equipment has been prepared by the crew, everyone returns to their respective homes for a final meal and to say farewell to their family. At 20:00 or 21:00 pm (local time), they gather again in front of the ship owner’s house before departing downriver from the small village wharf. Along the Mosquito Coast, a land breeze blows westward toward the ocean at night, making it much easier to sail downstream to the river mouth from the village. This part of the voyage takes about an hour of paddling, after which the crew can rest until sunrise. However, the larger fishing boats originally introduced by Caymanian fishers are at risk of grounding in the shallow river mouth. Sometimes it takes half a day and a dozen village men to free a grounded boat and set sail into the open ocean. This involves quickly pushing the boat into deeper water without letting it tip over. Voyages typically visit several cays in order of distance from the village. Without the availability of a GPS, the captain must carefully observe the available landmarks to navigate the boat on the open sea. The first destination for the fishermen investigated in this study was often Witis Cay, which is used by the villagers as a base for fishing activity. To reach Witis, fishermen first sail northeast from the village, using slight changes in the landscape along the shore to determine their position. About an hour into the voyage, the crew searches the northern horizon for a tiny flag on Nasa Cay. After this flag is sighted, they sail southeast toward Witis Cay (Fig. 5). Sometimes, the boat stops at Nasa to procure coral rocks to use as net sinkers or just to take a break, or the fishermen might decide to fish around the cays close to Nasa, such as the Wahamu and Toro cays. After departing Nasa and its neighboring cays, the boat sails southeast. During this part of the voyage, two triangular sails, each of which are controlled by two sailors,

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Fig. 5 The navigation route and position of traps

are deployed. Under ideal conditions, they sail with the prevailing northeasterly wind. Two crew members stand by each sail holding a sheet so that they can adjust the sail according to the strength of the wind. The captain also makes slight adjustments to the angle of the main sail and sometimes the rudder. Whenever it is necessary to change direction, the captain gives the order lakaya (to be changed) from his position in the stern, and the sailors immediately begin changing the positions of the two sails. As they sail to the village base, boats belonging to other villagers can often be seen at a distance. The crew can tell which village boat they have sighted by the color of the sails. The crew members discuss their destination while taking into account any information they obtain by observing the locations of the other boats. They need to find out where the sea turtles are resting, so they use all available information to decide where to fish. On the way to the fishing ground, waves may wash over the boat. Periodically, any accumulated water has to be bailed out. Bailing is done by using an empty 1-L plastic milk jug, often by a fourth apprentice crew member, who also performs other deck

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chores. A milk jug is also used as a washing bucket. During the voyage, the crew are constantly on the lookout for green sea turtles (lih in the Miskito language). Green sea turtles rest at night on coral patch reefs, which are known as banks or lih watlika (meaning the house of green sea turtles) or as walpa (rocks, plural is walpaya). The village base at Witis is believed to have some of the best turtle resting places (walpaya) in the Miskito Cays. Witis has been a major fishing ground for villagers since the Caymanians left. Before the indigenous people learned Caymanian fishing methods, they spearfished in waters close to the Malas Cays in the north (Fig. 6), where the waves are comparatively calm. When the crew arrives at Witis (i.e., the village base), they must decide whether to fish there or travel further. According to the village fishermen, fishing grounds around Mitis have been in use since the Caymanians discovered them. For that reason, the coastal villagers believe that green sea turtles no longer rest around Mitis, despite the presence of a large number of coral patch reefs, which are ideal turtle resting places. Therefore, some crews only take a break at Witis and then travel southward to look for turtles. Although as the boats sail farther from the northern cays, the water of the open sea becomes deeper and bluer, they still continue on to Paputa Souska. In the Miskito

Fig. 6 The simple image, navigation to far southeast fishing ground

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language, paputa means hemp palm tree. It is said that when the first indigenous green sea turtle fishermen arrived at Paputa, they planted a hemp palm on the cay to use as a marker as they traveled to the south (sauska). The waters around Paputa Sauska are similar to those around Witis, but with more deep water and stronger currents, and it has as many submerged turtle resting places (coral patch reefs) as are at Witis. These areas are favored for casting nets.

3.4 Navigation Accurately locating submerged rocks (coral patch reefs) is indispensable, and using a logical way to do this has made fishing very efficient. Captains, at a minimum, must be able to locate the turtle-resting rocks around Witis. These rocks have been given Miskito names since the Caymanians left. To pinpoint the locations of these submerged rocks, the fishermen draw eight imaginary lines extending outward in eight directions (the four cardinal directions and NE, SE, SW, and NW) from the village base, where there are three lobster fishing cabins that can be seen from a long distance. The fishermen sailing from Witis follow these lines. For example, they may first sail toward the southwest to Lemstens Kahbaika and then to Kaima Rock. Then, they may sail eastward to the southernmost resting place, called Three Rocks, before returning to the village base. They might also stop at Nina Yari. When they are over the predicted resting rocks, they turn again and again to investigate the shape and size of the submerged rocks. When they lack modern devices, this is done by eye. The names of some rocks are clues to the shape of the submerged corals: for example, Three Rocks, Karil (i.e., “small rock”), and Nina yari (i.e., an oblong rock at the back of the base) (Fig. 7). The area around Witis is very familiar, so locating these submerged rocks is relatively easy, but it becomes more difficult around less familiar places such as Paputa Souska. In less familiar places, buoys and flags are used to mark the submerged coral rocks. A young fisherman with good eyesight stands in the bow searching for these markers. In general, the resting rocks are assumed to be round. The method of searching for resting rocks in unfamiliar seas resembles the closed circular cognition method (Fig. 7). I tracked the routes followed by the villagers as they fished for sea turtles by GPS (Fig. 8). The boat traveled southeast from ??? on 23 August. They were unable to capture any sea turtles so after sailing farther southeast they turned back toward the northwest. They rotated several times and noticed some apparent banks, so they started moving smoothly at the bottom circle. Then, they cast flags at the center of each circle where a bank was found. After that, they sailed to the northwest for 2 days to cast their nets. Next, they sailed to the south where they had cast the flags a few days previously and then south to retrace their smooth route at the bottom circle. Even though they did not have names for the submerged rocks at Paputa Souska,

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Fig. 7 The fishing base

they were able to find suitable locations for casting their net with those senses. On 24 August they caught three turtles, on 26 August they caught six, and on 27 August they caught three more. Even if the fishermen find suitable submerged corals for casting their nets, they still may not find any sea turtles. Sometimes, they come back with 0 turtles. To avoid this bad outcome, the fishermen learn the relative locations of the various banks (walpaya, such as Nasa, Witis, and Paputa Souska). One of the older fishermen of the village could recognize at least 20 banks distributed around the Miskito Cays (Fig. 9). He said that if they saw no signs of sea turtles at the southernmost Paputa Souska or Dinkan banks, they could go north to Diemans Ki (Deadman’s reef in English) or Enjin Bar, which are rarely visited by the villagers followed in this study.

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Fig. 8 Comparison of spatial logistics

3.5 Catch Volumes I counted the number of turtles caught five times on the deck (34 days). A total of 57 turtles were caught. Of these, 44 were female. The average number caught per day was 1.7 (calculated as the total number of turtles/total number of days) or 2.65 (calculated as the total number of turtles/number of days that nets were set). On any given day that the nets were set, from 0 to 10 turtles were caught (on 4 days, no sea turtles were caught; 1 sea turtle was caught on each of 3 days; 2 sea

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Fig. 9 Current fishing ground

turtles were caught on each of 7 days; 3 sea turtles on each of 5 days; and more than 3 were caught on only 4 out of the 23 days on which nets were set). Occasionally, the villagers captured 10 sea turtles in a day. In general, the villagers aim to catch at least three turtles a day. A previous study conducted around the southern Mosquito Coast reported that sea turtles move in large numbers in a particular season. In addition to this seasonal movement, the villagers recognize that the turtles move in groups. Thus, they aim to locate those groups so that they can capture more turtles in a shorter amount of time (Fig. 10). Figure 10 shows the cumulative catch numbers during three different voyages. The fishermen aim to catch the allowed number of turtles for selling in the market

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Fig. 10 Current accumulation of catches

at the port, and they continue to fish until they have caught that number. Sometimes, however, they fail to reach that number, and sometimes they exceed it. The number of turtles per day caught tended to increase on the last days of fishing voyage. This might be because after fishing for a few days in the ocean, the fishermen have a better understanding of where the sea turtles are at that moment. Several voyages are believed to have been done for poaching as well. This rather steady catch rate is typical of the fishery. The village investigated in this study accounts for much of the catch, primarily because it is the closest village to the sea turtle banks (walpaya) identified by the Caymanians around Witis. Figure 11 shows the schedule of sea turtle fishing by each village boat operating at the time my investigation (December to January 2013) (Fig. 11). Unlike 40 years before, when fishing was seasonal, voyages are undertaken throughout the months of the open fishing season. For example, in the past, the coastal peoples could not carry out fishing activities during July because of strong currents and heavy rains, whereas currently the largest catch is obtained in July, the month when the sea turtle fishing season open on the Mosquito Coast. The fishing grounds might be expanding. A map drawn by Nietschmann shows spearfishing activity within a 30-km radius of the village that he studied. In contrast, my investigation shows that green sea turtle fishing in the studied village extended to fishing grounds in the open waters south of the Miskito Cays. It should be noted, however that the study area differed between the two investigations (Photo 1). Also, these changes may have been associated with the development of the flourishing lobster fishing industry around the Miskito Cays (Nietschmann 1997).

4 Conclusion The indigenous lowland peoples of Eastern Nicaragua have been fishing for sea turtles for the past 40 years, but their fishing practices have changed gradually as a result of the introduction of British Caymanian techniques. Although past fishing practices around the Pearl Cays off the south Mosquito Coast cannot be directly compared with present practices around the Miskito Cays off the north coast, the differences observed are worth mentioning. The adaptations that the Miskito people have made to the recent

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Fig. 11 Productivities under management regimes

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Photo 1 Current green sea turtle fishing of Miskito Indians (2)

resource management regime are quite remarkable, especially the incorporation of British Caymanian techniques. Despite their lack of access to detailed maritime charts and modern boat construction techniques, they successfully catch large numbers of turtles. However, only limited understanding of developments in these coastal small communities can be gained by a short term study. More detailed investigations, including more in-depth conversations with the Miskito people, are needed to ensure the protection and conservation of green sea turtles along the Mosquito Coast. Acknowledgements This paper was presented at the National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) Special Research Project “Human Relation with Animals and Plants: Perspectives of Historical Ecology” at the National Museum of Ethnology, Japan (March 19–21, 2018).

References Conzemius E (1932) Ethnological survey of the Miskitu and Sumu Indians of Honduras and Nicaragua. Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington DC Dampier W (1970) A new voyage around the world. In: A. Gray (ed) (Argonaut Press, 2). N. Israel, Da Capo Press Dennis P (2004) Miskito people of Awastara. University of Texas press Ingle R, Smith F (1938) Sea turtles and the turtle industry of the West Indies, Florida, and the Gulf of Mexico, with annotated bibliography. University of Miami Press, Miami

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McSweeney K (2004) The dugout canoe trade in Central America’s Mosquitia: approaching rural livelihoods through system of exchange. AAA Geograph 94:634–661 M. W (1732) Mosqueto Indian and his golden river. In: Churchill A (ed) A collection of voyages and travel, vol 6. London, p 288 Nietschmann B (1972) Hunting and fishing focus among the Miskito Indians, eastern Nicaragua. Human Ecology 1(1):41–67 Nietschmann B (1973) Between land and water: the subsistence ecology of Miskito Indian, Eastern Nicaragua. Seminar Press, New York Nietschmann B (1979) Ecological change, inflation, and migration in the far Western Caribbean. The Geographical Review 69(1):1–24 Nietschmann B (1997) Protecting indigenous coral reefs and sea territories, Miskito Coast RAAN, Nicaragua. In: Stevens S (ed) Conservation through cultural survival: indigenous peoples and protected areas. Island Press, Washington DC, pp 193–224 Parsons J (1962) Green turtle and man. University of Florida Press, Gainesville Rebel T (1974) Sea turtles and the turtle industry of the West Indies, Florida, and the Gulf of Mexico, with annotated bibliography (orig. pub. 1938, R. Ingle and F. Smith). Miami: University of Miami Press Smith R (1985) The caymanian cat boat: a West Indian maritime legacy. World Archaeol 16:329–336 Takagi H (2015) The green turtle fishing Cayuko (Dori Tara) used around the Miskito Cays, Eastern Nicaragua. SOKENDAI. Rev Cult Soc Stud 12:139–163 Takagi H (2016) Environmental anthropology of natural resource use in indigenous regions—the case of the green turtle fishing by Miskito Indians. Doctoral Dissertations, Graduate University of Advanced Studies. Takagi H (2017) Sea turtle diet of Caribbean Sea. Biostory 28:98–108 Takagi H (2019a) Comparison of overseas influence within historical formation of mass green turtle consumption in mosquito coast, Nicaragua and Bali, Indonesia. In: Ikeya K (ed) Spreading food cultures in Asia: from the past to present. Senri Ethnological Studies, vol 100, pp 35–64 Takagi H (2019b) Ethnography of human and sea turtles -commercial fishing of Miskito Indians. Akashi Publishing, Tokyo Von Oertzen E, Rossbach L, Wünderich V (1990) The Nicaraguan mosquitia in historical documents 1844–1927. Dietrich Reimer, Berlin

Sweet Cassava, Bananas and Plantains in the Peruvian Amazon: Shipibo Cultivation Methods on the Floodplains Mariko Ohashi

1 Introduction The lands in the Amazon are classified into two categories: highland, also known as terra-firme; and floodplain, also known as várzea (Meggers 1996, 13–14). In the highlands, where land is not affected by floods, indigenous people use slash-andburn agriculture, and move to a new location once the cleared site is no longer fertile enough. On the floodplains (both higher and lower, as explained in the Sect. 2), flooding in the rainy season brings nutrients to the soil, making the land highly productive, so it is unnecessary for the residents to change their fields every few years. The floodplains account for only 2% of the land in the Amazon (Padoch et al. 1999: xi). However, the high productivity of the floodplains has been noted by archaeologists, geographers, and forest environmentalists (Lathrap 1970; Hiraoka 1985, Padoch et al. 1999, Denevan 2001). Owing to their high productivity, they have been exploited by the non-indigenous population. On the Peruvian floodplain, which has fertile soil and good fishing grounds, several indigenous groups, including the Pano-speaking Shipibo, continue to live (Kvist and Nebel 2001: 3–4, 16). This chapter covers Shipibo use of land and plants. The Shipibo live on the floodplains and grow sweet cassava (Manihot esculenta) and bananas (Musa spp.), both of which, apart from being staple foods, have cultural importance. According to Dufour’s review article of ethnographies in Amazon (1992), Shipibo people, as well as Yanomami, are one of the groups that consume bananas most in comparison to other indigenous groups.

M. Ohashi (B) Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 K. Ikeya and W. Balée (eds.), Global Ecology in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9_14

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In the text, I use the term “banana” as a general term that includes both “sweet” bananas such as Cavendish and “plantains” that are cooked before served as a meal, because Shipibo people use both of them and they do not differentiate those plants in two categories. Rather, they distinguish those “bananas-plantains” into 22 different types (See: Appendix Table 1).1 There are many studies about the Shipibo, the most recent one being the special issue of Fieldiana Anthropology subtitled “The Shipibo- Conibo: Culture and Collections in Context” published in 2016 by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago [Wali and Odland (2016) introduces the issue]. However, most of the research either focuses on the Shipibo’s culture and cosmology, such as Roe’s monograph, Cosmic Zygote (Roe 1982), or their language (Valenzuela 2000; Valenzuela et al. 2001), and few studies have been conducted on their food consumption and subsistence, with two important exceptions. Bergman (1980), which I will cite often below, focused on the relation between labor investment and the productivity of bananas and other staple foods for the Shipibo. Behrens studied their food categorization and preferences (1986), their soil classification and use of land (1989), and the formation of the food market because of the Introduction of cash crops (1992). Ohashi et al. (2011) and Ohashi (2015) analyzed the importance of food sharing in a Shipibo native community. This chapter is an update of those studies about the Shipibo’s agriculture and subsistence in the new context, and I hope that my onsite research on two consecutive large floods in 2011 and 2012, during which I did participatory observation, helping the Shipibo people harvest cassava from beneath the water and prepare cassava beer and and cassava flour, will be a valuable contribution to the literature on the use of cassava in Amazonia. Section 2 explains how the Shipibo plant their staple crops and make use of different kinds of land. Sections 3 and 4 focus on how the people reacted to the extreme floods in 2011 and 2012. I argue that even though the Shipibo eat a lot of bananas daily, when faced with extreme flooding, they started to eat cassava as their ancestors did. This study is based on my fieldwork, conducted between 2008 and 2015 for a total of 18 months.

2 The Importance of Sweet Cassava and Banana for the Shipibo 2.1 Growing Sweet Cassava and Banana on Floodplains Although both cassava and bananas are important staple foods for the indigenous peoples in Amazonia, the crops have quite different histories. Cassava is native to the Amazon and can be classified roughly into two groups, bitter and sweet cassava, the latter being developed from the former (Lathrap 1970: 48–50). On the floodplains of the Peruvian upper Amazon, indigenous peoples grow mainly sweet cassava. Bananas, on the other hand, are native to Southeast Asia, and are thought to have

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arrived in the Amazon via Africa through the slave trade.2 Its importance is reflected in the ethnobotanical diversity attached to the indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon, studied by researchers such as Boster (1984), who studied Aguaruna’s manioc (cassava) cultivars, and Salick et al. (1997), who analyzed the diversity of cassava among the Amuesha. Bananas have become a staple food for indigenous peoples in the Amazon, including the Shipibo, whose major part of dietary culture evolves around bananas. Bergman’s monograph, published in 1980, is the most comprehensive publication on the livelihood of the Shipibo. According to Bergman (1980: 62), the Panoans, the ancestors of the Shipibo, came to the Ucayali River basin from the southwest to settle there before 800 BCE. They made contact with Western culture and the market economy as early as the 1950s (Hern 1992: 505–516). Since the 1980s, their traditional, polygamous family style has been declining (Hern 1992: 505–516). However, the author observed on several occasions that villagers maintain a relationship with someone other than their spouse. It is also worth mentioning that they have no formal wedding ceremony. Considering such observations, monogamy does not seem to be the norm among them, either. Bergman states that historically, the Shipibo relied more on cassava than on bananas. However on the basis of his research in the Pisqui River basin in the 1970s, he argued that bananas had become more important than cassava in terms of energy intake (1980: 125–134, 179). Thus, bananas, the dominant crop in Shipibo daily life, became more important than cassava within the last few decades. Bergman’s main research interest was the relationship between labor investment and productivity, and he argued that the Shipibo are highly labor efficient, even compared with highly efficient hunter-gatherers such as the !Kung of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa, owing to their cultivation of bananas (Bergman 1980: 210). The existence of “easy-to-grow” bananas is as important as the floodplains and their ecological characteristics. That said, by making bananas a major part of their diet, the Shipibo found an efficient way to produce nutritious food with low labor input. Simulataneously, however, the floodplains are a risky place, too, as they experience huge floods every few years. Floods usually bring fertile soil, but sometimes they wash away everything: fields and even houses. In 1971, while Bergman was doing fieldwork, the Shipibo suffered a enormous flood and the fields were under water for more than 75 days. He reports that “[w]here the depth exceeded 60 cm. [sic] for more than 30 days the loss was total. At lesser depths and durations a large percentage of plants survived” (Bergman 1980: 58). Several villagers of Dos de Mayo, the village where I did my fieldwork, told me after the 2011 huge flood that there would not be another huge flood for several years. However, the villagers were ravaged by severe floods twice in 2011 and 2012.

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2.2 “Dos De Mayo” Village and Indigenous Policies in Peru The village of Dos de Mayo, where I conducted my research, is located in the state of Colonel Portillo. To get there, you take a boat from Pucallpa upstream along the Ucayali River. After about 20 hours of boat travel, you take a canoe (with an engine) for another half an hour, and then walk for 15 minutes. The village was founded in 1977 and was designated as a Native Community by the Peruvian government in 1984.3 At the time of the settlement, the village was built on the Ucayali River. Nowadays, the village is located 1.5 km away from the river, not because the village has moved, but because the river has changed its course over those decades. From 2000 on, the village has been involved in a community-led timber production/forest conservation project. I was actually introduced to the village by an engineer who was working on the timber production project. In 2013, there were 16 households in the village and the population was about 100. Villagers fish every day, using gill nets, fishhooks, and sometimes bows and arrows. Their staple foods are bananas and sweet cassava, but they also eat rice and pasta, bought with cash. The sources of their cash income are planting and selling maize, selling timber, and working on oil palm plantations. Peru introduced its first policies for the “benefit” of indigenous people in 1974, giving indigenous “communities” the right to use the land exclusively. Although the property rights of the land belong to the state, indigenous people thought this policy would “give them land”. The village of Dos de Mayo was founded in the following way. An Shipibo shaman looking for a place to “create a new village” found a place in the highlands near what was then the main stream of the Ucayali River, high enough to avoid inundation. He cleared the land and settled there. In 1984, Dos de Mayo officially become a native community. In a way, the village is a result of the government’s indigenous policy, which prompted indigenous people to settle.

2.3 Agriculture in Dos de Mayo The land around Dos de Mayo is divided into three categories: (1) lower floodplain, which floods every year in the rainy season (from November to March, approximately); (2) higher floodplain, which floods only during extreme floods; and (3) highland, which never floods. The villagers call the higher floodplain nashoba (pronounced nash-bah) in their language, and consider it the best land for cultivation, planting bananas there (for more information, see Ohashi et al. 2011). In the highland, they use the slash-and-burn method to grow cassava. It is less common to plant bananas in the highlands, as the land is not fertile enough and gives only one good harvest: after the second harvest, the fruits become much smaller. On the higher floodplain, bananas are planted among other plants as part of mixed-plants field.

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As I learned in November 2009, 33 of the 44 cultivated fields across all land types are planted mainly to bananas, and the other 11 fields grow different crops of the rest of the fields, five are dedicated for cassava (three of them in highlands and two of them in floodplain), one is maize, other five “fields” produce timber. All fields contain mixed crops, and apart from bananas and sweet cassava, they plant sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas), sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum), and pineapples (Ananas comosus). All of the harvest is for self-consumption (in 2015). In terms of land rights, the owner of the land (the person who first cleared the land) or his family members are entitled to the harvest. Also, anyone can take crops in abandoned secondary forest (Ohashi et al. 2011). Bananas are a daily staple food, eaten boiled or roasted and, sometimes, raw. Ripe bananas are boiled and crushed to make a sweet drink. Cassava is also a staple food, either boiled or roasted. However, cassava is more important as an ingredient of the fermented drink, “atsua xeati” in Shipibo language. At meetings and parties, cassava liquor is passed around and served to all participants.

3 Two Consecutive Extreme Floods and How Villagers Coped with Them Floodplains are rich land for agriculture as the floods bring fertile soil in the rainy season. The villagers of Dos de Mayo are aware that as long as their banana fields are kept clear of weeds, they will yield harvest almost perpetually with no need for. After the initial clearing, the land requires no other specific effort. However, floodplains are at risk of being washed away by occasional extreme floods. In February 2011, while I was visiting, the village suffered one such flood. What follows is based on my interviews with villagers in February–March and October 2011 (I left the village around the 10th of March and returned in October).

3.1 The First Extreme Flood (February 2011) When the flood started, the villagers were optimistic, saying, “The land will become more fertile.” However, three days later, when the water level had risen to 90 cm, people started to worry and began talking about the possibility food shortage saying that “if banana roots are soaked in water for too long, we will run out of food.” They knew that if the flood is only temporary, the land becomes more fertile and the bananas become more vigorous. But the water level of the tributary that runs near the village was almost 4 m higher than that of in 2009. The villagers had not seen such an extreme flood in the last 13 years, the last one being in 1998, although they also said, “Before that, there had been a great flood every 7 or 8 years.”

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When I visited the village again in October 2011, the villagers told me about the hardship they suffered from the flood. “The water ceased only in March,” they said, which means that the banana fields were inundated for more than a month. During that period, the crops were fatally damaged and there was no harvest. Among the 22 types of banana the Shipibo in Dos de Mayo grow, two types (Panchaa Paranta and Paro paranta) are relatively resistant to flooding, becouse they have more stable roots, and the villagers obtained some harvests from these bananas (see: Appendix Table 1).4 Even in the household that planted the most water-resistant species, the harvest was less than 50% of what is expected in years without extreme flooding. To make matters worse, after the prolonged inundation, even the water-resistant bananas stopped yielding. All the families were affected by the flood but especially for the 6 households in the village, the damage to the banana fields on the floodplain was crushing. What did they do, after they had eaten all the water-resistant bananas? What follows are the choices they made for survival. Sweet Cassava From a Villager’s Field Rescued the Whole Village Many villagers told me, “Mauro’s field saved us.” Mauro, one of the villagers, grows sweet cassava almost every year and has it ready to harvest year-round. In fact, while I was doing my fieldwork (between December 2008 and April 2015), he was the only villager who grew sustancial amount of sweet cassava in his field, even though other villagers did have smaller sweet cassava fields). Villagers from all households benefited from his cassava field: Mauro let them harvest sweet cassava from the field and they took it home to cook. A close friend of Mauro’s told me that he was “invited to Mauro’s house to eat”. However, Mauro’s sweet cassava field (about 1 ha) was basically for his own consumption and could not sustain the needs of the whole village. When it became apparent that the villagers could no longer rely on his sweet cassava, they searched for other ways to survive. Asking Other Tribal Groups For Help A neighboring native village called Juancito, is inhabited by member of the Asháninka tribal group. Because they live in the highlands and use slash-and-burn agriculture to grow mainly sweet cassava, they almost never suffer from floods. As the food supply became scarce, the people of Dos de Mayo asked their Asháninka friends for help, hoping to get some sweet cassava (most villagers have several friends there). However, the Shipibo are perceived as “lazy people” by other indigenous people living in the central Peruvian Amazon “because they eat bananas”, which are easy to grow. Usually they do not say this to their face, but when the villagers asked for help, one was told, “You didn’t work on land because you are lazy.” The villager got angry and came home empty-handed. Others did get help, but as sweet cassava is not easy to carry and the neighboring village is an hour’s walk away, they never returned to ask for more. Another villager went to ask for a cutting of sweet cassava, but then stayed in his Asháninka friend’s house for almost 6 months.

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Planting Sweet Cassava There were also villagers who preferred to go out of the village, instead of planting sweet cassava. They migrated away from village to seek cash income, three households went to an oil palm plantation, which is located approximately 50 km from Pucallpa, the nearest city. With their fortnightly paycheck every two weeks, they bought rice or pasta and sent food home. One worked in his mestizo (non-indigenous) friend’s maize field in another nearby village, helping him with the harvest. With the cash earned there, he bought sweet cassava from the Asháninka. As a medium- to long-term measure, some villagers planted sweet cassava. In November 2009, there were only three sweet cassava fields in the highlands. After the extreme floods, six more fields were planted, all bigger than 1 ha, and larger than most of the banana fields in the floodplains. The villager whom the Asháninka refused to help become so motivated that he planted three cassava fields. In September 2012, 11 households were working on sweet cassava fields in the highlands. Obviously the main reason for expanding cassava cultivation is to hedge risk of enormous floods, but another possible reason is that several villagers seemed to feel indebted to Mauro, because they were relying on the cassava he was producing to make the cassava beer. Shipibo people are very sensitive to this kind of indebtedness. It is also worth mentioning that there were villagers who, instead of planting cassava, tried to obtain cassava from those who produce it, relaying on personal relationships with those producers.

3.2 The Second Enormous Flood Usually, villagers plant bananas on the higher floodplain and sweet cassava in the highlands, because sweet cassava is vulnerable to wet soil. However, in May 2012, some villagers planted sweet cassava on the higher floodplain after having clearing the banana field. Their reasoning was the following: (1) the soil was extremely fertile because of the extreme flooding the previous year; and (2) another extreme flood was very unlikely to occur soon, as they occur only once every 7 or 8 years on average. One household planted as much as three cassava fields.5 However, another extreme flood occurred in December 2012 quite unexpectedly. I was in Dos de Mayo at the time, and I helped villagers to harvest sweet cassava. In this section I describe how the villagers coped with the second flood. Collective Harvest On 11 February 2012, the villagers started talking about the flood, saying that “fields were getting soaked.” On 12 February, the water inundated the first field and came within 20 cm of another Cassava field. On the 14th, that field was inundated, too. As the water was approaching, the owner invited other villagers to harvest the soonto-be-inundated field. Usually, when a villager invites other persons to harvest with them, they invite the people they normally eat with.

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However, in emergencies similar to the one described above, the members of the household that are harvesting will reach out to other households to join. The custom is that the cassava would belong to whoever harvest it regardless of the ownership of the field, meaning that villagers who participate in the harvest can take the cassava home with them. Thus, sometimes other villagers who are not invited may ask the owner to let them harvest as well. The owners always accept the offer.6 With the flood approaching, they harvested all the sweet cassava in the field. Usually, when villagers arrive at a field for harvest, the owner indicates where to harvest, although in some cases the harvest begins without any instructions. In one of the cases when I was present, the sweet cassava was already beginning to blacken and the owner instructed us to harvest all of it. On this particular occasion, they cut even the smaller plants that they usually would not harvest. The villagers told me that it is better to harvest while the water is still there, for two reason: (1) the flooded sweet cassava starts to decay rapidly; and (2) if they wait until the water is completely gone, the soil will harden, making harvest more difficult. In some fields, the water reached eye level, about 1.5 m high. Villagers told me that they would dive into the water to harvest, but in reality, they waited for a few days until the level was lower. Once the villagers gather for harvesting, the participants start by cutting the branch of the plants they plan to harvest. Afterwards, they start to dig out the roots (Figs. 1 and 2), and pile the harvested cassava into one. Then, they cut off the edible roots and put them in a basket or bag to bring them back to the village. When villagers from several different households participate, each household or consumption group brings their own harvest back separately. On this occasion, apart from the owner, three adults (including myself) and five minors participated in the harvest. In the rainy season of 2012, the total harvest of sweet cassava in the village amounted to 973 kg (weighed by the author on an electric spring scale). Processing Sweet Cassava Once dug out, sweet cassava cannot be preserved for long. Usually the Shipibo either boil or roast it before eating it, but when they were forced to harvest so much at once, they had to process it in several ways for longer storage. First, most of they made a drink called atsua xeati (ats-a-shanty) in Shipibo (Fig. 3), better known as Cassava beer or masato in Spanish. The fermented drink is brewed in each family, mainly by women, who first boil the cassava and chew it to add saliva, which catalyze the fermentation process. It takes a few days to prepare the drink. Brewing atsua xeati requires a certain mastery of skills, and being a good brewer gives her a high status; villager would call her “a wise woman who has a wide knowledge”. The drink is usually prepared either for a gathering or as a reward for a collective work, such as clearing of the field.7 Then, they prepare cassava flour, atsua potó in Shipibo language. To make flour, villagers in Dos de Mayo first put sweet cassava in water for a few (3–4) days until they get fermented and bubbles come out, either by putting them in a bag and leaving them in the river, or putting them with enough water in canoe and covering them

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Fig. 1 Harvesting cassava from below the flood water

Fig. 2 Gathering harvested cassava into piles

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Fig. 3 Woman preparing cassava liquor and adding saliva for fermentation

with banana leaves (Fig. 4). Then, the villagers are dried for a few more days by putting some weight such as timber on them. Later, they crush dry them for a few more days, putting it with a net to flour in basket and roast in on an iron plate (Fig. 5). While processing it, the villagers say cheerfully, “We will eat atsuapoto, it will sound nice, mushi-mushi.” However, they seldom prepare it unless their fields get soaked, because it takes a considerable amount of effort. Indeed, no one in the village owns an iron plate, so the villagers must borrow one from someone in a nearby village. There is no bitter cassava in the village, and the villagers have never seen it. However, the process they make sweet cassava flour is strikingly similar to the customary technique in other parts of Amazon (Lancaster et al. 1982:31–36).

4 The Floods and Reevaluation of Cassava The villagers of Dos de Mayo make efficient use of the higher floodplain, lower floodplain, as well as the highland, according to their different ecological characteristics. The high floodplain is especially important for their agriculture, and there is even a specific name (nashoba) for it in the Shipibo language. The two consecutive floods

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Fig. 4 Process preparing cassava flour

of an enormous scale in 2011 and 2012, however, taught the villagers the lesson that while the floodplain can be quite fertile ground for cultivation, it is vulnerable when hit by a catastrophic natural disaster. This section describes how the villagers started to plant more sweet cassava after the first flood, and how they coped with the second one. We also discuss the difference between sweet cassava and bananas, especially why they use only sweet cassava to brew alcoholic beverage. The Reason why the Villagers were Reluctant to Plant Cassava Even before the 2011 flood, the villagers had already been aware of necessity and the importance of planting cassava in the highland, but they were reluctant to do so. There were several reasons behind their unwillingness. Firstly, clearing a field for cassava in the highland is not an easy task, while they prefer bananas to cassava and have such a fertile land in the floodplain to plant bananas. Another reason is that, even when the village last underwent a large flood in 1998, the flood subsided soon enough that they didn’t suffer such drastic consequences as in 2011, so the villagers were optimistic about the safety of their plants in the floodplain. It is also worth mentioning that, since the timber production had been introduced to the village in 2009, the project diverted villagers’ time and attention from diversifying their agricultural activities. The villagers said they were too busy to clear the land in highland for cassava. While this does not necessarily mean that the Shipibo

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Fig. 5 Villagers roasting cassava on a iron plate

people would have opened a field in the highland had they not been occupied with such projects, it is possible to point out that this was one of the reasons that kept them postponing the opening of a field on the highland. I have heard some villagers complaining, “we have no time for fishing,” because of the timber production project and meetings to take decisions as the village as a whole about the issues related to the project. Under such circumstance, it was not easy to force themselves to slash, burn and clear cassava field in highland. Planting Sweet Cassava to Recover from the Flood In 2009, before the two consecutive extreme floods, all the sweet cassava fields had been located on the highlands. However, after the first extreme flood in 2011, as I mentioned earlier, some villagers planted sweet cassava on the higher floodplain, as well as on the highlands, where the soil had become extremely fertile thanks to the previous year’s flood. It is also worth noting that no one believed there would be an extreme flood again in the following year. It is worth noting that they planted sweet cassava before replanting bananas, their favorite staple food. In March 2012, many villagers told me that they still had not cleared the banana fields damaged by the previous year’s flood. They gave priority to sweet cassava because it grows much faster. Sweet cassava can be harvested in 4 months, while bananas can be harvested only after 9 months, even if they plant a

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sapling as tall as a man (about 1.5 m). Thus, they planted sweet cassava first, before restoring the banana fields. In December 2012, the extreme flood reached the higher floodplain fields, again, and the people in the village had to harvest sweet cassava from under the water, as explained in the Sect. 3. However, as the water receded sooner than in 2011 and because bananas are water-resistant for approximately four weeks, bananas did not get damaged by the extreme flood a year earlier; moreover, it may be possible to point out that bananas even benefitted from the second flood. The Significance of Sweet Cassava and Bananas Revisited The lesson from the disaster was that planting only bananas on the higher floodplain puts them at risk. Thus, planting sweet cassava is important for risk hedging. Simultaneously, the cultural importance of planting sweet cassava cannot be neglected. Bananas have gained more importance in Shipibo daily life in terms of calorie intake since they are easier to grow, and villagers prefer bananas to cassava as for the taste as well. This is evident in the fact that I heard them complain many times saying “I don’t want to eat more cassava. I am fed up with cassava” when they were waiting for the flood to subside. Nevertheless, the Shipibo people learned that planting sweet cassava is vital for risk hedging. Likewise, they realized the cultural importance of planting sweet cassava from which they brew an alcoholic beverage that is always shared by everyone and possess a high importance in their social life. Technically, it is possible to brew a beverage from bananas, but it would be difficult to replace the sweet cassava beverage. When they brew liquor from sweet cassava, they harvest a huge amount of sweet cassava at once, brew a large amount and drink it over the course of a few days. On the contrary, it is impossible to make such a large quantity using bananas, for bananas cannot be harvested in such large quantities at once. Not only are bananas grown in small scattered fields principally for selfconsumption but also banana harvest is hard to predict in advance, ultimately causing inconsistency in the timing as well as the amount of harvest. Once, too many bananas ripened at once, so the villagers brewed a banana drink. However, the fermented drink did not last more than two days. Meanwhile, sweet cassava can be harvested in huge quantities because it can be left underground without worrying that it will become over-ripe like bananas.

5 Concluding Remarks This chapter describes how extreme floods in 2011 and 2012 led to a reevaluation of sweet cassava by the villagers of a Shipibo indigenous community. My onsite research suggests that, apart from saving the village from lack of food, sweet cassava brought social change in villagers’ life on two aspects. First, emergency harvest of sweet cassava obliged the villagers to work collectively: the harvest, and the preparation of cassava flour. However, the Shipibo people

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who are regarded as “lazy people” by other indigenous groups and mestizos found the whole process of the collective work pleasing. Another significant aspect is the brewing and sharing of the cassava beer. It is very important for Shipibo people to invite others to eat (Behrens 1992), once the food is ready, they leave the house and shout, “Fuman pi” (Come and eat!). In recent years, however, this custom has been reduced due to several different reason, such as the decrease in their catch and game harvest (Ohashi 2015). The cassava beer rejuvenates this custom because it is something they can produce when they want, unlike bush meat or big fish that depends on the results of hunting or fishing, Thus, sweet cassava enables them to maintain this culture of inviting others. Harvesting and processing sweet cassava during the flood required collective work, and the villagers seemed to enjoy the process. Apart from the liquor, they made cassava flour. Processing cassava flour is demanding work, but the “lazy” Shipibo people enjoyed it. It seemed to me that both drinking cassava liquor and preparing cassava flour reinforced relationships among villagers. Apparently, both collective works preparing cassava flour and drinking cassava beer together reinforced relationships among villagers. In daily life, bananas have replaced sweet cassava as the major staple food for the Shipibo. Yet sweet cassava remains an important crop, both as a staple food in case of emergency and as the only ingredient of the traditional alcoholic beverage. Notes (1) The ethnic classification at least gives an idea about how meticulous their notion of the “bananas-plantains” is. Whether they are of 22 different species still remains to be tested; perhaps some of them are the different cultivars of the same species. For this reason, a rather ambiguous term, “types”, is used instead of species, a more precise word. (2) Baleé (2011) is a harsh critic of the common theory (Métraux 1948) that the first bananas were brought to the Americas by Spanish conquistadores through Hispaniola Island. He argues that bananas were already in South America before the Conquest, based on his survey of linguistic data, and that in several different indigenous languages, vocabulary for bananas existed. (3) It is noteworthy that the government’s indigenous policy probably benefited indigenous groups by giving them land rights, it has also affected Shipibo’s traditional semi-nomadic lifestyle. They moved seeking fish. When their fields were washed away by flood, they looked for a new place to establish themselves, according to the floodplain dynamics. Nowadays, people settled in their villages and “native communities” are separated by fixed borders. Despite the dynamic changes of the floodplains, the Shipibo has lost a big portion of that mobility. Unlike Dos de Mayo, some villages have no highland within their own territory. It is interesting to see how those villages coped with the floods. It should have affected them even more than Dos de Mayo.

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(4) To gather information about the local variety of bananas planted in Dos de Mayo village, the author showed villagers a fruit (bunch), or plant of bananas and asked them what they call it (while gathering data, I always asked the same question to two of them, at least). In most cases, the way they call it coincided with the words used by others. The author has not been able to examine this classification by villagers genetically. Therefore, the author is not sure whether those species are genetically different indeed, but have classified most of them using Simmonds method (Simmonds 1966). For details, see the Appendix. Bananas are called paranta in Shipibo language, resembling plátano in Spanish. Many of their names are derived from objects or animals they resemble. At least one of them has two names depending on whether they are ripe or not (Table 1, No. 16: teyu paranta and mano paranta). In some cases, the ways villagers call the plant do not coincide, but they do understand which plants are which. The author assumes that some plants have different names, but this topic requires further examination. (5) Most of the sweet casaava fields are located in the highland, but one of the villagers cultivated a small field of sweet cassava (0.3 ha) in the lower floodplain area, which was flooded annually. This villager started the harvest only when the water receded. (6) As for Shipibo’s notion of the ownership of the land, see Ohashi et al. (2011). According to my observation, they have an idea that the right of those worked to harvest is stronger than that of the owner of the land. (7) For more detailed information, see Ohashi (forthcoming). Cassava beer and its cultural meaning: brewing sweet cassava drink in Peruvian Amazon, Biostory (The society of Biosophia Studies), Vol. 37 (in Japanese). (8) Commercial fishing and deforestation have strongly reduced their catch and game harvest, but probably that is not the only reason why their sharing custom has declined. Another possible factor is that connections with external economic and socio-political entities such as lumber enterprise and forest conservation project agents provided cash income to the village, benefiting some of the villagers more than others. While the cash income benefited the villagers in several way, it also created certain sense of inequality among them and caused frictions within the village. See Ohashi (2015) for more detail.

6 Appendix

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Table 1 Local Bananas Classification Local name

Meaning in Shipibo

Simmonds’s genomic classification

The way they eat

1

Canchin paranta

A plant of palm family

AA

Raw

2

Bahua paranta

Yellow-naped parrot

AAA

Raw

3

Lima paranta

Lima (Peruvian capital)

Raw

4

Rontun paranta

—

Raw

5 6

Paurin paranta

—

Raw

Yakaa paranta

Sitting

Raw

Ro paranta

Atelidae

Raw

Shoiti paranta

For roasting

Bushi paranta

Penis

8

Chiyuru paranta

—

Ani paranta

Big

9

Chimai paranta

—

Wakamanchan

Oxhorn

7

AAB

Cook Cook Cook

10

Sapen paranta

Manatee

Cook

11

Manzana* paranta

Apple

Raw

12

Cuchijina paranta

Pig’s tail

Cook

13

Iza paranta

Small bird

14

Panchaa paranta

Flat

15

Paro paranta

—

16

Cook ABB

Both Both

Teyu paranta (unripe)

Bitter

Mano paranta (ripe)

—

Unknown

Cook

Raw

17

Nawashian paranta

Yellow headed caraara

Cook

18

Campion paranta

—

Cook

19

Cashibu paranta

—

Cook

20

Sawa paranta

—

Cook

21

Cinco paranta

—

Raw

22

Chinton paranta

—

Cook

Note (1) Classfied by the author according to Simmonds’s classification crieria (1966). The genemic classification “unknown”, there are few planted in Dos de Mayo village and I did not identify see the flowers and bunches (fruits) Note (2) Ohashi (2013: 91)

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References Baleé W (2011) New data for the existence of banana cultivation in coastal Brazil before 1492. In: Wright JB (ed) Encounter, engagement, and exchange: how native populations of the Americas transformed the world. Papers of fifty-third annual meeting of the seminar on the acquisition of latin american library materials. SALALM Secretariat Latin American Library Tulane University, pp l3–36 Behrens CA (1986) Shipibo food categorization and preference: relationships between indigenous and western dietary concepts. Am Anthropol 88(3):647–658 Behrens CA (1989) The scientific basis for Shipibo soil classification and land use: changes in soil-plant associations with cash cropping. Am Anthropol 91(1):83–100 Behrens CA (1992) Labor specialization and the formation of markets for food in a Shipibo subsistence economy. Hum Ecol 20(4):435–460 Bergman RW (1980) Amazon economics: the simplicity of Shipibo Indian wealth. University Microfilms International, Michigan Boster JS (1984) Classification, cultivation, and selection of Aguaruna cultivars of manihot esculenta (Euphorbiaceae). In: Advances in economic botany. Ethnobotany in the Neotropics, vol 1, pp 34–47 Denevan MW (2001) Cultivated landscapes of native amazonia and the Andes. Oxford University Press, Oxford Dufour D (1992) Nutritional ecology in tropical rain forest of amazon. Am J Hum Biol 4:197–207 Hern MW (1992) Shipibo polygyny and partrilocality. Am Ethnol 119(3):501–521 Hiraoka M (1985) Floodplain farming in the Peruvian amazon. Geograph Rev Japan 58:1–23 Kvist LP, Nebel G (2001) A review of Peruvian flood plain forests ecosystems, inhabitants and resource use. For Ecol Manage 150:3–26 Lancaster PA, Ingram TS, Lim MY, Coursey DG (1982) Traditional cassava-based foods: survey of processing techniques economic botany 36(1):12–45 Lathrap DW (1970) The upper amazon. Thames & Hudson, New York Mayorga CGA, Palma PGB, Sandval-Cañas GJ, Ordoñez-Araque RH (2021) Ancestral fermented indigenous beverages from South America made from cassava (Manihot esculenta). Biol Food Sci Technol Int 41:360–367. https://doi.org/10.1590/fst.15220 Meggers BJ (1996) Amazonia man and culture in a counterfeit paradise, Aldine Atherton, Chicago Métraux A (1948) The Tupinambá. In: Steward J (ed) Handbook of South American Indians. (Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 143), vol 3. Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, pp 95–133 Ohashi M (2013) Subsistence cultivation of banana in the floodplains of the Amazon. A case of Shipibo, Biostory 19:85–94 (in Japanese) Ohashi M (2015) Whom to share with? Dynamics to the food sharing system of the Shipibo in the Peruvian Amazon. In Tanaka M, Inoue M (eds) Collaborative governance of forest toward sustainable forest resource utilization. Tokyo, University of Tokyo Press, pp 223–245 Ohashi M, Meguro T, Tanaka M, Inoue M (2011) Current banana distribution in the Peruvian Amazon Basin: with attention to the notion of ‘aquinquin’ in Shipibo society. Tropics 20(1):25–40 Ohashi M (Forthcoming) Cassava Beer and its cultural meaning: brewing sweet cassava drink in Peruvian Amazon, Biostory 37 (in Japanese) Padoch C, Ayres JM, Pinedo-Vasquez M, Henderson A (1999) Várzea: diversity, development, and conservation of amazonia’s whitewater floodplains. Adv Econ Bot vol 13 New York, The New York Botanical Press Roe PG (1982) Cosmic Zygote: Cosmology in the Amazon basin. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick Salick J, Cellinese N, Knapp S (1997) Indigenous diversity of Cassava: generation, maintenance, use and loss among the Amuesha, Peruvian upper amazon. Econ Bot.51(1):6–19 Simmonds NW (1966) Bananas, 2nd edn. Longman, New York

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Valenzuela PM (2000) Major categories in Shipibo ethnobiological taxonomy. Anthropol Linguist 42(1):1–36 Valenzuela PM, Pinedo LM, Sani Y, Maddieson I (2001) Shipibo. J Int Phon Assoc 31(2):281–285 Wali A, Odland JC (2016) Introduction to the volume. In: Fieldiana Anthropology. Chicago, Field Museum of Natural History

The Constructed Biodiversity, Forest Management and Use of Fire in Ancient Amazon: An Archaeological Testimony on the Last 14,000 Years of Indigenous History Laura P. Furquim, Eduardo G. Neves, Myrtle P. Shock, and Jennifer Watling

1 Introduction The study of Amazonian biomes and their peoples has an important role in the development of modern science. Since the early eighteenth century, with Charles Marie de la Condamine, western scholars have roamed the tropics in search of answers to deeper questions, such as the emergence of biological diversity (Safier 2014). Likewise, in South America, since the first Europeans arrived on the continent in the early sixteenth century, they were confronted in the Andean highlands by centralized and hierarchical states, such as the Inca Empire. Such evidence of monumental architecture, abundant in the Andes and also along the Desert Coast of the Pacific Ocean, was employed to establish a picture of the ancient history of South America that remains strong until the present: the notion that the Desert Coast and the Andean highlands were cradles of civilization, whereas the tropical lowlands had a peripheral role in the human occupation of the continent. Such a perspective was further reinforced by the hypothesis that the ecological conditions of the humid tropics would be inimical to the establishment of large, sedentary, and permanent settlements in the past. According to this view, environmental factors such as lack of terrestrial animal protein or the widespread distribution of nutrient-poor soils would impose a ceiling with strong limitations for human L. P. Furquim · E. G. Neves (B) · J. Watling Laboratory of Tropical Archaeology, Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] M. P. Shock Archaeology Department, Institute for the Science of Society, Federal University of Western Pará, Santarém, Brazil J. Watling Laboratory of Microarchaeology, Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 K. Ikeya and W. Balée (eds.), Global Ecology in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9_15

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occupation and prevent the establishment of long-term and stable occupations. As a result of these endeavors, tropical rainforests have retained, over the years, an image of being pristine environments scarcely occupied by humans over the millennia. The underlying reasoning for this assessment was based on “degeneration” theories that considered the tropics as marginal to human history due to supposed environmental limitations (Noelli and Menezes Ferreira 2007). With neocolonialism, such perspectives eventually translated into modern public policies for the occupation of these areas, frequently fraught with significant social and ecological problems, such as those happening at this very moment. Archaeological research carried out in the last thirty years in the Amazon has contributed to changing this picture. It is becoming clear that the Amazon was densely settled at the time of European arrival and that the societies that lived there displayed a wide variety of patterns of social and political organization (Heckenberger and Neves 2009). If, in the Andean past, stone was widely used as raw material for monumental architecture, in the Amazon, soils filled the role of construction material. As a consequence, only recently have archaeologists recognized that ditches, channels, earthworks and mounds covered by forest were built by ancient Amazonians (Prümers and Betancourt 2014; Heckenberger et al. 2003; Rostain 2012; Schaan 2010). Such new evidence shows that the Amazon was also a cradle of early cultural developments but that its ancient societies had different histories than expected by previous hypotheses. There is, therefore, room for new theories that move away from traditional classificatory typologies, as well as a new synthesis of world archaeology that incorporates such recent developments. Archaeology in the Amazon has the potential to elucidate long environmental histories involving people, plants, animals, and landscapes in order to understand how dialectical deep history unfolded during millennia. Patterns of tree and soil distributions associated with archaeological sites can be understood as living artifacts, worked over centuries or millennia in the shaping of biomes that have a strong indigenous component, and whose intensity is yet to be better understood (Balée 2008; Levis et al. 2017; ter Steege et al. 2013; Lins et al. 2015; Souza et al. 2016a, b; Cassino et al. 2019; Clement et al. 2010). In this chapter we aim to explore some of the patterns revealed by archaeology as it studies records of human occupation in the Amazon that span most of the Holocene, particularly the continuities and changes in environmental management, accumulated in the form of knowledge among traditional populations (traditional ecological knowledge, (cf. Smith 2012) and materialized in the current floral biodiversity of the region.

2 Early Patterns of Interaction There is still controversy regarding the age of early Indigenous occupation of South America, as well as the productive strategies and the degree of environmental impact these first settlers had (Vialou et al. 2017; Bueno et al. 2013; Boëda et al. 2016; Posth et al. 2018). It is known that the occupation of South America may have

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already extended to the Southern Cone of the continent at 14,147 cal. BP where people and several species of extinct mammals lived together (Dillehay et al. 2015; Politis et al. 2016). In tropical lowland South America, occupations from the Pleistocene/Holocene transition were apparently defined by sparse populations, which renders difficult inferences about migration routes or dispersion patterns. Nevertheless an early pattern of recurrent occupation of significant places such as rockshelters and areas adjacents to major rapids can be found. Sites located many miles apart, such as Toca do Meio, Lapa do Boquete, and Pedra Pintada Cave were already occupied by about 12,000 years ago [12,440 ± 230 and 11,145 ± 135 BP (Roosevelt et al. 1991, Boëda et al. 2016)]. Just over 1,000 years later, many tropical lowland biomes were already occupied by groups with diversified food processing technologies. Remains associated with such groups include artifacts such as projectile points, hooks, flakes and axes, indicating a large spectrum generalist diet that included fish and small to medium-sized animals as well as tubers, palm fruits, and other fruits (Shock and Moraes 2019; Pereira et al. 2018; Roosevelt 1992). Pedra Pintada cave, located adjacent to the lower Amazon floodplain, sits in a transitional environment between forests and savannas. Excavations there yielded the oldest securely dated archaeological context for Amazonia thus far (ca 12,400 BP) (Roosevelt et al. 1996). Archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological records evidence a diet based on fishing, hunting of terrestrial and aquatic animals (such as turtles), and the consumption of palm fruits, tree fruits and nuts. Large amounts of fruit pericarps from the Arecaceae family (palms) were identified, some of them widely consumed today, such as tucumã (Astrocaryum vulgare), buriti (Mauritia flexuosa), bacaba (cf. Oenocarpus bacaba), macaúba relatives (Acrocomia spp.) and other species such as Attalea microcarpa, and Attalea spectabilis. There is also evidence of the consumption of fruits such as jutaí (Hymenaea parvifolia), pitomba (Talisia esculenta), and murici (Byrsonima sp.). These remains represent a generalist use of resources from forested and open areas (Roosevelt 1991; Roosevelt et al. 1996; Silva 2016). Ecotones and transitional environments between forests and savannas seem to have had a prominent role in plant management and domestication from the beginning of human occupation of the neotropics (Roosevelt et al. 1996; Piperno and Pearsal 2000). Indeed, at Pedra Pintada and other sites outside Amazonia with even earlier dates of occupation, such as Santa Elina rockshelter, evidence of the combined use of species typical of distinct biomes were found (Roosevelt et al. 1996; Bachelet and Scheel-Ybert 2015). These areas may have functioned as laboratories for the cultivation and selection of species used by Indigenous people of the past, since the transport of plant varieties out of their habitat requires a process of change and adaptation. Nowadays, however, these are the most ecologically fragile and threatened environments in the neotropics, resulting from increasing deforestation and climate change that weaken forest transitions and augment fire occurrence (Watling et al. 2018; Flores et al. 2012). Domesticated plants known today (Clement 1999) were already consumed during the Early Holocene, whether locally or elsewhere in South America. At the Teotônio

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Fig. 1 ADE (Amazon Dark Earth) soil profile. Cultivated plants in the Teotônio site during Early and Middle Holocene. Upper Madeira River, Rondônia, Brazil

site, located adjacent to large rapids on the south bank of the Madeira River, SW Amazonia, lithic artifacts of the Girau phase (9,520 – 9,400 cal. BP) one finds in deposits associated with botanical remains evidence for use of palms, legumes (Fabaceae), ariá/lleren (Calathea cf. allouia) and possibly other root crops, pequiá (Caryocar sp.), guava (Psidium sp.) and Brazil nut (Bertholettia excelsa) (Watling et al. 2018). In subsequent occupations, bean (Phaseolus sp.) starch grains were identified in small quartz flakes of the Massangana phase (ca. 6,500 – 5,500 cal. BP), alongside manioc (Manihot esculenta) and squash (Cucurbita sp.) phytoliths. Such contexts show a diversified and non-specialized pattern based on management and cultivation of tree species, root crops, legumes, and squashes (Fig. 1). The transition to the Middle Holocene (ca. 8,200 – 4,200 BP) was marked by climatic changes towards more dry conditions in southwest Amazonia, which caused the temporary shifting of ecotonal (forest/savanna) boundaries in the region (Mayle et al. 2007; Pessenda et al. 1997, 2001). Changes in species composition were accompanied by a process of anthropogenic environmental changes close to archaeological sites. Through co-evolutionary processes involving people and landscapes, indigenous peoples engaged in the controlled use of fire—aimed at clearing small areas for housing and/or cultivation—and the encouragement, fostering and introduction of useful species, involving agroforestry techniques that cultivated plants with both short and long cycles (Rindos 1983; Clement et al. 2010; Levis et al. 2018). The Monte Castelo shell mound, in SW Amazonia, offers a record of occupation that spans the Middle Holocene, between ca. 7,000 to 4,200 BP (Miller 2013; Furquim 2018; Pugliese et al. 2017). There, the consumption of both exogenous and local plant species involved seasonal cultivation and the management of neighboring areas (Furquim et al. 2021). Subsistence involved cultivated plants such as maize (Zea mays), squash (Cucurbita sp.), sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) and yams (Dioscorea sp.), combined with managed tree crops such as Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa),

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Fig. 2 Monte Castelo Shellmound, an artificial island built around 6,000 B.P. in an ecotonal transition between flooded savannas and forests. Middle Guaporé basin, Rondônia, Brazil

cocoa/cupuaçu (Theobroma spp.), murici (Byrsonima sp.) and guava (Psidium sp.) (Furquim 2018; Hilbert et al. 2017; Furquim et al. 2021). There is also evidence that a local variety of wild rice (Oryza sp.) was brought under selection and domestication, although its cultivation was later abandoned by indigenous populations of the region (Hilbert 2017) (Fig. 2).

3 Changes in Soils: The Anthropogenic Dark Earth on Amazon Amazonian soils are made up mainly of orange and reddish acidic soils insufficiently fertile for widespread cultivation (Quesada et al. 2011), especially of plants that require high soil nutrient content, such as maize. Around 5,500 years ago, Indigenous people began to transform soils through composting and subsequently planting small gardens next to houses on these spots (Schmidt et al. 2014), a practice that was allied to environmental management including fire use and suppression, and the selection of useful plant species (Arroyo-Kalin 2012). These same practices are carried out today by, for instance, the Nukak Indians of the Colombian Amazon (Politis 1996a, b) and the Kuikuro of the Upper Xingu Indigenous Territory (Schmidt 2013). Such modified soils, called “Terras pretas” or Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE), have a dark color that contrasts with adjacent natural soils, due to the accumulation of charcoal

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and organic matter (Schmidt et al. 2014; Arroyo-Kalin 2012; Glaser and Birk 2012). It is estimated that ADEs currently occupy 1% of the Amazon territory (Kern et al. 2004; Levis et al. 2014), or around 70.000 sq km, roughly the size of Ireland. The oldest identified ADEs are located in the Upper Madeira River basin, SW Amazonia, at Teotonio and Garbin sites, with dates reaching back to at least 6,500 years ago (Watling et al. 2018; Zuse 2014; Caldarelli and Kipnis 2017). Compared to the typical soils of this area, these early ADEs have higher, more basic pHs and higher levels of phosphorus (P), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), zinc (Zn), manganese (Mn), copper (Cu) and carbon (C) (Macedo et al. 2019; Bernardes et al. 2017). In the Central Amazon their formation appears to correspond to a process that culminated in the creation of mosaics of fertile soils inside forested areas. At the Açutuba site, located on the lower Negro River, for example, stratigraphic profiles normally show abrupt transitions between underlying strata with natural soils and overlying strata with anthropic soils with abundant presence of charcoal: from a density of 10 fragments per liter of sediment in the natural soil, to 83 fragments per liter of sediment in the occupation layers (Smith 2012; Silva et al. 2016). The relationship between the use of fire and the formation of ADEs is related to the establishment of agroforestry systems and the opening of habitation areas. In some sites of the Central Amazon, such as Laguinho, there is an increase in the concentration of grassy species—potential indicators of open areas—such as Setaria sp., six varieties of grasses (Poaceae), two of Cyperaceae, and species that indicate secondary vegetation such as passion fruit (Passiflora sp.), two varieties each of Amaranthaceae, Solanaceae, Bromeliaceae, Cecropiaceae, Brassicaceae, Commelinaceae and three varieties of Fabaceae (Lima 2011). An increase in phytoliths from grasses and other herbs is also recorded in ADEs at Hatahara, on the lower Negro River (Cascon 2010), Teotonio (Watling et al. 2020), and the Porto site in Santarém (Alves 2016). Around 1,000 BP, these anthropogenic soils reached a massive scale, with the effect that today they support a much richer vegetation of useful species (i.e., greater agroecological diversity) than adjacent soils (Souza et al. 2016a, b; Lins et al. 2015). The increase in the heterogeneity of anthropogenic landscapes that resulted from ADE formation possibly led to an increase in the diversity of plants grown at that time, as suggested by the archaeobotanical database (cf. Furquim 2018). Often associated with black ADEs (terras pretas) are brown ADEs (terras mulatas) (Arroyo-Kalin 2017; Denevan 2006) which exhibit the same characteristics but on a smaller scale, with fewer cultural remains such as ceramic shards (Matos 2015). These patches have been interpreted as cultivation areas, since the much lower quantity or absence of cultural remains is not consistent with the dense occupations that formed the black ADE patches (Arroyo-Kalin 2012). In short, the archaeological record of the Amazon indicates (1) plant domestication and management since the Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene; (2) soil modifications resulting from daily activities in the Middle Holocene from at least about 6,500 BP, and (3) increase in density of soil and forest management from the Late Holocene, around 3,000 BP (Neves et al. 2004).

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4 Biodiversity of Plants During the Holocene An archaeobotanical database was built from published data and unpublished reports from across 188 archaeological sites in the Neotropics. We gathered in total data from 76 families and 240 species of plants identified from seeds, charcoal, phytoliths, starch grains and pollen preserved in sediments and archaeological artifacts (see complete list of references in Furquim 2018). A broad look indicates some patterns over time. First, there is a gradual increase in the agrobiodiversity generated by indigenous peoples in the past; second, the combined use of wild and domesticated plants seems to have been consistent, including combined cultivation of plants of short and long cycles, as well as a permanent combination of fruits, tubers, grains, seeds and nuts. During the Early Holocene there is evidence that 46 genera of plants were used, while in the Middle Holocene this number increases to 75, and further to 134 during the Late Holocene. Thus, there was an increase in agrobiodiversity because there was no specialization in cultivation. Plants currently consumed as staple foods, such as maize and manioc were present, but did not occupy the predominant role they have today or during the colonial period (Roosevelt et al. 1996; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Fausto and Neves 2018). Some of these plants (such as squash and beans) were cultivated by Indigenous people of the Americas as early as 10,000 years ago, before the beginning of ceramic production, the widespread establishment of village life, the formation of the first ADEs, showing that management and cultivation practices were an integral part of traditional Indigenous knowledge since the beginning of human occupation of South America. There has lately been an extensive debate surrounding the construction of anthropogenic landscapes, anthropogenic forests, the increase in alpha (local) and beta (regional) biodiversity by indigenous peoples in the past, and the relationship between biodiversity and diversity of useful plants (Balée 2000; Neves 2012; ter Steege et al. 2013; Lins et al. 2015; Clement et al. 2015; Junqueira et al. 2010; Arroyo-Kalin 2018). In the Amazon, these processes are manifest bothin the creation of anthropogenic forest patches near archaeological sites—in which agrobiodiversity is higher than in other places—as in creating a situation of species hyperdominance in the Amazon as a whole. The effects of these processes are long lasting and appear to be dispersed in “waves” of human disturbance, with housing sites as central points, spreading through gardens, clearings, areas of management, hunting and collection, and encompass various environments, between rivers banks, terraces, floodplains and lowlands. Anthropic forests are landscapes with palimpsests of stories connecting people and plants which can emerge through many processes that may or not include human action—such as plant succession, ending the seed dormancy through fire, the removal of vegetation, or the management of competing plants (Politis 1999; Caromano et al. 2016; Lins et al. 2015) (Fig. 3). The Amazon has about 16,000 species of trees, of which only 227 (1.4%) account for half of the total number of individuals. Among these hyperdominant species (ter

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Fig. 3 Meliponid apiary in the middle of an açaí orchard, community Ponta da Castanha, Tefé Lake, Middle Solimões River, Amazonas, Brazil

Steege et al. 2013) there are about 20 species of domesticated or managed plants, whose dispersion and concentration was possibly influenced by human action in the past (Levis et al. 2017). In the graph below (Fig. 4) we selected these 20 hyperdominant domesticated plants to explore how they help us in understanding the antiquity of Amazonian landscape construction. Among the hyperdominant species of palms (Arecaceae) with some degree of domestication are açaí-do-mato (Euterpe precatoria) and açaí-do-Pará (Euterpe oleracea), patauá (Oenocarpus bataua), and murumuru (Astrocaryum murumuru), these having the larger populations and total concentration at present. Their chronological distribution in the archaeological record, however, is quite different. Despite the documented use of the genus Euterpe sp. since the Early Holocene it is not possible to assess which of the açaí species is present in the sites from this period. It is known that açaí was managed since about 2,000 years BP, and it is linked to forest areas in the Brazilian and Colombian Amazon where there is occurrence of sites with black earths (ADEs). The same can be seen with bacaba (Oenocarpus bacaba), the genre which is represented from ca. 11,000 BP, but whose species remains dated only from the Middle Holocene. Other palm trees, such as patauá and murumuru were managed since the Early Holocene, about 11,000 years ago, and are present in several sites, such as rockshelters and open air sites, with or without anthropogenic soils. Needles to say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, given the problems involved in identifying specific palm species in the archaeobotanical record, since much of the only genus (macroremains) or family/subtribe (phytoliths) can be identified.

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Fig. 4 Chronological distribution of the domesticated hyperdominant species of the Amazon forest. Discontinuous lines indicate that the distribution along the period is estimated (Furquim 2018)

There is less accurate information about fruit trees. Taperebá (Spondias mombin) was identified only in the Middle Orinoco River about c. 4,000 BP, and in the Middle Solimões River about 1,000 BP, associated with ADEs. There is no evidence yet that shows the antiquity of the specific use of the rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis), cupuí (Theobroma subincana) cacauí (Theobroma speciosum), abiu (Pouteria caimito) pequiarana (Caryocar glabrum), bacupari (Garcinia macrophylla), inga (Inga edulis) or Amazon tree grape (Porouma cecropifolia), due to difficulties in taxonomic identification of many archaeological remains. We have evidence of the use of the chocolate genus Theobroma in the above mentioned Monte Castelo shell mound about 4,500 BP, and at the São João site, located in the Middle Solimões at about 1,000 BP, as well as of Theobroma cacao in the Western Amazon around 5,200 BP (Zarrillo et al. 2018). Seeds of the genera Caryocar sp. and Spondias sp. have dates of the Late

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Fig. 5 (a) A Brazil nut orchard over the ADE (Amazon Dark Earth) archaeological site Ponta da Castanha (Solimões River basin). Brazil nut modern seed (b), experimental burned seed bark for archaeobotanical reference collection (c), and archaeological seed bark from Sol de Campinas site (d)

Holocene in Colombian amazon and Southwestern Amazonia (Watling et al. 2018), while Pouteria sp. and Inga sp. are dated about c. 10,000 BP in Santa Elina rock shelter, southwest of the Amazon. The Fabaceae family in general (which includes >1,200 species of leguminous trees and herbs in Amazonia, including Inga sp.) is frequently found in early and mid-Holocene contexts throughout the South American continent, and likely comprised an important early resource long before the common bean (Phaseolus sp.) was adopted into lowland economies. It has been ethnographically shown that even small groups of hunter-gatherers can change the configuration of useful species in their surroundings and create more productive environments (Balée 2008; Posey and Balée 1989; Politis 1996a, b). Such practices are part of agroforestry practices (Denevan 2006), reviewed by Levis et al. (2018). The evidence presented here, albeit preliminary, indicates that the hyperdominant effect seen in the composition of the Amazon flora developed as part of a co-evolutionary process between people and plants that started at the beginning of its occupation. From Brazil Nut to Brazil Nut Orchards The Brazil nut tree (Bertholletia excelsa) is the tree species with the most ancient and widespread use in Amazonia. There are traces of the use of Brazil nut seeds from about 11,000 BP at Pedra Pintada cave, from about 9,000 BP in southwestern Amazonia at Teotônio site, and around 7,000 BP at the Monte Castelo shell mound, also in southwestern Amazonia. Brazil nut is a species that benefits from clearings in the forest for its growth (Mori and Prance 1990). The presence of large Brazil

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nut groves associated with archaeological sites is a constant pattern throughout the Amazon basin, and has been identified by many researchers as one of the main indications of human presence in the past (Balée 2008; Shepard 2011; Cassino et al. 2019) (Fig. 5). This association is due to the combination of a cyclical practice of plant and animal management, in which the opening of forested areas for cultivation also created spaces for the development of seeds, probably carried and buried by dispersers such as the agouti (Dasyprocta leporina), which were attracted to the areas. The agouti themselves would be attracted by the presence of the Brazil nut orchards, then used as a hunting ground by indigenous peoples, completing the cycle. Knowledge of these succession cycles between fields, cultivation fields and Brazil nut trees is widespread among many contemporary groups such as the Wajãpi, who recognize these plants as cultigens of the agoutis (Oliveira 2016), and perform management activities and periodic cleanings of the stands. The greatest spread of the Brazil nut tree seems to have occurred, however, during the Late Holocene, when it occupied vast areas of the Amazon basin, including the Negro, Solimões, Madeira, and Amazon river basins, in regions both with and without ADEs (Thomas et al. 2015). In the Central Amazon, some of these contemporary Brazil nut orchards (dated by dendrochronology) are more than 400 years old (Andrade et al. 2019; Scoles and Gribel 2015), confirming the resilience of these landscapes and management practices.

5 Palaeoenvironment, Paleofires, and Agroforestry Management in the Past In the Neotropics the management of plants and the use of fire had key roles in the construction of landscapes (Piperno and Pearsall 2000). The use of fire in environmental management was already practiced by humans long before the colonization of the Americas, probably embedded in basic systems of natural resource management (Boivin et al. 2016; Roberts et al. 2017). The management systems of contemporary indigenous peoples provide the baseline used for archaeology to identify the presence of such systems in the past (Cassino et al. 2019). Among past agroforestry management practices, the use of fire played an important role, whether in the open fields, to release nutrients trapped in plant matter into the soil, in the extermination of pests and weeds, or in preventing more severe fires ( “controlled burning”) (Levis et al. 2018). The existence of domesticated plants can be used as indirect evidence of these management strategies. In the Amazon, Clement identified 140 plant species that exhibit some degree of domestication, i.e., whose phenotypes and genotypes were modified by human selection. For such changes to be established and maintained, it was a necessary and concomitant process of landscape transformation in which whole plant populations— and the gene flow within them—were managed (Clement 1999). The richness and diversity of domesticated plants, as a result of co-evolution among people, plants,

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and landscapes (Rindos 1983; Clement et al. 2010) is an important aspect of past and present environmental management history. Genetic data show, for example, that manioc was domesticated between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago in Southwestern Amazonia (Isendahl 2011). It is important to remember that wild manioc does not reproduce vegetatively (by clone/stake) as the domesticated species does. It is likely that this feature was selected by Indigenous people so that other advantageous traits could become perennial more effectively, such as the presence of larger and more productive roots (Rival and Mckey 2008). Therefore, in the beginning, selection involved the removal and isolation of individuals to avoid crossing with wild populations, operating derived landscape changes. These practices form the basis of agroforestry systems today, and were already under way in the early Holocene. In Teotônio and Monte Castelo sites, the recovery of carbonized palm seeds, along with traces of other fruit species having populations domesticated at present (e.g., Brazil nut, pequiá, guava, and biribá) in occupation layers dating from ca. 9,000 and 7,200 years BP provides indirect evidence of agroforestry since the first occupations of the area (Furquim 2018; Watling et al. 2018). Guava (Psidium sp.), identified in both sites, as well as the early presence of root crops, suggests the use of fire in these systems, these species being associated with highly disturbed/ secondary forest areas (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6 Hearth feature dating from 6.000 B.P., associated with an ADE (Amazon Dark Earth) layer in the Teotônio site, Rondônia, Brazil

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As agroforestry systems extend far beyond inhabited areas, the evidence of their existence in the past can also be identified by paleoecological studies that reconstruct the history of vegetation and fire beyond the archaeological site, allowing a correlation between human presence and ecological changes on a larger scale (Mayle and Iriarte 2014). The most widely used proxy for detecting fire in the past is charcoal, which can be quantified and dated from sediments, soils, and lake coress. Identifying anthropogenic paleofires, however, requires an association with human activity areas, due to the possible occurrence of natural outbreaks of fire during periods of drier climate and in regions with savanna vegetation. In the savannas of Central Brazil, for example, evidence from Lake Comínia contained carbon dated to ca. 32,000 years BP, prior to human presence in the region (Ledru 2002) (but see also (Vialou et al. 2017; Araujo 2013; Parenti 2001). Many species of the savanna have evolved with fire. From the arrival of humans, however, fire probably began to be used to stimulate the production of edible fruits, control pests, and help in hunting (Mistry 1998). The paleoenvironmental record, however, can also contain traces of fires caused by farming practices and other human activities. Lake cores in the eastern Amazon (Comprida (Bush et al. 1989), Geral, Santa Maria, Saracuri (Bush et al. 2007) Curuá (Behling and da Costa 2000), Crispin (Behling and Lima da Costa 2001) Tapajós (Irion et al. 2006) and Carana (Maezumi et al. 2018), in the state of Pará), and in the southwest (Gentry and Parker, Peru (Bush et al. 2007), and Chaplin, Bella Vista (Burbridge et al. 2004), Chalalán, Santa Rosa (Urrego et al. 2013) and Rogaguado (Brugger et al. 2016), in Bolivia) record charcoal since at least 8,000 cal. yr BP, when most of these lakes were formed. Amazon forests very rarely catch fire naturally, even in places with longer dry seasons (Nepstad et al. 2004), which is why some researchers (Bush et al. 2007; Mayle and Power 2008), attribute this charcoal to human presence. In addition, charcoal input in many of these records is higher during the Middle Holocene (ca. 8,200—4,200 cal BP) than during the Late Holocene (from 4,2000 cal BP.)—a shared pattern in the savanna (Vernet 1994). The higher incidence of fire during this time could be the effect of a drier climate, which would have resulted in unmanaged anthropogenic fires (as seen recently in Acre (Aragão et al. 2007)). A similar pattern occurs in the Late Holocene, where more intense periods of El Niño correlate with higher incidence of charcoal in lakes and soils of the Amazon (Bush et al. 2008, 2017). When accompanied by pollen analysis, some of these records register the opening of the forest to plant crops (notably maize) since at least 6,320 cal. BP in the southwestern (Bush et al. 2016), and 4,300 cal. BP in the eastern (Bush et al. 2000) Amazon. Direct evidence of the management of perennial plants, however, is scarce in the paleoecological record, depending on the taxonomic resolution permitted by fossil pollen, which is often restricted to genus. Generally, a genus containing species used by people also contains species that are not used. However, a paleoecological study in Santarém (PA) quantified the abundance of annual economic genera (maize, manioc, and squash) over 8,500 years of history, and showed that they increased with the use of fire in the region from 4,500 cal. BP (Maezumi et al. 2018). Archaeobotanical studies at archaeological sites in the region also showed the intensification of these

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Fig. 7 Maize and peanut crushed by mortar in a wooden pestle for chichi production in the Palhal Village, Tupari indigenous people, Branco River, Rondônia, Brazil

agroforestry systems over time (Alves 2016). In eastern Acre, another paleoecological study found an increase in regional fires from ca. 4,000 cal. BP and subsequent proliferation of palm also interpreted as the proliferation of agroforestry practices in the Late Holocene (Watling et al. 2017). In archaeological sites located in this region, such as Sol de Campinas site, dating from ca. 1,000 to 1,600 BP, there are traces of the use of these palm trees—like the uricuri (Syagrus coronata) —in fires probably related to cooking and or daily activities together with large amounts of maize kernels (Neves et al. 2016; Watling et al. 2015) (Fig. 7). From Agroforestry to Pasture: Acre After 500 Years of Colonization The Brazilian state of Acre, on the border with Bolivia and Peru, has a long history of territorial disputes centered on the debate about models of farming/conservation proposed by different groups. Data from 2017 tell us that about 45% of the total territory consists of protected areas, among which 14% are Indigenous Lands, and indicate that the number of cattle herds and areas for temporary crops (especially corn and sugarcane) have increased in recent years (SEPLAN 2017). The gradual removal of vegetation cover since the 1980s has revealed the presence of several archaeological sites consisting of earthern structures such as mounds, ditches, and roads, whose archaeobotanical and paleoenvironmental remains point to a long history of agroforestry. The study of Watling et al. (2017) found that the region of the so-called geoglyphs, which began to be built around 2,500 years ago (Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012), was covered by bamboo (Guadua sp.). Forest clearance to build the geoglyphs appears to have been restricted to areas of occupation. However human presence is correlated

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Fig. 8 Archaeological site Sol de Campinas do Acre. Aerial view of the mounds in circular shape (a) (Photo: Sana Saunaluoma), ceramic vessel fragments (b) and excavation profile (c), Acre, Brazil.

with a significant increase in palm trees in the same locations. Traces of these anthropogenic forests can be found today near these archeological sites, like the geoglyph Três Vertentes (Balée et al. 2014). Sol de Campinas, a site consisting of mounds arranged in a circular shape, was occupied intermittently between 1,000 and 300 yrs B.P. represents an indigenous space usage model of this region 400 years BP. Like neighboring, similar sites, it is located on a small plateau close to water sources, clearly to take advantage of this natural resource. A variety of maize was cultivated with a slightly larger grain (2 mm) and used in combination with species indicative of secondary forests such as passion fruit and murici, and perennial species such as Brazil nut, tucumã, urucuri (Attalea palerata) and other palms (Neves et al. 2016; Furquim 2017) (Fig. 8). There are reports about indigenous peoples who lived in this region until the nineteenth century, when the first rubber tappers began to occupy the area, triggering the migration, murder, and enslavement of many indigenous people (Labre cited. in Rocha 2016). In the 1970s, the Brazilian Federal Government sponsored a colonization project in the area. Due to the low productivity of the soils and the inexperience of the settlers (most originating from outside of the area) these forests gradually became transformed into cattle pastures. Based on paleoenvironmental records of Watling et al. (2017), a comparative look between the past and the present shows that, while past indigenous management led to the maintenance and transformation of forested environments, current land use practices are characterized by deforestation on a spatial and temporal scale never seen before. Over 500 archaeological structures have been identified in Acre, the vast majority located in cattle grazing areas. The removal of anthropogenic forest formed over 2000 years favors a rapid exhaustion of the soil, which in about two years is unproductive for agriculture. A look at the past can not only enhance indigenous

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history, but also point to new agroforestry and water management strategies that enable cultivation, coupled with environmental conservation.

6 Conclusions The landscapes bequeathed by Indigenous societies that occupy the Amazon for millennia are perceived and incorporated by modern traditional communities and integrate part of their traditional ecological knowledge (TEK, cf. Smith 2012) and of their daily management and cultivation practices. ADEs, plants, and landscapes are often used as resources (Rocha et al. 2014) in the construction of gardens, yards, and modern agroforestry systems. The construction of traditional ecological knowledge undergoes a direct correlation between knowledge accumulated through generations and creative engagement, uniting tradition and innovation (Ingold 2000) through a learning process that is inscribed in the territory. For instance, current agrobiodiversity is positively correlated to the history of human occupation, and corresponds to past sociocultural variability, buts its preservation is also favored by the continued use of anthropogenic soils and their associated landscapes by Indigenous and traditional communities in the present. Studies on fertility of soil have indicated the presence of archaeological materials. Similarly, community gardens on ADE sites in the Urubu River (Amazonas state), show that sites occupied by more than one cultural group support greater heterogeneity and diversity in their plant composition (Lins et al. 2015). There is, however, a homogenizing effect, wherein gardens with higher proportions of exotic plants have a lower variability of native species, suggesting that the introduction of such species neutralizes an ancient process of succession, formation of seed banks, and correlations between past and present plants. In addition, exotic species are those most in need of the improved conditions provided by ADEs, since they are not adapted to Amazonian acidic soils (Junqueira et al. 2016a, b), which is the reason why ADEs are sought for their cultivation (Fig. 9). This chapter aimed to show that Indigenous agroecological practices have contributed over the millennia to transform Amazonian biomes. Such practices are still alive and their ancient record can be found in archaeological sites and contemporary landscapes. The conversion of forests into pasture, together with the catastrophic social and ecological consequences it brings, also erases, in a few days, biomes that co-evolved with humans over millennia. The Amazon rainforest and its traditional inhabitants were never as threatened as they are today and Indigenous lands play an important role in preventing further deforestation. It is impossible, therefore, to disentangle nature conservation from the protection of the livelihoods of traditional societies as we hope to have shown here.

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Fig. 9 Archaeological sites dated from the last 500 years before European conquest (Source Eduardo Tamanaha), with approved indigenous lands (Source Funai Database)

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Relations Between People, Water, and Domestic Animals in an Ancient Oasis City Hirofumi Teramura

1 Ancient Oasis Town on the Silk Road The Silk Road has played an important role as a trade route where people and goods have travelled since ancient times. The term “Silk Road” covers the three main ideas of “oasis, steppe, and sea” and does not simply refer to a single road. Instead, it should be regarded as a network connecting towns to towns and streets to streets. As the crossroad of exchange between the East and West and the North and South (i.e., agricultural people and nomadic tribes) on the Eurasian continent, Central Asia is a place where important progress was made in the history of humanity and culture. The eastern half of Central Asia is a mountainous area occupied mostly by the Pamirs. The western half is an arid plain. Human exchange and physical exchange in this area were closely related to the topographic surroundings of the environment and scenery. The Syr Darya, representing Central Asia, has two sources in the Tian Shan (Kirgiz and east Uzbekistan). It flows towards the northwest while passing through Kirgiz, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan and eventually draining into the northern Aral Sea. The Panj River and Vakhash River have their respective sources in Pamir and the Hindu Kush, and they join together to become the Amu Darya, which flows to the northwest. This river previously drained into the Aral Sea, although at present, it has dried up. The Zeravshan River, from its source in the periphery of the Pamir, flows in the area between Syr Darya and Amu Darya. Samarkand, the capital of the Samarkand state in the Republic of Uzbekistan in Central Asia, has been known since ancient times as an oasis town on the Silk Road. It is located on the banks of the Zeravshan River. It is a central city in this area formerly known as “Sogdiana” whichi is sandwiched between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. It particularly flourished from the 4th to seventh centuries by virtue of the H. Teramura (B) National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 K. Ikeya and W. Balée (eds.), Global Ecology in Historical Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6557-9_16

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east–west and north–south trade when the Sogd people, who were skilled in business and the industrial arts, travelled along the Silk Road. After the eighth century, Arab armies entered these areas and Islam became the accepted religion. In the fourteenth century, Samarkand was thoroughly destroyed by the Mongol Empire. However, it was reconstructed by Timur in the latter half of the fourteenth century and flourished in the fifteenth century as the capital of the Timurid empire. Afrasiab is an ancient site at Samarkand, that is a broad hill devoid of vegetation.. Its area is huge, and various-scale archaeological excavations have been intermittently conducted. The old urban area built after the Timurid period was constructed on the south side of Afrasiab, and the new urban area built in the Soviet era is laid out in an orderly fashion spreading to the west. Many ruins of the old city are scattered in the watershed of the Zeravshan River, where Samarkand is located. I participated in archeological excavations of the Dabusia and Kafir-kala ruins. Both ruins are located near the river and a canal, which suggests that people’s livelihoods cannot be separated from water in this region. In the past, this area was the foremost grain-growing and cotton-producing region in Central Asia. The relation between human beings and water and plants still remains important. In this paper, I first discuss this important connection between human beings and their surrounding environment, particularly the relation between ancient urban centers (and their inhabitants) and water. I then introduce the results of archaeological investigations of site locations of urban ruins, unearthed remains, artifacts, and the relations among human beings, water, and animals around the watershed of the Zeravshan River.

2 Ancient Urban Centers and Water In this section, I briefly discuss the relation between ancient urban centers and water, an environmental attribute that is indispensable for human beings to survive. Figure 1 shows the landscape around the Zeravshan River near the modern suburbs of Samarkand. The width of the river is modest in this area, and the water level is low in September, when this photo was taken. Because the water is shallow, sandbars are readily apparent. The modern town of Samarkand is located on the far side of the hill visible in the foreground. It is not an exaggeration to say that the ancient country of Sogdiana flourished because of the water from this river. The Afrasiab Hill was located on the north side of what is now Samarkand before the Mongol invasion. It occupied a roughly triangular area of about 220 ha, and extended about 1.5 km from east to west and from north to south, with the southern part having the highest elevation. The first city wall (i.e., the citadel) was set at the northern part of the hill, with four additional city walls constructed one after another. The outermost wall encloses the entire area, indicating that the streets developed gradually. People are thought to have begun inhabiting the area as early as the sixth century BC.

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Fig. 1 The Zeravshan River flows through a neighboring district of Samarkand

Although Afrasiab was destroyed by the Mongols in the thirteenth century, the streets were reconstructed by Timur south of the previous location, and the city flourished as the capital of the Timurid Empire during the 14th–fifteenth centuries. The old town expanded to the west during the Soviet era. Figure 2 shows the Samarkand city area as seen from Afrasiab Hill. The area contains ruins and almost no plants, in contrast to the areas with huge mosques with blue roofs in town. Afrasiab itself was located a short distance away from the Zeravshan River, although an artificially constructed canal, called the Siab River, flows through nearby ruins (Fig. 3; the hill in the background it is part of the Afrasiab wall). At present, some locations along the Siab River act as staging areas for sightseeing. The Kafir-kala ruins (Fig. 4) are located 13 km southeast of modern Samarkand. The Kafir-kala was a fortified city constructed during the Sogdian era (4th–eighth centuries AD) close to the Dargom irrigation canal. The Dargom Canal was dug during the 6th–seventh centuries BC. The total area of the ruins is about 16 hectares (Mantellini and Berdimurodov 2005; Begmatov et al. 2020). Figure 5 shows a satellite image of the fortified city of Kafir-Kala and the Dargom Canal. The canal flows close to the wall enclosing the ruins, and a small stream runs from a potable water spring located within the ruins to the canal (Figs. 6 and 7).

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Fig. 2 A view across the old city from Afrasiab Hill

Fig. 3 Afrasiab Hill and the Siab River

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Fig. 4 The citadel of the Kafir-kala ruins

Fig. 5 Satellite image of the Dargom Canal and Kafir-kala ruins. [WorldView-3, includes © DigitalGlobe, Inc., NTT DATA Corporation]

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Fig. 6 Small stream flowing in the Kafir-kala ruins

3 The Dabusia Ruins The Dabusia ruins are located about halfway between Samarkand and Bukhara, and are important for understanding the culture and flow of people along the Silk Road. This area acted as a hub of exchange on the Eurasian Silk Road. In Samarkand, the Zeravshan River divides into two branches, which merge again around the Dabusia ruins. Northwest of Navoiy, the capital of Navoiy Region, the river turns to the southwest and flows through Bukhara. It disappears into the desert after passing Karakul. Thus, at present, it is not a tributary of the Amu Darya. Today, this district is a leading grain-producing region of Central Asia, a major cotton production area, and a contact point with the northern pastoral society. The Dabusia ruins are large-scale Silk Road urban ruins that spread over about 80 hectares, although the area of the old city is thought to have been larger (about 250 hectares). The ruins are in a good state of preservation. The height of the remaining city wall is almost 20 m in some areas (Fig. 8). Figure 9 is a view of the Dabusia ruins from the west. The floodplain of the Zeravshan River spreads in the area north of the ruins. The water level can reach up to half the height of the wall during flooding. The ruins consist of three parts (from north to south): the Citadel (royal palace), adjacent to the Zeravshan River; the Shakhristan (inner city area), and the Rabat (suburban area). Each section is

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Fig. 7 A spring in the Kafir-kala ruins

Fig. 8 Fortification wall of the Dabusia ruins and the Zeravshan River

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Fig. 9 Panoramic view of the Dabusia ruins (from the west)

enclosed by a fortification wall made of sun-dried bricks, although the contour map shows that empty moats also separate the areas (Fig. 10). The Zeravshan River flows just beneath the fortification wall, and is well situated to provide the fresh water that is necessary in people’s daily life.

4 Archaeological Excavation of the Dabusia Ruins In this section, the past and present of an oasis town on the Silk Road is examined by introducing the archaeological excavation of the Dabusia ruins. The best Dabusia ruins excavation results were obtained in Trench 8, which is located near the highest point of the citadel. Excavation began in 2009 and continued through 2012 (Fig. 11). In those four years, the trench was excavated to a depth of about 7 m, reaching the pre-settlement land surface. Therefore, the excavation allowed a chronological investigation of one section from about the sixth century BC to the present day (Fig. 12). Excavation results obtained from the upper stratum shed light on the latter half of the Islamic era. Construction of buildings in the citadel area ended after the thirteenth century. After that, the area was used mainly for burials or as a garbage dump. Although it is possible that numerous people resided here, it is apparent from the excavation that this section was not an important district. Regarding inhumation, supine extended burial in a pit was employed in all cases. No burial accessories were found in this area, however. People were buried with their heads pointed northward and faces turned westward. From this arrangement, it is known that these are Islamic graves.

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Fig. 10 Topographical map of Dabusia ruins (based on Uno and Berdimurodov 2013)

Fig. 11 Excavation of the Trench 8

Among the remains from the year 710 of the Islamic era (the first half of the era) until the beginning of the thirteenth century, the tenth century bath ruins (Samanid) are characteristic. Sun-dried bricks were normally used for construction, but bath facilities were usually made of calcined bricks. Characteristic artifacts unearthed from these ruins include a large pot placed upside down (Fig. 13). A square-shaped hole that is presumed to be a drain was found after the pot was removed. In addition, a stone disk about 1 m in diameter with patterned piping and a small hole at the

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Fig. 12 The layer sequence in the Trench 8

center was found (Fig. 14). It is possible that this disk functioned as the base of a fountain. The finding of a water-use facility near the center of the citadel provides valuable information about the utilization of non-potable water at that time. Through the first half of Islamic era, a trend is apparent by which old rooms in buildings are partitioned to increase the number of rooms, while the building itself became smaller in the Trench 8. Many facilities have been found attached to inside of these buildings, including a bread oven, furnace, bed-shaped remains, and a deep-well-type lavatory.

Fig. 13 Remains related to water (tenth century AD): a large pot placed upside down (left) and a drain ditch underneath it (right)

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Fig. 14 Detection of remains presumed to be a basin related to a bathing facility

Bones of goats, sheep, cattle, and chickens were unearthed from places inferred to be cooking areas. In addition, bones of horses and donkeys and a few pigs were found. Bones of newborn goats (kids) and lambs, which are still consumed today were also present. Although there are many opinions as to when the Sogdian era began and ended, here I use the 4th–seventh centuries for the Sogdian era. During this period, Sogdian merchants played active roles in the east–west trade in the Sogdiana region. In most ruins, there are rooms and passages partitioned by walls made of sun-dried bricks and “Pakhsa” (huge sun-dried bricks). There are also bed-shaped remains and lavatories. A passage drilled through a wall was also found. When these rooms are compared with a group of buildings of the Islamic era in the upper stratum, the wall size and

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floor area are greater, although fewer unearthed articles per unit area were found as compared with the Islamic era. However, if only these remains are considered, then the best days of Dabusia were the Sogdian era, when refuse disposal and other matters were managed satisfactorily. After the Achaemenid period of Persia (550–330 BC), influences of western culture became significant in Central Asia. The period from about the third century BC to the third century AD is known as the antique era. An urban area consisting of sun-dried brick buildings and roads was built in the citadel area towards the end of third century BC to the beginning of second century BC. During the antique era, clay pots (Fig. 15, upper right) were produced with pottery wheels and used in daily life. The walls of the buildings from this period tend to be small compared with Sogdian era walls, but building construction continued in this district until the end of the Karakhanid period of the Islamic era (around the beginning of the thirteenth century). The landscape of the town and its urban district were maintained. Furthermore, the buildings and roads at that time were oriented nearly parallel to the walls surrounding the citadel. Therefore, it is highly probable that the city plan of the entire citadel area was designed. In the lowest stratum of the trench 8, clay pots with thicker walls on which indentations are left inside (Fig. 15, lower right) were found, although definite remains of building were not confirmed. It is merely considered that intermittent use of the land began in this district ( “before town” strata in Fig. 12, 6th–3rd centuries BC). To summarize, evidence from the archaeological excavation of the Dabusia ruins indicated that the development of Dabusia started during the Achaemenid period of

Fig. 15 Clay pot and another shards/ fragments excavated from the Trench8

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Persia. Buildings made of sun-dried bricks were constructed from around the end of the third century BC to the beginning of the second century AD. This area thus became urbanized. In addition, one can infer from the scattering of artifacts over the entire Dabusia area that regular development started earlier in areas away from the citadel. The reason for the decline of the citadel area was probably the invasion by Mongolian nomads, headed by Genghis Khan, into Central Asia (after 1219 AD). However, in the Rabat district (commercial area), a Muslim mosque that was constructed around the 11th–twelfth centuries AD remained until the modern age, and it was surrounded by a busy bazaar. Then I considered that the urban function (commercial function) of Dabusia was maintained and inherited as the bazaar of the present Dabusia village.

5 Relations Among Human Beings, Water, and Animals and Plants in Ancient Towns Animals and Water In the excavation of the Dabusia ruins, information related to utilization of animals was obtained in addition to that related to the utilization of water. Many animal bones were found in several investigation units in addition to those found in the Trench 8 (Fig. 16). Figure 17 shows the proportions of unearthed animal bones by species. In the investigation unit located in Rabat, bones of goats and sheep accounted for about 80% of the bones recovered from around the second century AD. Although the proportion of goats and sheep was also high in the animal bones unearthed from the 8th–tenth century strata in the investigation unit in Shakhristan, the proportion of cattle and horses grew; in addition, small numbers of camel and donkey bones were also found in this area. The changes in the type of animal bones unearthed are important. In ancient times, domesticated goats and sheep were used primarily as food animals. As time advanced, cattle, horses, and camels began to be used in transportation. Such changes are supported by the fact that the utilization of camels and donkeys became more common with the expansion of Silk Road trade, which was accompanied by the active movement of people and goods. The animal bones were found at two different locations, Rabat and Shakhristan, and it is probable that the characteristics of the district (suburban area and inner city area, respectively) are influential. The types and species compositions of animal bones left in the ruins differed over time and by location. In one town of the Dabusia ruins, the possibility exists that a hierarchy of the society in every district has influenced the differences found in the kinds of animals represented.

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Fig. 16 Pieces of animal bones found in several investigation units in the Shakhristan area of the Dabusia ruins

Fig. 17 Proportions of animal bone fragments in the Rabat and Shakhristan excavations

The use and management of water resources also can be illustrative. For water to be supplied to the water spouts in the unearthed bathing facility, it is first necessary to pump river water to the upper parts of the citadel residential area. Adequate technology and labor were required in order to do so. The degree of maturation of civilized society can be inferred from evidence of such management capabilities.

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Roads and Ancient Towns As part of our investigation, we also studied the environments surrounding the present Dabusia ruins (Teramura 2013). One survey was a hearing investigation to the village people about the sales floor of a bazaar (regular market), which was in use until the 1950s, in the Rabat district, particularly regarding commercial goods (Fig. 18). This survey identified that stores of various categories (see the boxes and texts, i.e. “cloth”, in the Fig. 18) operated along the road that runs north–south in the central area of the Dabusia ruins. It is interesting that the bazaar that operated through the 1950s was located along the ancient trade route. The fact that a bazaar was operated in the former commercial area (Rabat) might be related to the intended use of that place in the ruins and the important role played by the road along which people came and went, even though it might not be directly related to the Dabusia of the Sogdian era. The modern bazaar in Dabusia village has moved closer to the highway connecting Samarkand and Bukhara. It might be natural that, in the past and at present, the bazaar operates near the road used to transport people and goods. In the future, as people’s lifestyles continue to change, the relation between people and the surrounding environment should be studied comprehensively. In particular, the life and culture of the people currently living around the Dabusia ruins should be studied in addition to studying the past (ruins).

Fig. 18 Position of the each facilities in the bazaar in 1950s (based on Teramura 2013)

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Other Investigations In the Dabusia ruins, we also collected samples for physicochemical analyses, such as geomagnetic and pollen analyses (Fig. 19), to investigate the mutual relation between people and the surrounding environment with the goal of obtaining information related to the environments of the past to the present. It is expected that valuable information will be obtained by learning about past vegetation around the Dabusia ruins from a pollen analysis. In addition, water was sampled from around the Dabusia ruins for isotopic measurement (Fig. 20, left). It should be possible to verify the area from which the water is taken for irrigating crops, particularly cotton, which is currently a major industry in this area (Fig. 20, right). Currently, grapes and nuts such as walnuts are cultivated in this dry Central Asian climate, and large amounts of dried grapes are sold in the modern bazaar. One feature of the district is the existence of the “living infrastructure” represented by domestic livestock (e.g., sheep and goats).

Fig. 19 Samples being collected in the Dabusia ruins for physical and chemical analyses

Fig. 20 Environments around the Dabusia ruins. Left, examples of areas where water was sampled for a water quality investigation; right, harvest in a cotton field

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6 Concluding Remarks The Silk Road in Central Asia was a crossroads of civilization, and the relation between human beings and the surrounding environment, which remain connected to the present day, was examined. Specifically, I focused on the remains of ancient urban oases in Uzbekistan and discussed the relationship between humans and water by introducing archaeological survey results of the environment surrounding the Dabusia ruins as well as the excavated remains and relics. The evidence shows that people began to live in places where they could access water, which was essential to their lives, and those places developed from villages to towns and cities. In addition, the fragments of animal bones excavated changed from mainly goats and sheep in the second century AD to a more diverse group including horses, camels, and donkeys by the 8th to tenth centuries AD. These newer animals were probably involved in trade, such as the transport of goods. These changes may indicate that the relationship between humans and animals changed in tandem with the increase in trade between cities. Central Asia is located in the boundary zone between agriculture and livestock farming economies, and through time, people have lived through the fusion and confrontation of these two activities. The results of this cross-cultural fusion in a boundary zone has been gradually revealed through the excavation and research of ancient urban remains. The labor force and civil engineering technology for excavation required the use of artificial irrigation canals from the Zeravshan River, similar to those found in Afrasiab and Kafir-kala. The demonstrated relationship between human beings and water in oasis towns along with Zeravshan River indicates that the exchange of culture and civilization was based on coexistence and fusion (or opposition), and the process continues today in Central Asia. It is my goal to present new cultural and social images related to urban ruins along the Silk Road using not only past information but also current information. To do so, macro and micro information obtained by ethnologic and anthropological surveys, as well as by archaeological and historical surveys and investigations related to the grazing of domestic animals, should be integrated. To that end, all data should be standardized based on certain criteria (e.g., spatiotemporal information). Also, cultural ecology should be described by analyzing spatiotemporal behaviors using techniques and tools such the geographical information system (GIS) (see an example of a GIS reconstruction of the Silk Road in Fig. 21). To share cultural assets and cultural sites as the true property of humanity requires that we present them in the form of objective and concrete information. In addition, non-scientists and local people should be involved, a task I plan to attempt in future studies.

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Fig. 21 A GIS reconstruction of the silk road as a crossroad of civilization (based on Uno and Berdimurodov 2013)

Acknowledgements The research project at Kafir-kala is supported by JSPS KAKENHI, Grant Numbers JP19H01350 JP19K13409, JP19K13397. The research project at Dabusia and Kafir-kala is being conducted by the Uzbek-Japanese Joint Expedition directed by Dr. Amridin Berdimurodov (the Institute of Archaeology of Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan) and by Professor Takao Uno (Tezukayama University).

References Begmatov A, Berdimurodov A, Bogomolov G, Murakami T, Teramura H, Uno T, Usami T (2020) New Discoveries from Kafir-kala: coins, sealings and wooden carvings. ACTA ASIATICA: Bulletin of the Institute of Eastern Culture 119, The Töhö Gakkai. Tokyo, pp 1–20 Mantellini S, Berdimurodov A (2005) Archaeological explorations in the sogdian fortress of Kafir Kala. In: Ancient civilizations from Scythia to Siberia, vol 11, pp 107–132, Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden Teramura H, Yamaguchi H, Usami T (2013) Archaeological research and digital documentation of Dabusia Tepa in Uzbekistan, Conference on Cultural Heritage and New Technologies: CHNT 18. November 11–13, 2013, Vienna, Austria Teramura H (2013) Survey method of Kala-i Dabusia. In Takao U, Amridin B (eds.) The site of Kala-I Dabusia: Sogdian city along the Silk Road. Archaeological research of city centers of Central Asia. Published by Shin’yosha Co., Kyoto, Japan, pp 5–10. (in Japanese) Teramura H (2014) Keikan koukogaku no houhou to jissen (in Japanese) Douseisha, Tokyo, Japan

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Index

A Adaptive strategies, 119, 120, 127, 130, 131, 133, 134 Amazon ecosystem, 53, 72 Amazonia biomes, 259, 274 American whalers, 213 Ancient Amazonia, 260 Animal-human relationships, 76, 78, 84, 210, 211, 219, 220 Anti-whaling campaign, 216–218 Anti-whaling movement, 218 Araceae, 183

B Balaena mysticetus, 209, 211 Bamboo shoots, 151, 155–157, 159, 161–164, 167 Bamboo varieties, 156, 163, 166, 167 Bear, 75–82, 84, 86, 134, 170 Bear-human relationship, 76, 78, 80 Biodiversity, 26, 32, 35–38, 51, 260, 265 Bowhead whales, 209–218, 220

Domestication, 105, 106, 108–111, 113–116, 137, 141, 144, 184, 186, 191, 193, 194, 197–201, 261, 263, 264, 266, 269 Domestication history, xiv, 185 Domestication models, 114, 193, 197, 201

E Eastern Nicaragua, 223, 237 Eco-history, xii Edible aroids, 183, 184, 203 Ethnobotany, 21, 23–29 Ethnoecology, 21, 25–27, 30–34, 37, 38 Eugeissona utilis, 170, 172, 175, 176

C Cassava, 64, 69, 181, 242–251, 253, 254 Central Asia, 283, 284, 288, 294, 295, 299 Crop-feeding, 91, 92, 97, 99, 101 Cultivated taro, 184–187, 191, 198 Cultural ecology, 25, 299 Cultural industry, 6, 13

F Flooding savannah, 51 Floodplain, 52, 53, 56, 57, 60, 64, 65, 70, 192, 241–247, 254, 261, 265, 288 Floodplain areas, 255 Forest, 6, 13, 14, 24, 29–32, 34, 37, 51, 54, 56, 75, 76, 78, 80, 84, 97, 98, 100, 109, 111, 113, 138–140, 142–144, 146, 151, 152, 156, 159, 165, 169, 173, 174, 178, 189, 198, 230, 241, 244, 245, 260–262, 264–268, 270–273 Forest landscapes, x, xi, xvi French Guiana, 31, 32, 52–54, 56, 57, 60, 63–66, 68–70

D Dabusia ruins, 288–291, 294–299 Deterrence, 91

G Gathering village, 76 Gayal-human relationship, 138

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304 Globalized world, ix

H Hierarchy, 4–12, 15, 295 Historical change, 76, 138, 146, 209, 218, 220 Historical ecology, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 51–53, 71, 138, 151, 209, 210 Homo sapiens, ix, 137, 209 Human-animal interaction, 75 Human-plant relations, v, xvi, xviii Human-plants interaction, v, xiv, xvii, xviii

I Indigenous people, 31, 32, 63, 211, 213, 216, 219, 220, 232, 241–244, 246, 261–263, 265, 269, 270, 272, 273 Indigenous whaling, 213, 216–218, 220 IWC management system, 219

J Japan, 3, 4, 7–9, 11–14, 36, 75–77, 80, 84–86, 91, 92, 105, 109, 119, 164, 166, 167, 186, 189, 192, 194, 196, 200, 201, 204, 220, 239

K Kalimantan, 174

L Landscape, 3–6, 8, 10–13, 16, 23, 29, 35–37, 51–54, 61, 64, 68, 69, 71, 75, 80, 84, 96, 154, 190, 199, 211, 218, 230, 260, 262, 264–266, 269, 270, 274, 284, 294 Landscape transformation, 6–8, 13–15, 269 Livelihoods, 37, 76, 120, 146, 153, 155, 243, 274, 284 Lowland Indians, 223

M Macaque, 75, 80 Matagi, 76, 78, 79 Migration, 140, 166, 218, 220, 261, 273 Modern civilization, 218 Modern world, ix Monsoon Asia, 151, 156, 164–166 Mountain landscape, 75

Index O Okinawa, 105–111, 114, 115, 196

P Peruvian Amazon, 243, 246 Phalacrocorax carbo sinensis, 122 Plantain, 256 Poyang Lake, 120, 121, 123–125, 131, 133, 134 Pre-Columbian, 52–54, 57, 58, 64, 68–71 Primary landscape transformation, 7, 10, 13–15 Provisioning, 99–101

R Raised field, 5, 52–65, 68–70 Rearing, 105, 106, 108–116, 140–142, 145 Rice farmers, 170, 179, 181

S Satoyama, 6, 37, 75, 84, 86 Sea turtle fishing, 224, 225, 227, 229, 230, 237, 239 Shipibo, 241–243, 246, 248, 253–255 Silk Road, 283, 284, 288, 290, 295, 299, 300 Slash-and-burn, 29, 31, 32, 65, 151, 152, 155, 159, 165, 166, 241, 244, 246 Snow, 76, 214 Standardization, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 15, 16 Subsistence whaling, 213, 216, 218 Sweet cassava, 241, 242, 244–248, 250–255 Swidden agriculture, 14, 15

T Threat enhancement, 102 Tropics, 25, 33, 34, 63, 259

W Western Penan, 174 Wild boar, 105–116, 173, 192, 193, 200 Woodlands, xvi

Z Zeravshan River, 283–285, 288–290, 299