Week 4

(NOTE: ALL ATTACHMENTS HAVE BEEN MOVED TO http://sites.google.com/site/conservationinmekong02/weekly-literature)

Assignments:

1. Read an article on history of SE Asia. This should basically be a paper about humans after the development of agriculture and may be about political or social development in the region. This will be briefly presented in class.

[NC] Mudar, Karen M. 1999. How Many Dvaravati Kingdoms? Locational Analysis of First Millennium A.D. Moated Settlements in Central Thailand. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology Vol. 18(1): 1-28. [NC]

Maps show archaeological site settlement divided by subsistence patterns from Higham, Charles. 2002. Early Cultures of Mainland Southeast Asia. Art Media Resources Publishers.

p. 28. Hunting and Gathering

p. 168 Hunting gathering and early agriculture

p. 228. Agriculture in early historical period.

[NC]

[arb] Sweeney, Megan, McCouch, Susan (2007) The Complex History of the Domestication of Rice. Annals of Botany. 100: 951-957

[ss] Tayles N., Nelsen, Domett and K. 2000. Agriculture and dental caries? The case of rice in prehistoric Southeast Asia. World Archaeology. Vol 32:1. pp68-83. [ss]

[fig] Diamond, J. & P. Bellwood. 2003. Farmers and their languages: The first expansions. Science. 300(5619):597-603. [fig]

[NB] Saw, L. G., J. V. LaFrankie, K. M. Kochummen and S. K. Yap, 1991. Fruit Trees in a Malaysian Rain Forest. Economic Botany. 45(1): 120-136.

Nguyen, M. 2003 Comparison of Food Plant Knowledge Between Urban Vietnamese Living in Vietnam and in Hawai‘i. Economic Botany, 57(4): 472–480. [NB]

3. Definitions of the terms "domestication," "center of origin," and "agriculture" should be provided with clear citations for each.

Domestication

[NC] Domestication is a whole process of human intervention to living things’ lifeway ( Bokonyi 1989 and Fuller 2007), plant or animal, for human’s benefit in both food surplus and another usage. Domestication’s meaning is about all process from hunting and gathering to wild plant reproduction in the early stage of cultivation then shifted to agricultural based on fully domesticated plant or animal. Domesticated process makes selective plants or animals more dependent on humans for survival but also more productive than their indigenous species (Fuller 2007)

Bokonyi, S. 1989. Definitions of Animal Domestication. In: J. Clutton-Brock, ed., The Walking Larder: Patterns of Domestication, Pastoralism, and Predation. London: Unwin Hyman. 22-27.excerpt pages from page 22-25.

Fuller, D. 2007. Contrasting Patterns in Crop Domestication and Domestication Rates: Recent Archaeobotanical Insights from the Old World. Annals of Botany 100: 903–924. [NC]

[mr] Referring to the domestication of animals, Bokonyi defines domestication as follows:

"The essence of domestication is the capture and taming by man of animals of a species with particular behavioural characteristics, their removal from their natural living area and breeding community, and their maintenance under controlled breeding conditions for their mutual benefits." See the link for more on this article and others on domestication.

Bokonyi, S. 1989. Definitions of Animal Domestication. In: J. Clutton-Brock, ed., The Walking Larder: Patterns of Domestication, Pastoralism, and Predation. London: Unwin Hyman. 22-27.

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=NqwOAAAAQAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA22&dq=domestication+means&ots=HYv8FfLv02&sig=AP-cRXvPKOV9C09f1SLlcHZqAoM [mr]

Center of origin

[tli] Center of origin is defined as the original geographic center for the origin of a plant or animal. There is much debate concerning the way in which animals and plants radiate out from these centers to other locations. Speciation and domestication may occur as they get further from the original center, and at different rates depending on environmental and human factors.

Briggs, John C. 2000. Centrifugal Speciation and the Centres of Origin. Journal of Biogeography 27 (5): 1183-1188. [tli]

Agriculture

[fig]

Agriculture is traditionally defined as the business of producing food and fiber. But a basic understanding of the structure and function of ecosystems reveals that agriculture can be defined also as the business of managing resources to capture solar energy and transfer it to people for their use. It can be reasoned then that success in agriculture is closely linked to the employment of management tactics that either 1) enhance the efficiency with which solar energy is captured, and(or) 2) the efficiency with which captured solar energy is harvested, and(or) 3) the efficiency with which harvested solar energy is assimilated.

Heitschmidt et al. 1996. Ecosystems, sustainability, and animal agriculture. Journal of Animal Sciences.

74(6):1395-1405 [fig]

[ln] The definition of agriculture can be flexible. It depends on fields related such as food security, land use or rural property. Focusing on urban agriculture in developing countries, Baumgartner and Belevi defined “urban agriculture comprises the production, processing and distribution of diversity of foods, including vegetables and animal products within (intra-urban) or at the fringe (peri-urban) of an urban area. Its main motivation is food production (for personal consumption or sale) and/or higher income”.

Baumgartner, B., & Belevi, H. 2001. A systematic overview of urban agriculture in developing countries. Swiss Federal Institute for Environmental Science & Technology (EAWAG) and Dept. of Water & Sanitation in Developing Countries (SANDEC). [ln]

4. Students will work as a group to complete the following assignment.

• All the gazetteer cities in the Mekong watershed should be represented as "dots" that are proportional to their population size on Google Earth.
• Decide on cut-off size for important cities.
• Color the dots to separate the cities into 2 categories: "important" and "other"
• Compile a list of important cities and be familiarized with these cities.
• Ensure that all KML files are attached.
  • 1. [mr&tli]
  • Cities in Yunnnan. The "important" ones are in blue, and are in the Mekong watershed. The "others" are in red.

[ln & nc]

Cities in the Mekong drainage, Laos. Important political and historic cities are in blue. [arb]

[fig & jpt]