Traditional forms of plant exploitation in Australia and New Guinea: the search for common ground

Characterisations of ‘‘hunter-gatherers’’ in Australia and ‘‘horticulturalists’’, or ‘‘agriculturalists’’, in New Guinea are familiar, and yet problematic. These terms are inadequate to convey the richness and diversity of subsistence practices across both regions, either for the recent pasts of ethnography and history, or for the distant pasts of archaeology (Harlan 1995); but they continue to be casually applied in academic and everyday discourses. Attempts to develop conceptual and terminological frameworks that do justice to the diversity of practices continually founder; they are bound by, and fall back into, existing terminology and stereotypical and evolutionary overtones. A recent workshop entitled ‘‘Plant exploitation and domestication east of the Wallace Line: movement, manipulation and management of plant biodiversity’’ (Canberra, August 2006) provided an opportunity for key researchers in several disciplines (including agronomy, anthropology, archaeobotany and archaeology, botany, ecology, ethnobotany, geography, palaeoecology and palaeobotany) to focus on the nature of plant exploitation practices across Australia and New Guinea. The workshop is the first in a series intended to foster cross-disciplinary dialogue and to develop long-term research agendas regarding the effects of traditional plant exploitation practices on plant morphogenetics and biodiversity in Sahul. The workshop series is part of a broader initiative, The Environmental Futures Network, funded by the Australian Research Council (http://nesuab.ees.adelaide.edu.au/page/ default.asp?site = 1). Several key themes of contention and significance are reported.