Human-Environmental Relationships in Prehistory: An Introduction to Current Research in South and Southeast Asia

Abstract

Understanding human environmental relationships is fundamental to understanding past cultures. Views of how environments and humans interrelate, however, have changed substantially during the twentieth century. Either the environment or social relations have been seen as causal in changing cultural groups. As McGlade (1995) and others have suggested, differentiating environments and social relations negates their co-dependence and co-evolution. This article briefly introduces the papers presented in this volume, contextualizing them within both the status of current data collection and the theoretical orientation discussed. The pioneering environmental data presented by the authors represent critical first steps in creating models that better reflect the complexity of human environmental relationships in the Asian tropics. KEYWORDS: Asian palaeoenvironment, palynology, phytoliths, geomorphology, development of agriculture, agricultural change.