Possible Early Dry-Land and Wet-Land Rice Cultivation in Highland North Sumatra

Abstract

The origins of dry farming in the Southeast Asian tropics have been neglected until recently. Information from five North Sumatran pollen diagrams is summarized, with a chronological control of 41 radiocarbon dates, and it is suggested that pollen, phytolith, and microfossil charcoal evidence, viewed in the light of the local topography and more recent land use, indicates that dry rice may have been cultivated from c. 2600 B.P., possibly coeval with swamp rice, or some form of irrigated rice, depending upon the location, and that agricultural expansion in this area of largely poor soils began between 700 and 500 years ago. KEYWORDS: prehistoric rice cultivation, North Sumatra, palaeoenvironmental analysis, palynology, phytoliths, Southeast Asian archaeology.