title: Ancient crops provide first archaeological signature of the westward Austronesian expansion.
abstract: The Austronesian settlement of the remote island of Madagascar remains one of the great puzzles of Indo-Pacific prehistory. Although linguistic, ethnographic, and genetic evidence points clearly to a colonization of Madagascar by Austronesian language-speaking people from Island Southeast Asia, decades of archaeological research have failed to locate evidence for a Southeast Asian signature in the island's early material record. Here, we present new archaeobotanical data that show that Southeast Asian settlers brought Asian crops with them when they settled in Africa. These crops provide the first, to our knowledge, reliable archaeological window into the Southeast Asian colonization of Madagascar. They additionally suggest that initial Southeast Asian settlement in Africa was not limited to Madagascar, but also extended to the Comoros. Archaeobotanical data may support a model of indirect Austronesian colonization of Madagascar from the Comoros and/or elsewhere in eastern Africa.
authors.affiliation: School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia; a.crowther@uq.edu.au.
authors.forename: Alison
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Crowther
authors.affiliation: Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London WC1H 0PY, United Kingdom;
authors.forename: Leilani
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lucas
authors.affiliation: Canterbury Archaeological Trust, Canterbury CT1 2LU, United Kingdom;
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Helm
authors.affiliation: Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UU, United Kingdom;
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Horton
authors.affiliation: British Institute in Eastern Africa, Nairobi 00100, Kenya; McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, United Kingdom;
authors.forename: Ceri
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Shipton
authors.affiliation: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1079; The Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM 87501;
authors.forename: Henry T
authors.initials: HT
authors.lastname: Wright
authors.affiliation: Department of History, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada;
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Walshaw
authors.affiliation: Anthropology Program, School of World Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23284-2021;
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pawlowicz
authors.affiliation: Institute des Civilisations-Musée d'Art et d'Archéologie, L'Université d'Antananarivo, Antananarivo BP 564, Madagascar;
authors.forename: Chantal
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Radimilahy
authors.affiliation: Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom;
authors.forename: Katerina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Douka
authors.affiliation: Department of Historical Sciences and Theory of Art, University of the Balearic Islands, 07122 Palma, Spain;
authors.forename: Llorenç
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Picornell-Gelabert
authors.affiliation: Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London WC1H 0PY, United Kingdom;
authors.forename: Dorian Q
authors.initials: DQ
authors.lastname: Fuller
authors.affiliation: School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 2PG, United Kingdom; Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, D-07743 Jena, Germany.
authors.forename: Nicole L
authors.initials: NL
authors.lastname: Boivin
mesh_terms: D001106:Archaeology; D001210:Asia, Southeastern; D018556:Crops, Agricultural; D006801:Humans; D008270:Madagascar
keywords: Madagascar; archaeobotany; dispersal; language; rice