Tracing Early Agriculture in the Highlands of New Guinea: Plot, Mound and Ditch

Dr Tim Denham is Reader/Associate Professor of Archaeology at the Australian National University. He has undertaken fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, mostly in the highland interior, since 1990. His primary research has focussed on plant exploitation and the emergence of agriculture in the highlands during the Holocene. He has also published on the Holocene histories of Island Southeast Asia and northern Australia. Over the last decade, his interests have diversified to include: the domestication of vegetatively propagated crops, especially bananas; geoarchaeology and environmental change, mainly in the wet tropics; and, the application of new technologies to archaeological questions.