Clarifying ambiguity: a reassessment of the multi-disciplinary evidence for a 10,000 year-old palaeosurface at Kuk Swamp, highlands of Papua New Guinea

Shifting cultivation is a widespread agricultural practice in the wet tropical forests of the world, as well as other environments. Short-term cultivation followed by long-term fallow is a human adaptation to the low fertility of soils under tropical forests. Forms of shifting cultivation are likely to be ancient and among the earliest agricultural practices. Here, a multi-disciplinary method for the investigation of shifting cultivation in the past is outlined. The method is grounded in direct archaeological evidence and palaeo-pedological evidence for soil formation processes associated with cultivation practices, which are interwoven with contextual palaeoecological and geomorphological evidence for landscape transformation. Hence, these multi-disciplinary lines of evidence are recast to assess whether a short period of use of a c. 10,000 year-old palaeosurface at Kuk Swamp in montane Papua New Guinea represents shifting cultivation or alternative types of plant exploitation in the past.