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The Sweet Potato in Oceania: a reappraisal.

Article Excerpt
The Sweet Potato in Oceania: a reappraisal Edited by C. Ballard, P. Brown, R.M. Bourke and T. Harwood Ethnology Monographs 19, Oceania Monographs 56, 2005. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh and University of Sydney, Sydney. ISBN 0-945428-13-8. Pp. viii + 227. SA62.70/$US56.

The volume consists of 18 chapters including an opening overview chapter by Chris Ballard and a concluding chapter by Doug Yen in which he provides some historical context for his own seminal work (1974), upon which this volume builds, as well as an attempt to integrate the key points of the proceeding chapters. As Ballard notes, a number of themes tend to dominate. These are, in East Polynesia, the questions of origins, timing and the South American connection, while in New Guinea issues of adaptation and the role of the proposed Ipomoean revolution underlies much of the work.

One of the most significant developments since Yen's 1974 work is direct archaeological evidence for early sweet potato in Polynesia, in particular that recovered by Kirch from Mangaia. Evidence for food production in Oceania is often problematic and Haberle and Atkin describe the problems of looking for sweet potato in the pollen record. It is unfortunate that the authors didn't expand their brief to review recent work in New Zealand on kumara phytoliths or the macrobotanical remains from Polynesia, although Green summarizes the latter in his review. Richard Scaglion examines the South American connection and argues that the Canari people of Ecuador who were coastal cultivators of sweet potato, or...