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The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory.

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The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory By Graeme Barker Oxford University Press, 2006 ISBN 0019-928109-2 Pp. xvi + 598. UK80 [pounds sterling](hb)

In the last few years several books have sought to provide global or pan-regional reviews of early agriculture (Bellwood 2005; Denham and White 2007; Denham et al. 2007). The inception of agriculture has long perplexed archaeologists, although some now consider it a little outdated as a separate topic of study. There is a perception that the theme of forager-farmer transitions is often, although not necessarily, bound to teleological interpretations of human history, namely, a looking back into the past from the standpoint of, and implicitly with a view to justify, the present. Although at one level such reflections are valid--for example debates about early agriculture have been intimately bound to debates of demographic advantage, socio-political development, the rise of civilisations and colonial expansion--such reflections fail to account for the importance of agriculture, or food production more generally, to societies in the past or the present. Once the importance of agriculture is recognised as a subject worthy of study in its own right, curiosity invariably turns to questions of why and how did some people in different parts of the world come to be farmers? These questions frame Barker's critical, global review.

In the first...