In order to bring together our discussion so far, it is useful to return to the notion, introduced at the beginning of the paper, of communities enmeshed in systems of symbiotic interaction, at once interconnected but economically diverse. Here I want to suggest that such a pattern was probably an integral feature of early Austronesian society.
Current linguistic evidence places the beginning of Austronesian expansion, initially involving most likely groups from Taiwan moving southward into the northern Philippines, at around 5000 BP (Bellwood 1985:107-121; Pawley and Green 1973:52-54). Bellwood (1985) has proposed a comprehensive model of this expansion based primarily on linguistic and archaeological evidence. According to this model, carriers of Austronesian languages essentially moved southward, settling the islands they encountered with an economy based on agriculture, focused initially on cereals, rice in particular, but adding as they moved southward a variety of tuber and tree crops which in some areas replaced rice as the locally dominant staples.
Without disputing this model, it should not be taken to imply that all early Austronesians were equally committed to rice agriculture. This seems unlikely. Instead, they probably included groups practising a comparatively broad spectrum of economic activities, including trade and, in addition to farming, elements of secondary foraging, hunting, fishing and marine collection (cf. Pawley and Green 1973:35-36). This is not to suggest that the early Austronesians subsisted as full-time foragers, and certainly not as rainforest hunters and gatherers. Rather, what appears to have distinguished the early Austronesians was, almost certainly, the existence of a strong maritime element and, as a concomitant of economic diversity, the presence of significant relations of exchange. Although not full-time foragers themselves, the early Austronesians almost certainly initiated, by their arrival in Island Southeast Asia, two major innovations, both of them associated with exchange, that transformed the nature of foraging in the region: namely — (1) the creation of a special niche for forest collectors-for-trade and (2) the envelopment of foraging groups with agriculturalists and others in a diversified economy.
The principal evidence that the proto-Austronesians practised rice agriculture comes from linguistic reconstructions, and most especially from the work of Robert Blust (1976). This evidence also points to economic diversity. Thus, the early Austronesians appear to have possessed a diverse technology which Blust (1976:37) describes as a “mixed picture” —“with stone tools next to iron, probably bark cloth next to textiles, root crops next to grains”. While Blust (1984-5) has since revised his views somewhat, particularly in regard to iron, the picture he presents remains a complex one. Rice agriculture is certainly a major feature, but, at the same time, the evidence suggests,
a polymorphous economic base incompatible with the somewhat rigid notion of “progress” from one exclusive level to the next (Blust 1976:37).
Economic polymorphism is also suggested by the archaeological record, incomplete as it is. Thus, Bellwood (1985:159), in discussing the gradual southward expansion of Austronesian-speakers, while stressing the propelling role of agriculture, points up the continuing presence of foraging adaptations, noting that (1985:159):
This expansion was not a geographically unified process of replacement. The hunting and gathering lifestyle has been progressively eroded but it has certainly never disappeared entirely … Hence in recent millennia different technologies and economies could and did occur in neighbouring and contemporary sites in a mosaic-like fashion (Hutterer 1976).
Later I will suggest that, in addition to agriculture, the continuing presence of secondary foraging may, indeed, have contributed to the success of the early Austronesians as colonizers. At the same time, the envelopment of foragers in a more diversified economy may have increased the effectiveness of foraging itself, possibly drawing new groups into this niche.
Finally, while cereal cultivation appears to have been a major factor in Austronesian expansion, the Proto-Austronesians, it is equally clear, were not an exclusively land-oriented people. Thus, linguistic evidence confirms the existence of an early and well-developed maritime tradition (Blust 1976:36) and with it, very likely, a pattern of sea-going trade.
While economic diversity might not have contributed to population density, it seems likely to have encouraged a centrifugal, outward-movement of people, one consequence of which may well have been the incorporation of still greater diversity. As I will suggest later, secondary foraging probably played a role in this, facilitating both expansion and the incorporation of new crops and cultivation methods as expanding groups colonized new environments. Moreover, by holding open, initially at least, the option of a thorough-going sedentism, the early Austronesians succeeded as colonizers, pursuing a variety of adaptive strategies and adding new ones as they colonized new environments, while preserving, at the same time, the possibility of future socio-cultural complexity.
Finally, from the outset, the Austronesians must have been able, as a result of economic interaction and exchange, not only to envelop and so transform existing foragers, but also to develop and enmesh new lines of economic adaptation, including in time, new varieties of foraging particularly geared to the region’s unique environments — to its ever-wet rainforests and, even more importantly, to its vast archipelagic seas.