Introduction and Definition
A useful methodological tool to help unravel the complexities of how early agriculture emerged within a given locale is the concept of “practice” (following Bourdieu 1990; see Denham 2005, 2009, 2011; Denham & Haberle 2008; Bruno 2009; Jussuret 2010). In archaeology, practices represent human actions in the past, including habitual modes of behavior and dispositions, as well as individual idiosyncrasies (Barrett 1994). As such, the concept of practice has been proposed as a useful way to overcome various dualisms, or binary divisions, that permeate the study of human-environment interactions and social relations, whether in the past or present (Fig. 1; Denham & Haberle 2008; Denham 2009).
Schematic diagram showing how the concept of practice reconciles various dichotomies inherent to the understanding of human-environment (upper) and human-human (social) relations (lower) in the past...
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Denham, T. (2014). Agricultural Practices: A Case Study from Papua New Guinea. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_84
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