Tracking the development of agricultural lifestyles in island Southeast Asia through modern and prehistoric rodent communities

农业是人类历史上一个重要的转型事件，但在东南亚岛屿出现的时间似乎比周边地区晚得多。然而，由于简单的物质文化和住房，农业的早期阶段在热带地区可能是考古学上“看不见的”。该项目建议使用农业啮齿动物害虫的最近进化史，所有这些都是从本地啮齿动物区系中原位出现的，作为农业起源和传播的代理，以及随后的强化。该项目将使用地理学和种群遗传学来推断当代啮齿动物种群的历史，结合史前样本的考古动物学和古代DNA分析来测试我们的推断。

The emergence of agriculture, a key transformational event in human history, seems to have occurred significantly later in island SE Asia than surrounding regions. However, the early stages of agriculture may be archaeologically ‘invisible’ in the tropics due to simple material culture and housing. This project proposes to use the recent evolutionary history of agricultural rodent pests, all of which emerged in situ from among a native rodent fauna, as a proxy for the origins and spread of agriculture, and its subsequent intensification. This project will use phylogeography and population genetics to infer the history of contemporary rodent populations, combined with archaeozoological and ancient DNA analyses of prehistoric samples to test our inferences.