A Place Against Time Land and Environment in the Papua New Guinea Highlands

About this book

An ethnographically focused environmental study. It includes an investigation of how indigenous knowledge permits a sustainable agricultural system with no extended fallow periods and no outside inputs.

Contents

Environmental ethnoscience: land use, soils and society; rotating the land: the relativity of shifting cultivation; the climate factor; ethnometeorology: the climate; coping with climatic variations: the spectre of famine; the land resources factor; ethnogeoscience: topography and geology; living with land loss: the costs of erosion; the biotic factor; ethnobotany: the plants and vegetation communities; contending with forest and fallow: demons to regrowth; into the soil: nutrient cycling and decomposition; the soil ethnopedology: the soils; keeping up with soil status: the implications of variability; out of the soil: fertility under cultivation. (Part contents).

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