| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
What were the indigenous agricultural and population patterns in peninsular Malaysia's southern lowlands? What factors produced these patterns? Based on our analysis of ethnographic and historical evidence, as well as aerial photographs taken in 1948 in the Tasek Bera and Sungai Bera watersheds, the Semelai, an Orang Asli group, had a robust and productive subsistence agricultural system emphasising rice but insured by cassava. These photographs, from the P.D.R. Williams-Hunt Collection, provide an unusual record of Semelai agriculture prior to settlement in 1954 and contribute to our knowledge of indigenous economic patterns in the southern lowlands, which have received little ethnographic attention.
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