Cereals of Southeast Asia Page 1 of 28 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 February 2022 Print Publication Date: Mar 2022 Subject: Archaeology, Archaeology of Southeast Asia Online Publication Date: Feb 2022 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199355358.013.19 Cereals of Southeast Asia and The Oxford Handbook of Early Southeast Asia Edited by Charles F. W. Higham and Nam C. Kim Abstract and Keywords Rice is the most important cereal in Southeast Asia today. Archaeobotanical evidence in mainland Southeast Asia suggests that this has been the case over the past three and a half millennia. Archaeologists have tended to emphasize the central role of rice in the ori gins and dispersal of agriculture, as well as how irrigated rice formed the foundation of states throughout mainland Southeast Asia. However, there are many other cereals that are traditionally cultivated in Southeast Asia or adjacent parts of China and India. This chapter provides an overview of the early history and past distribution of cereals of Southeastern Asia, highlighting how little is known about many of them, and a summary of the current evidence for origins and spread of rice and foxtail millet, the best known cereals from archaeobotanical evidence in Southeast Asia. Keywords: rice, millet, weed, origin, dispersal, crop-processing, cultivation system, archaeobotany, China, India Introduction CEREALS are starchy grains of cultivated grasses that have historically formed the carbo hydrate staples of most civilizations worldwide, including the urban cultures of Southeast Asia. It has been argued, for example by Steensburg (1989), that cereals were a neces sary basis for the rise of urban civilizations and writing systems, although he allowed for the fact that Asian rice could be highly productive in more localized and less centralized social systems. In the history of mainland Southeast Asia, over the past 1,000 years, ur banism and states have relied heavily on the production of rice, usually irrigated rice, which supported military conscription and urban wealth, while the hilly periphery with more diverse cropping and shifting cultivation offered resistance to and escape from such states for sparser populations (Scott 2009). Archaeologists have tended to emphasize the central role of rice in the origins and dispersal of agriculture throughout mainland South east Asia. The spread of rice has been posited as central in demographic growth in, and migration from, China (Bellwood 2005). However, there are many other cereals that are traditionally cultivated in Southeast Asia or adjacent parts of China and India, and a com Dorian Q. Fuller Cristina Castillo