Abstract
Human actions have impacted both the landscape and the subsistence strategies that may respond to the coping strategy from environmental and social variability. Archaeologists' questions concerning the shift from foraging to farming in Southeast Asia is an important subject matter. Research in archaeology suggests that the movement of different groups of sedentary agriculturalists from the southern provinces in China had brought the Neolithic suites into northern Việt Nam about 4000 years ago. Others had migrated from the western regions of Mainland Southeast Asia, down the Mekong River in South Việt Nam.
This research studied four archaeological sites in Việt Nam. Putting use of archaeobotany as a tool is an effective approach to generate data. The sub-discipline will add a better understanding of the key role of plants, determine the human-plant relationship and discern various strategies employed whether there was a transition from plant gathering to either tuber domestication or cereal agriculture, determine whether there was a form of exchange networks with the other neighbouring groups, or if they remain as foragers. The use of the macrobotanical techniques addresses questions on the transition to plant management. The methods in anthracology for wood identification, the study of parenchymatous tissue for tuber determination, the use of X-ray fluorescence to determine the number of mineral elements present in the petrified drupes to understand post-deposition, and the application of ethnographic methods to assess the local plant knowledge are substantial to further advance the archaeobotanical analyses in Việt Nam.
The four sites' macrobotanical results indicate that plants were used in different categories: food and non-food as stimulant and technological purposes. The attribute of awareness concerning choices and decision-making processes and the concept of “ginhawa” (well-being) are significant in understanding the social and cultural aspects and the behavioural patterns. From the data obtained, there is direct evidence of utilisation of wild and cultivated tubers and cereals, and a suite of fruits, nuts showing subsistence strategies of foraging and plant management. Results further show that cultural transformation from the dispersal and adaptation through cultivation and exchange correlated with the existence of the cultural materials and the introduced plants.