Abstract
The timing of early cultivation in the West African forest zone has for a long time been shrouded in uncertainty. This is due, in part, to the paucity of archaeological research focusing on subsistence and agriculture, and the dearth of direct evidence of cultivation in the region. Some palynologists have used patterns in the occurrence of oil palm pollen, including steep upsurges during the mid‐ to late Holocene, as proxies for cultivation. Others have argued that the upsurges in oil palm pollen were caused solely by climate change and thus cannot be proxies for cultivation in the region. This entry examines the lines of argument and uses archaeological, archaeobotanical, and palynological data to provide new insight into early cultivation in the region. By blending these classes of data, results indicate a synchronous occurrence of oil palm pollen, charred oil palm endocarps, domesticated crops, and evidence for sedentism in the West African forest zone. This points to the possibility that human activities of some sort, especially cultivation, encouraged upsurges in oil palm growth in the region from the mid‐ to late Holocene. Another possibility is that both climate change and cultivation caused the retrogression of the forests and paved the way for upsurges in oil palm. Furthermore, phytolith and starch analyses are needed to add to the existing body of data to increase the chances of successfully disentangling the evidence for cultivation from natural phenomena.