Dr. Pei-Lin Yu, Anthropology, is co-Editor for the recently published open access edition of the journal “Quaternary.” The issue consists of nine papers from across the Asian continent, and is entitled “Advances in East Asian Agricultural Origins Studies: the Pleistocene to Holocene Transition.”
Additionally, Yu published an article entitled “Tempo and Mode of Neolithic Crop Adoption by Palaeolithic Hunter-gatherers of Taiwan: Ethno-archaeological and Behavioural Ecology Perspectives,” in “Senri Ethnological Studies No. 106: Hunter-Gatherers in Asia: From Prehistory to the Present” edited by Kazunobu Ikeya and Yoshihiro Nishiaki, pp. 147-77. National Museum of Ethnography, Osaka, Japan.
Yu’s interests in the hunting and gathering transition to agriculture began with a two year journey to live among the Pumé Tribe in central Venezuela. Being of mixed-race Taiwanese heritage, she pursued research under a Fulbright Senior Fellowship in 2017 to study the ancient traditional gardening practices of Amis indigenous people of Taiwan. Pei-Lin now studies the evolutionary significance of the transition with special attention to East Asia, and how gardening knowledge made possible the Austroneasian expansion across the Pacific: the greatest human migration before space travel. She will begin a Research Fellowship at the National Museum of Ethnography in Osaka Japan in March 2022.