BAYLISS-SMITH, TIM
tpb1001@cam.ac.uk
University of Cambridge, UK (Geography)
Agriculture, agroforestry, human ecology- Marovo
Current affiliation, academic qualifications and contact details
Timothy Peter Bayliss-Smith
M.A. and Ph.D, University of Cambridge
Reader in Pacific Geography, University of Cambridge
Work address: Department of Geography, University of Cambridge,
Cambridge CB3 2EN, England, U.K.
Home address: 48 Alpha Road, Cambridge CB4 3DG
Tel:01223-338715 or 0223-333399 (work) 01223-301409 (home)
Fax: National 01223-333392, International 44-1223-333392
E-mail: tpb1001@cam.ac.uk
Nationality: British
Research
I am a geographer whose engagement in Western Solomons dates back to fieldwork
in Marovo Lagoon in 1986 and 1996-97. I have previously carried out extensive field
research in Ontong Java atoll. My village surveys and interviews in Marovo Lagoon
were all conducted in English and Pijin. As a result of this work I published a book
with Edvard Hviding (2000) that reviewed Marovo knowledge of the forest and its
history of use, from swiddens and taro terraces (ruta) to copra plantations, and then
the switch from that mid-20th century economy to the modern opportunities offered by
logging and ecotourism. Subsequently (2003) we have also written about forest
disturbance in Marovo in the 19th century, before the move of inland populations to
the coast and the disastrous population decline that took place in the first decades after
full-scale colonial contact. I have also reviewed the population decline c. 1850-1920
that took place on Simbo (2006). These are all topics that could, and I think should,
be studied further, and also elsewhere in the region.
Further ideas and reflections
In particular I see a need for inland areas of the larger areas to be studied and
documented, using archaeological, historical, oral-historical and botanical evidence.
These are the areas now being re-settled by coastal communities, and they are also the
focus for timber concessions to logging companies. Knowledge of past history needs
to be collected now, before modern land-use removes all traces of old village sites,
skull shrines, taro terraces, and the disturbed vegetation that marks old areas of
swidden cultivation, and before oral-historical knowledge has faded away.
Key publications/reports/materials
Bayliss-Smith, Tim 1993. Time, Food and Money in the Marovo Lagoon, Solomon
Islands: Village Surveys in a proposed World Heritage Site. Technical Paper 299,
CSC(93) EPP-19, Commonwealth Science Council, London. 25p.
Bayliss-Smith, Tim 1999. “Intensification in the Pacific: comment”. Current
Anthropology, 40: 323-324.
Hviding, Edvard and Tim Bayliss-Smith 2000. Islands of Rainforest: Agroforestry,
Logging and Ecotourism in Solomon Islands. Aldershot: Ashgate. 371p.
Bayliss-Smith, Tim, Edvard Hviding and Tim Whitmore 2003. “Rainforest
composition and histories of human disturbance in Solomon Islands”. Ambio 32(5):
346-352.
Bayliss-Smith, Tim 2003. “The archaeology and ethnohistory of exchange in
precolonial and colonial Roviana: comment”. Current Anthropology 44 (suppl.): S70S71.
Bayliss-Smith, Tim 2006. “Fertility and depopulation: childlessness, abortion and
introduced disease in Simbo and Ontong Java, Solomon Islands”, in Population,
Reproduction and Fertility in Melanesia, S. Ulijaszek (ed.), 13-52. Oxford: Berghahn.