East/Southeast Asia (Geographic Keyword)
176-200 (499 Records)
This paper integrated new archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological research in the Ordos region to provide new information on the timing, mechanisms, and process of development of agro-pastoralism in China. The paper includes a new synthesis of archaeobotanical, and zooarchaeological data to understand the nature and the beginnings of agro-pastoralism as early as the Late Neolithic period (2600-1900 B.C.）. Environmental factors constrained and shaped animal husbandry in the Ordos Region, an area...
Finding the Right Spot: Utilizing Historic Maps, Period Imagery, and Archaeological Data to Identify Aircraft Crash Sites within the Larger Battlefield Landscape (2017)
Identifying aircraft crash sites is a critical component of the mission of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. This paper uses several examples of aircraft crash incidents and illustrates the contextual use of multiple lines of data, such as historic imagery, GPS, period maps, and GIS for the effective location of individual crash sites across the greater battlefield landscape. This effort is undertaken to help address the goals associated with DPAA's greater mission: the return of missing...
Forager Efficiency, Demographic Shift and Environmental Change: Re-evaluating the Broad Spectrum Revolution in Mainland Southeast Asia (2015)
On the Thai-Malay Peninsula the Pleistocene to Holocene transition was accompanied by significant post-glacial sea level rise, new environmental conditions, and increased human population densities. How did foragers adapt to these changes? In this region, the BSR has been the primary framework for understanding forager response to these conditions since Gorman’s analysis of the fauna from Spirit Cave (1971). Gorman suggested, following Flannery’s in the Near East, that at the...
A FORENSIC APPRAISAL OF ART OF WRITING AND WRITING MATERIALS SUCH AS INK, PAPER AND WRITING INSTRUMENTS IN PERSPECTIVE OF INDIAN ANTIQUITY (2015)
The study traces the origin of ink, paper, writing instrument and art of writing in perspective of Indian antiquity and in the light of India’s past -unraveled by researchers, testimony of foreign writers, literary evidences and paleographic facts along with a few old religious & astrological documents like almanacs, horoscopes etc., written ‘Sanskrit’ language. A prolific art of writing, well developed scripts e.g. "Brahmi", a well-established Grammar "Sanskrit" and writing materials such as...
Formation of iron market system in the capital area of the Qin and Han dynasties (2016)
Market system plays a key role in the formation of the imperial economy of Chinese early Empire. Previous scholarship usually paid attention to prestige goods in this regard, giving a good albeit partial description about the market system in Early China. Putting in the anthropological discourse of market exchange, this presentation explores the production and distribution of iron objects—one major type of daily-use items—in the Guanzhong basin according to burial data to better understand the...
Fortified Towns in a Nomadic Pastoral Landscape on the Mongolian Steppe: Bai Balik and the Northern Railways Archaeological Project (2017)
Mongolia is well known for its history of nomadic pastoralism and Bronze and Early Iron Age burials and monuments. For a brief period in the 8th and 9th centuries, however, the Uygher and Khitan Khanates built large towns and urban centers. One of these, Bai Balik was established about 758 CE during the northward expansion of the Uyghur Empire, by the Uyghur khagan, Bayanchur Khan as a ceremonial and trading center in the fertile and strategically located Selenge Valley. This well-known site,...
Foundations of Childhood: Bioarchaeology of Subadults at the Late Shang Capital of Yinxu (2017)
Oracle-bone inscriptions and pre-Han texts say little about children, making bioarchaeology the best available method to study childhood during earlier periods. In 2004, extensive excavations were carried out on building foundations in Dasikong Village, a Late Shang (c.1200-1046 BC) lineage neighborhood found on the outskirts of modern-day Anyang, Henan Province, China. This led to a uniquely high recovery of subadult remains as younger subadults are often found in and around foundations. For...
From a strategic passage to a remote town ----the status change of Dunhuang in the history of China and West communication reflected from the beacon ruins in Dunhuang (2017)
Silk Road played an important role in the ancient China and West communication. Dunhuang is located in the most western part of the Hexi Corridor, which is a valley between Qilian Mountain and Beishan Mountain. It connects the countries of the Middle Asia, Europe and Africa in west and the East Asia in East. Beacon ruin is the most important type among the archaeological ruins, and played a key role in protecting the Northwest frontier and the Silk Road accessibility. Among the 182 ruins of...
From Hunting and Gathering to Farming in Northern Thailand (2017)
Southeast Asia’s prehistoric zooarchaeological record is peculiar: faunal assemblages are seemingly ‘diverse,’ and generally include a large number of mammalian/reptilian/avian and molluscan species, but often these assemblages lack telltale evidence for human consumption. Therefore, one of the primary challenges confronting zooarchaeologists in this region is identifying what taxa were actually exploited by prehistoric foragers and how these patterns changed over time. This paper investigates...
From Serial Specialist to Cereal Specialist: Managing Hunting and Husbandry in the Context of the Terminal Pleistocene-Early Holocene Fitness Landscape of North China (2017)
Recent reconstructions of terminal Pleistocene-early Holocene settlement and subsistence patterns in northern China indicate that the intensive yet highly mobile hunting pattern that developed during the Younger Dryas as a way of mediating the increased temporal and spatial patchiness of the terminal Pleistocene resource base was maintained and even facilitated by early experiments with farming millet in the early Holocene. The long-term viability of this novel adaptation was evaluated in the...
From Settlement to City: Two Issues Related to Phases I of the Site of Sanxingdui, Southwest China (2015)
Since the first archeological excavation in 1934, the site of Sanxingdui has been explored in 16 separate field projects, exploring an area of nearly 10000 m2. Due to various reasons, only the data of 5 excavations (Yueliangwan in 1934 and 1963, Sanxingdui in 1980, the Sanxingdui sacrificial pits in 1986, and Rensheng cemetery in 1998) have been published, reporting only on 3000 m2 of excavation surface containing mainly Bronze Age remains. Our understanding of the Neolithic period (Phase I) at...
From the Ground, Up: The Looting of Vườn Chuối in Archeological and Criminological Context (2017)
The exact nature of the illicit antiquities trade from ground to market in Southeast Asia remains poorly known outside of Thailand and Cambodia, where most research has been focused. This paper helps to address this imbalance by documenting and contextualizing looting activities at the Bronze and Iron Age site of Vườn Chuối, located within urban Hanoi. We provide a brief excavation history so as to place looting into archaeological and bioarchaeological contexts, and discuss current and future...
Gained bioarchaeological insight from the skeletal human remains at Dabaoshan, south central Inner Mongolia, China (2015)
The south central Inner Mongolia, China has been defined as an area where two economically diverse prehistoric cultures interacted: northern nomadic pastoralists and southern sedentary agriculturalists. Earlier archaeological work suggested that cultural exchanges between these two groups occurred prior to the early Iron Age. Dabaoshan cemetery was recently excavated in this area, and contains approximately 44 individuals. Human remains from this site represent one of the earlier settlements in...
Genetic structure of ancient population of the Early Bronze Age Qijia Culture and genetic contribution present-day Chinese (2016)
The Qijia culture was an early Bronze Age culture distributed around the upper Yellow River region of Gansu (centered in Lanzhou) and eastern Qinghai, China. It is regarded as one of the earliest bronze cultures. The Mogou site was a massive site of Qijia Culture in the Ganging region, more than one thousand graves have been found there. In our research, we studied the genetic structure of early ancient Mogou population, and further explored the genetic relationship between them and present-day...
A Geoarchaeological Investigation of Ancient Agricultural Fields at Sanyangzhuang Site, Henan Province, China (2015)
Over the last 10,000 years, agriculture has gradually replaced hunting and gathering, and become the dominant food resource. Because of their extreme importance agricultural issues have attracted much academic attention; a wide variety of new perspectives and understandings, especially concerning agricultural origins, have been gained in the past few decades. However, there is a huge intellectual gap between the extensive agriculture soon after the earliest domestication and intensive...
Geometric morphometry versus traditional stone artefact typology in the Hoabinhian of northern Vietnam (2017)
Hoabinhian typologies dominate stone artifact analysis in discussions of late Pleistocene archaeology in mainland Southeast Asia. Although, the objective reality of the types in this system has been questioned, there has been little empirical work to test the usefulness of the commonly used types as discrete entities. We collect 3D scan models of 110 artifacts from Mau A, a recently excavated site in northern Vietnam, where the Hoabinhian was was first described. We derive semi-landmarks along...
GIS as a Heuristic Tool: Revisiting Spatial Concepts in the Paiwan Landscape (2016)
This research showcases how Geographic Information System (GIS) serves as a heuristic interface to visualise obscure spatial concepts and further facilitates researchers to explore how these concepts influence people’s perception of and interaction with the landscape. The abandoned slate-stone settlements of Paiwan are one of their most distinct icons. However, their spatial location and their relation with the wider regional landscape were not thoroughly investigated. This research utilises...
A GIS-Investigation of the Yangshan Cemetery, Qinghai, NW China (2016)
This paper focuses on the use of GIS (geographic information systems) to examine mortuary practice in the Yangshan cemetery (ca. 4300-4000 BP), Qinghai Province, Northwestern China. The abundant graves unearthed in the Yangshan cemetery are valuable sources for investigating local social and economic organization. However, mortuary practice at Yangshan appears to be complicated, including graves containing single or multiple individuals, individuals deposited in extended or flexed position,...
A Glimpse of Rice Exploitation at Mojiaoshan Site, Liangzhu Culture: Archaeobotany and Rice Charring Experiment (2017)
Located at the Lower Yangtze River, China, Mojiaoshan Site is a 'palace' and center of Liangzhu Culture. On the edge of the Mojiaoshan platform, a waste accumulation of rice (H11) was found in recent years. Based on the archaeobotanic remains from this accumulation, this paper tries to preliminarily discuss the rice exploitation at Mojiaoshan Site. By conducting a charring experiment aiming to distinguish the rice broken before charring from rice broken after charring, the research tried to...
Global Connections: Beads and the Interaction Network of the Ifugao, Cordillera, Philippines (2015)
Grave goods have been especially useful in the archaeological examination and determination of political economy and levels of inter-group interaction. Among the Ifugao of the northern highland Philippines, ethnohistoric and ethnographic datasets indicate that the group can be considered a ranked society. Dominant Philippine historical narratives also suggest that the Ifugao were in isolation during Spanish colonization. Our excavations at the Old Kiyyangan Village provide material support for...
Globalization and world systems as alternative modes of cultural transmission in the eastern China, 5000-2500 BC (2016)
An eastern crescent zone of the Middle to Lower Yangtze and upwards to Shandong can be defined as a zone of Globalization processes in the Neolithic that was eventually broken down into a number of cores in a world system. The globalization model operates through Neolithic networks, that had no clear political centre but nevertheless promoted shared practices and cultural values over large distances. This is illustrated by the spread of food cultures: crops, cooking methods and ceramic...
Globalization in Southeast Asia’s Early Age of Commerce and the Contributions of Maritime Archaeology (2017)
Globalization has become a central concern of anthropology, and recently scholars have debated its definition, origins, and social implications. For example, some contend that it is a process associated with modern times while others argue that the first long-lived networks involving regular, trans-regional trade emerged between East Asia and the Mediterranean around AD 1000, and even earlier with other regions. It has become increasingly evident, based on a growing corpus of data, that...
Gone fishing: Evidence for Wide-ranging Marine Exploitation in the Initial Settlement of Island Southeast Asia (2017)
"Fishing is much more than fish... It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers" (Herbert Hoover, 1963. Fishing for Fun-and to Wash Your Soul. Random House) In the vast oceans separating continental Sunda and Sahul are more than 17,000 islands that make up the Wallacean Archipelago. Lying to the east of Huxley’s Line, these islands are characterised by unbalanced and depauperate terrestrial faunas but support some of the world’s most bio-diverse marine...
Grounding an underground survey: Paddy fields and monumental Bronze Age shell-scapes in the Dian Basin, Yunnan, China (2015)
Regions under paddy cultivation often present limits on site detection. In addition to deep plowing and continuous flooding of the fields, which intensify erosion and weathering of cultural remains, paddy fields are constructed and managed through field leveling and canal dredging. These processes raze and displace sites, leaving behind a fragmentary settlement record consisting primarily of sites defined by raised mounds and/or standing architecture. Oft used survey techniques that seek to...
The health and nutritional condition research on the skeletal human remains from Dabaoshan in Inner Mongolia, China (2016)
Dabaoshan cemetery (2300-2200 BP) is a recently excavated archaeological site in south central Inner Mongolia, China. Human remains from Dabaoshan cemetery (DBS) represent one of the earlier groups of ancient people in this area, which has the potential to illuminate the prehistoric life ways and relationships of ancient peoples in East Asia. Yet, little attention has been given to this cemetery by way of archaeological research. In this study, the nature and health consequences of the...