East/Southeast Asia (Geographic Keyword)
201-225 (499 Records)
The Ifugao of the highland Philippines responded to Spanish colonial incursions in adjacent lowland towns in the early 1600s by consolidating their political, social, and economic resources. This period saw the introduction of wet-rice agriculture and subsequent expansion of irrigated terraced agriculture in the region. These social and economic changes suggest an increased reliance on rice and a decreased dependence on a broad-spectrum diet. It is hypothesized that changes in diet and larger...
Health and Stress of Neolithic Yangshao Culture Skeletal Population from Wanggou Site, Zhengzhou (2017)
The Wanggou site, located in the Lower Yellow River valley, is a large Yangshao culture cemetery, dating to 7000-5000 BP. Two hundred and eleven skeletons were examined for variations from normal morphology, including non-metric traits, to characterized pathology of the Neolithic Age residents of Central China. This paper examined skeletal evidence of bone disease, trauma and musculo-skeletal stress markers (MSM) of ancient residents. A prevalence of spina bifida, spondylolysis, lumbarization,...
Heath and Stress of Ancient People on the Shanbei Loess Slope in China: The Social and Environmental Impact (2017)
This paper investigates the impact of social and environmental changes on the health of people living during the Warring States period (ca. 5th – 13th Century B.C.) on the Shanbei Loess Slope, a marginal area that connects the Guanzhong Plain and the Shanbei Plateau. Two human skeletal assemblages representing two different cultural settings, but with a longstanding history of conflict, were selected: (1) Zhaitouhe cemetery (n=73) (Xirong Culture, the minority) and (2) Shijiahe cemetery (n=33)...
Here we go again: a new series of AMS dates from the Kkho Wong Prachan Valley, central Thailand (2017)
A new series of AMS dates from the Khao Wong Prachan Valley (KWPV) in central Thailand addresses several key questions in the region, including the dating of the initial settlement of the valley, the duration of the pre-metal period, the first appearance of copper-base artifacts, the beginning of large-scale crucible-based copper smelting and production at the site of Non Pa Wai, the shift to a different copper production technology used at Nil Kham Haeng, and, the occupation span of the...
Heritage in post-modern settings: the case of Japan (2016)
The 'post-modern' condition can be characterized by reflexivity, by which is meant that every social fact is scrutinized as socio-historically constructed. The spread of this 'attitude' fundamentally destabilize the sense of the authenticity of heritage. However, as long as we have to accept this constitutive element of social reality, we have to consider how to come to terms with this and how to better utilize this for the betterment of our relationship with heritage and of our life-world. This...
High Precision Mapping of Human Behavior in Ethnographic Contexts, a New Tool for Ethnoarchaeology (2017)
Ethnoarchaeological studies attempt to link human behavior to the material residues they produce for the purpose of developing archaeological method and theory. Traditional studies in spatial ethnoarchaeology, however, have focused on the mapping of material remains, but the spatial distribution of the behaviors that produced them, the thing that interests us most, has gone largely undocumented and for good reason. Until recently, it was not technically possible to map people in space in a way...
Hokkado, Japan as an Island System in East Asian Pre-Colonial History (2017)
Hokkaido, Japan is an island separate from the East Asian mainland and Honshu yet closely linked culturally to the rest of the Japanese archipelago. Hokkaido was never isolated entirely from the East Asian mainland either. This paper reviews several key events that relate to Hokkaido as an island with a distinct cultural history. As the contemporary home of an indigenous population, the Ainu, Hokkaido has played, and can continue to play, an important role in our understanding of cultural...
Holocene seasonality, mobility, and diet at Niah Cave (Sarawak, East Malaysia): new isotope results on rainforest foragers and farmers? (2016)
Assessment of fine-grained proxies to infer paleoclimate and paleoecology in tropical Southeast Asia is hampered by the coarseness of the archaeological record. Advances in technology, however, do permit fresh insights into past rainforest ecologies using isotope ratios from tooth enamel, albeit with very real spatial and temporal limitations. This is especially true for isotopic analysis of incremental growth layers in human tooth enamel. In this paper, oxygen and carbon isotope ratios are...
Holocene Vegetation Cycles, Land-use and Human Adaptations to Desertification in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia (2017)
Since the retreat of the Pleistocene some 11,700 years ago, the landscape and vegetation of the Mongolian Gobi Desert has been profoundly changing, punctuated by the appearance of lakes, wetlands, and finally aridification. Vegetation communities have responded to these changes according to temperature shifts and northward to southward movements of the edges of East Asian monsoonal systems. Human groups have lived, foraged, and traveled through the landscape of the Gobi for millennia, adapting...
Honshu’s Pre-Agricultural Landscapes: Perspectives from Mt. Fuji and Toyama Bay (2017)
Pre-agricultural Japan experienced significant changes in its cultural and natural landscapes over some 30 millennia of human habitation and modification (ca. 34,000 to 2,300 calendar years BP). As an extensive period witnessing fundamental environmental and cultural changes, the pre-agricultural era was dynamic, with sub-periods of relative stability punctuated by episodes of rapid change in lifestyle, material culture, and environmental and cultural setting. This research compares and...
Household archaeology in Angkorian Cambodia: Preliminary results and challenges for future research (2016)
This paper presents the results from the 2015 excavation of a house mound within the Angkor Wat enclosure. Although household archaeology is well established in other tropical locations, notably Mesoamerica, few households have been closely examined in Southeast Asia. In this paper, we discuss some of the preliminary findings from our excavation of an Angkorian house mound, as well as research on the use of space around the mound and the potential for household gardens. A comparison with...
Household Change and Social Complexity in Prehistoric Korea (2017)
Household archaeology has made important contributions to the study of large-scale social transformations through the remains of the everyday. This paper examines the role of households, themselves, in the social changes that occurred during the Early and Middle Mumun Pottery Periods (ca. 1500-500 B.C.) in Korea. During this time, incipient social inequality developed alongside another significant change—households that were previously composed of multiple families became single-family units....
Houses (and Gardens?) at Angkor (2017)
Household archaeology and a focus on residential spaces is an emerging field in Southeast Asia. At Angkor, this approach has great potential for exploring the resiliency of non-elite members of society through changes in environmental and socio-political processes. In this paper we present results from the ongoing analyses of a 2015 excavation of a house mound within the Angkor Wat enclosure. Using a variety of techniques including macro- and micro-botanical analyses, geoarchaeology, soil...
How the Han Empire managed the large-scale iron production: a study report of iron smelting sites in Shandong province and Henan province (2017)
This paper is mainly about a study report of several iron smelting sites in Shandong and Henan province. By analyzing archaeometallurgical remains from large-scale iron production sites, this presentation tries to clarify issues under-addressed in previous excavation reports and shed new light on the iron technology, production organization, and the management of Iron Offices of the Han Empire that led to the developmental peak of iron industry in Chinese history.
Human activity accelerating the rapid desertification of the Mu Us Sandy Lands, North China-Evidence from Micro-charcoal Assemblages (2017)
Over the past several thousand years, the arid and semiarid regions of China have experienced a series of asynchronous desertification events in its semiarid sandy and desert areas, but the precise identification of the driving forces of such events has remained elusive. Identified are two rapid desertification events (RDEs) at ~4.6 ± 0.2 ka BP and ~3.3 ± 0.2 ka BP from the JJ Profile, located in the eastern Mu Us Sandy Lands. These RDEs appear to have occurred immediately following periods...
Human Adaptation and Natural Resource Usage in Prehistoric Southern Ryukyu islands, Southwestern Japan (2017)
This study aims to discuss about the strategy of prehistoric human adaptation to the island environment, especially focus on the natural resource usage. I introduce the case of southern part of Ryukyu islands—the southwestern part of Japan archipelago, where the first long-term human settlement had occurred about 4,300 years ago. Prehistoric people in southern Ryukyu islands had a unique material culture (absence of pottery, use of giant clam shell adzes), which was dissimilar to the surrounding...
Human dietary responses to the ecological instability of prehistoric Khao Wong Prachan Valley, Thailand: corroboration between paleobotany and skeletal chemistry (2015)
In Mainland Southeast Asia, rice agriculture and consumption has been a factor frequently tested for changes in population, biological and socio-cultural dynamics in prehistory. For Khao Wong Prachan Valley (KWPV) in central Thailand, Weber et al. (2010) indicated that rice did not enter the stratigraphy until the 1st millennium B.C., while millet seeds were encountered as early as the 3rd millennium B.C. and persisted throughout. Factors such as climate fluctuation, population expansion, and...
Human Ecology and Lithic Technology in Late Pleistocene SE Asia: A Whole Assemblage Perspective (2015)
Whole assemblage analyses have revealed that Late Pleistocene foragers in Western Eurasia show land use strategies that fall on an expedient-curated continuum of lithic organization linked to shifts between residential and logistical mobility. Here, we apply this model to reconstruct mobility strategies in tropical SE Asia to see whether it works in non-temperate settings. Data from over 42 lithic assemblages from across SE Asia indicate that they appear to reflect a distinct environmental...
Human occupation during the penultimate glaciation in China’s Western Loess Plateau: The technological evolution and adaptive variability of the Yanghsang (2017)
The newly excavated Yangshang site generated a high-resolution record in China's Western Loess Plateau which demonstrated that ancient humans occupied this region since MIS-7. Nearly 1700 stone artifacts and more than 330 animal remains were unearthed in 2013. Although the site was dominated by the quartz based core/flake tradition, same as most lower Paleolithic sites in Northern China, the core reduction analysis and raw material economic study among the long term cultural sediments indicate...
Ideas of Immortality and the Clay Buddha Image from Yibin, Sichuan, China (2017)
In 2012, the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Archaeology excavated a group of cliff tombs in Nanxi County, Yibin; grave M12 at this site revealed a clay Buddha image. This paper argues that this is the base of an object dating between the late Eastern Han and the Shu Han period (AD 25-263) that is similar to the bases of money trees molded in the shape of a seated Buddha or Queen Mother of the West. The image thus likely developed from the image of the Queen Mother of the West as seen at the...
Identification of Adhesive on Bone-Handled Microblades from the Houtaomuga Site in Northeast China (2017)
With the emergence and development of composite tools in the Upper Paleolithic, adhesives became one of the most widely used materials by early human societies. Of particular interest is to know which animal/plant species were being exploited for glue manufacturing. The Houtaomuga site, located in northeast China, provides favorable materials for the identification of organic residues; and a few bone-handled microblades were collected from this site. In this study, we scraped micro adhesive...
Identification of bast fibers from Samdzong, Nepal (2016)
Textile remains have been recovered from burials at the highland site of Samdzong, northwestern Nepal. The fabrics are desiccated exhibiting and high degree of preservation which is shown by the presence of cellular tissue pertaining to bast bundles. In this paper, we discuss methodological approaches towards the study of plant fibers and their surrounding tissues focusing on different techniques of microscopy. We will address advantages and limitations for transmitted and polarized light, as...
Ifugao Neonate and Infant Oral Health (2015)
The Ifugao Archaeological Project (IAP) seeks to develop a holistic understanding of the peoples of the Philippine Cordillera, specifically the bio-cultural adaptations to colonizing forces and environmental change. Presently relatively little is known about dental development and it's relationship to long bone growth given that current evidence regarding prehistoric Ifugao neonate and infant health is scarce. This study examines a dental sample from 15 neonate and infant skeletons...
In and out of contact: comparing communication between sites with ceramic technology in prehistoric southern Vietnam (2016)
Contact and communication between communities in the past can be identified through the comparison of material culture. Systematic studies of ceramic technological components including morphology, fabric and decoration have indicated that certain sites were exposed to networks of interaction more consistently than others. In a comparison between An Son and Rach Nui, both located in southern Vietnam with dates and evidence of occupation during the Neolithic period, from approximately 4000-3000...
In search of Southeast Asia’s trade network: Comparative ceramic analysis (2015)
Southeast Asia is a region whose inhabitants have long been engaged in long-distance trade connected through ocean and river systems. This paper presents the preliminary results of a petrographic study on earthenware samples from archaeological sites in Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand in order to scientifically investigate the putative trade networks. The preliminary results show a complex picture of local production and imported ceramics, one that changes depending on the location and the...