East/Southeast Asia (Geographic Keyword)
301-325 (499 Records)
The cave sites of Xianrendong and Yuchanyan are known for having produced the earliest pottery sherds yet discovered, respectively 20,000 cal BP and 18,600 cal BP. Both of these Chinese Upper Palaeolithic sites have been systematically sampled for radiocarbon dating and geoarchaeological analysis. Through micromorphology we identified clay lined fire features and ash lenses at both caves, revealing technological behaviour concerning pyrotechnology and the manipulation of clays in the Chinese...
Microscopic Analysis of Sherds from Pit H85 (2017)
H85 is the largest pit discovered in the north-central area of Yangguanzhai. In 2014 the archaeological team took sherd samples from the 12 layers excavated up to that point. Where possible, the team took one sherd from each of the colors grey, red, and beige as well as both fine, levigated texture and coarse, tempered texture from each layer. Thin sections of these sherds were produced and examined under the microscope to determine the choice of temper and other steps in the preparation of the...
Microscopic Leftovers: Exploratory Starch Grain Analysis on Ceramic Vessels from the Shangshan Culture, China. (2017)
This paper will outline trends observed in pottery technology and dietary practices of the early Holocene Shangshan Culture (11,400 to 8400 cal. B.P.) in the lower Yangtze Valley, China. The Shangshan people produced some of the earliest known fine ware, and it is hypothesized that communities engaged in the low-level production of rice, which began the process of domesticating this crucial cereal. To date, the nature of pottery use and rice consumption at Shangshan sites remains partially...
Microstratigraphic Investigation of Nomadic Pastoral Campsites in Eastern Mongolia (2017)
Since the origins of domestication, pastoral societies have been an exceptional example of adaptation and resilience. In recent years, studies focusing on herbivore faecal remains have shown the importance of these remains and their implication for identifying socio-economic activities. Here we present a multi-proxy examination of these deposits for an accurate identification of herds penning. We use micromorphology of soil sediments and stable isotopes analysis combined with archaeology and...
A Middle Yangshao Cemetery of the Yangguanzhai Settlement (2017)
In order to better understand the moated settlement of Yangguanzhai (ca. 5300-4800 B.P.) in the Wei River Valley of China, the archaeological team surveyed east of the moated area in 2015. A large number of pit burials with side chambers were found. The cemetery is so far the first known adult cemetery of this period (Miaodigou Phase of Yangshao Culture). Based on C14 dating and funerary goods, the cemetery is contemporaneous with the Yangguanzhai settlement. This discovery provides important...
Migration and Isolation in the Okhotsk Tradition of Hokkaido and the Kuril Islands (2017)
Northern people are known for epic migrations such as the Pleistocene colonization of Eurasian Arctic and Movement into North America as well as multiple migration episdoes across the North American Arctic in the late Holocene. In this paper we look at the subarctic Sea of Okhotsk region and patterns of mobility within the Okhotsk tradition from 500-1300 C.E. Using lead (Pb) and strontium (Sr) isotopes, we reveal unexpected differences in lifetime stationary residence vs. relocation of...
Migration, Diffusion, and Trade: Potting in Neolithic NW China (2015)
Painted pottery traditions in Neolithic Northwest China emerged through diverse processes of human migration, technical transmission, style imitation, and material exchange. Starting around 6000 years BP, Yangshao farming communities expanded incrementally farther upstream along the Upper Yellow River drainage and westward along the Hexi Corridor. The painted pottery tradition introduced by Yangshao immigrants developed into different chronological and regional styles in Northwest China over the...
Millets and Rice on the Move: Adaptive Strategies in the Past and Future (2017)
A growing tradition of archaeobotanical research, one that was pioneered by Steven Weber, is allowing us to form a picture of how millets and rice spread into Southeast Asia. Although rice continues to play an important role in the diet in this area, the use of millet has been slowly forgotten. These two different crops have been alternatively seen as a "cultural package" that coincided with the spread of farmer populations from Southern China, or adaptations to different ecological or climatic...
Mineralogical make-up of casting moulds and its archaeological implications for bronze making techniques in ancient China (2017)
In order to understand how bronze vessels were produced and the knowledge involved we cannot limit our study to simply the bronze vessels themselves. Thus, the analysis on bronze mold production plays a key role to our understanding of bronze vessel production. The focus in this study will be on the 155 mold fragments currently housed at the Royal Ontario Museum, originally from Anyang dated to the Shang dynasty. Petrographic analysis was utilized for this research on raw materials and how the...
Modeling a rapid transition in subsistence regimes in highland western China (2015)
The highlands of western Sichuan (or Eastern Tibet) experienced a profound change in both settlement patterns and in subsistence regimes when a shift from a millet-based agriculture to wheat and barley based agro-pastoralism took place c. 2000 cal. BC. Using a model that predicts the changing possible distribution of crops across the area, we examine the role that changes in ancient climate could have played in the reversal of subsistence practices in this area. SAA 2015 abstracts made...
Modeling Archaeological Site Location in Northern Mongolia: The Northern Railways Archaeological Project (2016)
Around the world, predictive models are increasingly important to heritage management by estimating where sites are likely to be located, particularly in un-surveyed areas. Northern Mongolia is well known for its archaeological resources, particularly Bronze Age and Early Iron Age sites, but vast areas remain to be surveyed. This poster presents a project conducted by the Mongolian International Heritage Team and Statistical Research to provide recommendations on the routing of a proposed...
Modeling the Spread of Crops across Eurasia (2017)
Understanding the routes and the timing of the spread of western Eurasia domesticates to Asia and of Asian domesticates to Europe and the Near East has become an increasing focus of research. To date, however, we have had little understanding of the types of constraints that farmers may have faced as they moved these domesticates into the challenging environments of Central Asia. The spread of many of these domesticates also took place during a time of marked climatic change. Although it has...
Modelling Communities: Social Transformation of Early Kaushi, Taiwan (2017)
This paper presents the modelling of different communities within two sites, Saqacengalj and Aumagan, which exemplifies the early developments of the Kaushi people. In the light of Ingold’s ‘wayfaring theory’ (Ingold, 2012), this research argues that interpersonal relationships are not entirely based on social identities, and social relations should also be investigated, regardless of their hierarchical status, but through intimate human interaction. Therefore, this research models human...
Movement of People and Its Cultural Reconstructions: Spatial Construction and Cultural Fluidity in Paiwan, Taiwan (2017)
Cultural cognition is figurative, metaphorical, analogical, and participatory in nature. Spatial constructions, presented as figurative patterns, are regarded in this paper as the imagery conceptualization processes. These processes map or encode spatial cognition and relative cultural aspects dwelling in people’s minds onto new lands through daily human activities and physically spatial constitutions when people move. Therefore, analyzing spatial constructions of a social group during...
Moving on from Movius: Recent Research in Pleistocene Archaeology in Myanmar (2017)
For many archaeologists, Myanmar is known as the place where Hallam Movius proposed the Movius Line as a result of his fieldwork in the 1930s. Movius proposed this line as a major cultural boundary of the Palaeolithic era, with bifacial technology present in the west and north, but absent to the south and east. His line continues to have a major influence on contemporary discussions of human evolution in the Eastern Hemisphere. Motivated by debates about the line, and other questions about the...
Multiple evidences for variations in subsistence strategy of prehistoric humans from the Guanzhong area in Shaanxi province, China (2017)
Influenced by the continual infiltration of surrounding cultures and the extension of agriculture originating in various independent centers, the multi-cultures and diversified economy had been formed in the Guanzhong area, Shaanxi, in the process of the prehistoric culture evolution. In this paper, the comprehensive analyses of stable isotopes (carbon and nitrogen) of humans and animals and the plant and faunal remains from the different periods and sites in the Guanzhong area will be employed...
Mumun Period Households and the Rise of Inequality in Korea (2015)
In the Jinju area of South Korea, social inequality first emerged during the Mumun Period (1060 – 340 cal. B.C.), during which permanent agricultural villages were also established. Excavations in the last two decades have uncovered close to 15 of these settlements, but the process of emergent inequality during the Mumun Period is just beginning to be understood. This poster provides results from the first systematic study of households from the Jinju area that intersects this important period....
Mythscape: An Ethnohistorical Archaeology of Space and Narrative in the Northern Thai Cultural Landscapes (2017)
A thousand-year old narrative of the Naga in northern Thailand relates how the town known as Yonok came to be destroyed (by an earthquake) after its ruler became unrighteous. Regardless of this divine retribution, the people of the town chose to rebuild. Local chronicles and written documents show that people in the region continue to practice and believe in the narrative today. The Naga is seen as the guardian of the land. It is also seen as the creator and protector of rivers, lands, villages,...
Navigating through Asian waters: Comparative study of 17th- and 18th-century porcelain trade in Manila, the Philippines and Banten, Indonesia from an archaeological perspective (2017)
The trade networks in 17th- and 18th-century Southeast Asia are often reconstructed by using European historical sources. As a result, Southeast Asia is frequently portrayed as a way station between Europe and China. However, the comparative study presented here between Ayuntamiento the Spanish government site in Manila, the Philippines and indigenous palace sites in Banten, Java, Indonesia under Dutch indirect rule suggests a far more complex picture and challenges the traditional understanding...
The Negotiated Wild: Khmer-Kuy Relations and the Politics of Habitat in Lowland Cambodia before 1970. (2015)
1970, the year of the Lon Nol coup, marks the beginning of the contemporary era in Cambodian habitat politics. This rupture fundamentally upset the "balance of power" between two edgily symbiotic systems of human-habitat regime. While the Khmer propagated "srok," with its high-yield agriculture and large sedentary populations, the Kuy and other ethnic groups exploited "prey", the forest, furnishing the Khmer empire, along with a regional Chinese mercantile network, with a wide range of valuable...
Negotiating Power at the Spanish-Philippine Frontier: What Evidence of Indigenous Prestige Economies Reveals about Indigenous-Colonial Interaction (2015)
Historical documents provide most of what is currently known regarding Spain’s subjugation of the Philippine archipelago. However, in this paper I discuss how archaeological evidence of indigenous prestige economies enriches our understanding of the interaction between the encroaching Spanish colonizers with indigenous polities. My study of imported ceramics found in the Malangwa watershed, Negros Oriental indicate that, contrary to Spanish records, indigenous access to foreign prestige goods...
Neolithic development in eastern Dongbei region, China (2015)
Dongbei region, an inclusive name for three provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning in Northeast China developed Neolithic succession, distinguished from the better known Huanghe culture (Yellow River) from the Early Holocene. Compared to Liaoning region, which is better known outside China, Jilin, a border province with North Korea has been left mostly unknown in international archaeological communities despite of its critical geo-political importance throughout prehistory and history....
Neolithic Development on Jeju Island: Adaptation in a Broad Northeast Asian Perspective (2017)
Jeju Island, locating southwest from the mainland of Korea, documents the earliest Neolithic culture in Korea. The Neolithic period in Jeju can be divided into six phases (Incipient, Initial, Early, Middle, Late, Final). The Gosan-ri type pottery of the Incipient phase has been only identified in Jeju. From the Initial to Final phases, the applique, Youngseon-dong type, Bonggye-ri type, and double-rimmed types of pottery have been found in Jeju, parallel to the Neolithic development along the...
Neolithic human-landscape interactions in eastern China: Preliminary results from Liangchengzhen (2017)
Cultural trajectory of the Yellow River catchment is characterized as complex and integrated feedback process of environment-landscape-human interactions. Landscape history of the Neolithic site, Liangchengzhen, provides a good example of prehistoric agricultural land-use and its impact on local landscape, as well as how the human-landscape process possibly affected rapidly increasing social complexity during the Longshan period and subsequent hiatus in eastern China. Through a combination of...
Neolithic Northern China in the Context of Early Eurasian Interactions (2015)
With a focus on painted pottery assemblages known as Yangshao, Majiayao, Banshan, and Machang from Neolithic Northern China, the present study explores early Eurasian interactions and exchanges indicated by ceramic assemblages and other kinds of archaeological records dated before 4000 years ago. Since the 1920s, scholars have noticed parallels between China’s painted pottery and other collections in Central Asia and further west, prompting the "western origins" theory on painted pottery found...