East/Southeast Asia (Geographic Keyword)
101-125 (499 Records)
Influented by the global climate fluctuation in the Late Glacial Maximum(LGM, ca.24,000-18,000 KaBP), Chinese antient hunter-gatherers underwent the climate cooling. Shizitan Site completely recorded the surviving process of hunter-gatherers in the valleys of Middle Yellow River. Supported by 71 AMS 14C dates, more than 10m-thick layers with human occupations fall into the LGM period. Evidence shows that Shizitan Human dealed with the guadually cold weather by more general fire-using, conpound...
Craft production and domestic economies of the prehistoric Chengdu Plain, southwest China (2015)
The Chengdu Plain has been home to several large walled settlements and many small villages since the late Neolithic era. Evidence from several sites suggests that multiple types of economic and subsistence production were usually coupled within a given community. Such activities might have mutually influenced one another while sharing or competing for resources, including labor and customers. Although some artisans possibly produced luxury goods or gifts used on special occasions, most of the...
Cranial Trepanations in Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Xinjiang (2017)
Trepanation is defined as the intentional removal of a piece of bone from the cranial vault of a living individual without penetration of the underlying soft tissues. In China, practicing trepanation can be traced back to the Neolithic, and it can still be found today in some populations in other parts of the world. Nine skulls with lesions from four Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age cemeteries (Yaer from Hami, Goukou from Jinghe, Yanghai from Tulufan, and Choumeigou from Changji) (4000BP–2000...
Creating, enduring and transforming: pots and people in southern Taiwan. (2017)
This paper seeks to reframe archaeological thinking on what constitutes ‘an object’ and how such objects endure through time. I will consider the changing presence of pots among the Paiwan people of southern Taiwan over the past 2000 years. The Paiwan are understood to have ‘lost their pots’ at least 100 years ago, in the sense that they chose to stop making them. This ‘loss’ is has been presumed to result from Chinese and Japanese colonial interventions during the 19th and 20th centuries. ...
Cultural exchanges along the Ancient Silk Road—A Case of Cranial Trepanation from the Early Iron Age in Xinjiang, China (2016)
This presentation reports a case of intentional trepanation along the ancient Silk Road in China from the Early Iron Age, with clear evidence of it being carried out by humans. Although trepanation has been widely performed in Eurasia, there are no definitive trepanation discoveries in western China dating from the Bronze Age. Microscopic observation and computed tomography scan were used to analyze the area of trepanation. With the observation of a three-dimensional deep-field microscope, the...
Cultural Resource Management in the Philippines : Current Practices, Trends and Challenges (2016)
The protection, preservation and conservation of archaeological resources has been a challenge in the Philippines all throughout the years given that there are various threats that endanger their scientific, cultural and educational value. As there are programs and measures the Philippine government carry on including state-enacted cultural/archaeological laws all throughout the country in order to safeguard these valuable resources, it is still the great task and effort to make the general...
Culture and its varations - A community focused study of Siwa and Western Zhou cemeteries in Gansu (2016)
For his last SAA paper, Professor Chen Pochan talked about the Dian Yangfutou cemetery in Yunnan. He presented the results of an analysis that provided new meaning on its social structure. The Dian culture was an important entity on the periphery of the Warring States and early Han world, but apart from several references in Chinese historical documents little is known, but much is assumed, about them. Chen's study complemented previous Dian mortuary research with site-specific practices in...
Culture prosperity of late longshan on north Shaanxi and its environmental background (2017)
The late Longshan culture of north Shaanxi was flouring, while that of the southern Inner Mongolia was declined and migrated to the south. Meanwhile, in Guanzhong Basin, the culture was also declined to the bottom. In this paper, we aimed to know the possible climatic factors drove the occurrence of these culture phenomena. A compile of Holocene climate records related to these three regions were collected and analyzed. The following results can be drawn: after 4.4 Ka BP, the climate of Inner...
Current Issues in the Archaeology of the Margins of Southwest China: The Example of the Stone-Cist Graves (2017)
Stone-cist graves are one of the most remarkable local discoveries in the mountains of Southwest China. Research on stone-cist graves has helped our understanding of various aspects of local cultural history, but there are many questions remaining such as chronology, the sequence of cultural developments, past social structures, as well as the origin and distribution of stone-cist graves. This paper introduces both previous advances and remaining challenges for research on this body of material,...
Daily life and ritual at Yanshi Shangcheng: Subterranean deposition and the puzzle of blended deposits (2017)
At the early Bronze Age city of Yanshi Shangcheng (Henan, China), an important aspect of the lifeways of residents was the practice of depositing various sorts of materials underground. Pottery, human and animal bodies, implements, ornaments and other materials were deposited in pits, wells, ditches, and graves. These "depositional practices" resulted in a bounty for future archaeologists. However, deposition has been undertheorized in Chinese archaeology. Depositional features are often...
Dating and Analysing Koh Ker Settlement and Activity (2017)
The popular narrative places Koh Ker as a short-lived, unconventionally planned, 10th century Angkorian city carved out of remote jungle following a capital shift under the reign of Jayavarman IV. The capital subsequently returned to Angkor and Koh Ker was swallowed by time and forest. A growing number of researchers find this untenable, seeing Koh Ker as a more sizeable, complex and enduring urban phenomenon based on recent investigations. 2015 excavations in the central urban core yielded...
Dayatou and Siwashan - Preliminary Report on the 2015 Season of the Tao River Archaeology Project (2016)
In May and June 2015, archaeologists from the Gansu Provincial Institute of Archaeology, Harvard University, Peking University, Yale University, and National Taiwan University, conducted archaeological and geophysical survey at two important sites in the Tao River drainage: Dayatou and Siwashan. Whereas Siwashan is the type site of the Siwa Culture, and has long been known as an important archaeological site, Dayatou has previously not undergone any published systematic research. Furthermore,...
The Demise of Angkor: infratructural inertia and climatic instability (2015)
The demise of Angkor and its city-region offers insights into the vulnerability of giant low-density cities to climate extremes. At Angkor, the iterative growth of massive, convoluted and intractable infrastructural networks progressively decreased the resilience of the settlement to changing circumstances by restricting or removing adaptive strategies. The nature and consequences of the water crises in Angkor between the 13th and the 16th centuries has been revealed by a combination of remote...
Demographic Fluctuation in Jomon Period of Japan (2015)
This paper surveys our recent studies on fluctuation in prehistoric population of each local area in Jomon or Japanese neolithic period, and infers the reasons for the fluctuations in archaeological contexts. Archaeological demographic reconstruction in Japan has been based on numbers of archaeological sites or structures such as pit dwellings. In Japanese archaeology, pottery chronology has been established in detail. In recent years, many 14C data of various pottery types in Jomon period...
Dental Micro-wear Analysis and Diets of Dacaozi Ancient Population in Qinghai, China (2017)
Dental microwear analysis (DMA) focuses on the microscopic scratches and pits that formed on a tooth's surface as the result of chewing which is a useful approach to reconstruct the diets of animal species and human ancestors. The aim of this study is to use this new method to reconstruct the diets of the Dacaozi ancient population, whom lived in the ancient interactive region of agricultural and nomadic economy in Qinghai Province, northwest China. Different micro-wear patterns of scratches on...
Developing Typologies of Temple Features of Angkor, Cambodia. (2017)
Over 1,400 temples have been identified surrounding Angkor, the capital of the medieval Khmer Empire (9th-15th centuries CE) in present day Cambodia. Some of these temples contain inscriptions and are easily dated, though many temples are lacking inscriptions and the associated chronological information. In this poster, we inventory and develop typologies for four types of temple features: pedestals, lintels, colonettes, and door frames. We use these diagnostic features to identify relationships...
Development of Maritime Networks and Human Migration in Wallacea and Oceania during Neolithic to Early Metal ages (2017)
The Austronesian expansion both in Island Southeast Asia and Oceania after the Neolithic times is one of the famous cases of human maritime colonization and adaptation in the world. This paper explores the evidence of Neolithic to Early Metal-aged maritime networks and maritime adaptation in East Indonesia or northern part of Wallacea based on our recent excavations in Northern Maluku and Central Sulawesi as well as some other latest archaeological outcomes in Island Southeast Asia. We summarize...
The development of typology in Chinese archaeology (2016)
This paper offers an overview of the development of typology in Chinese archaeology. In particular, we focus on how it has influenced and yet distinguished itself from typologies developed in western disciplines—and especially on how Chinese archeologists have relied largely on objects’ appearances to define types. In this manner, they have eagerly used typology in dating and defining archaeological cultures. The philosophy of classification, by which such typologies have been established, has...
The diet and subsistence system of Yuan-Shan People in Taiwan (2015)
Carbon and nitrogen isotope compositions of human bone collagen (n=5) were analyzed to discover the paleodiet of Neolithic people of Yuan-Shan (YS) Culture, in northern Taiwan. A local isotope baseline was constructed by 71 faunal samples. Four inferences are drawn: (1) pigs share similar isotope compositions with deer, which indicates they were herbivores rather than omnivores. It had a great possibility that the pigs were raised by human and we suggest that C3 plant was used as pig’s feed...
Dietary shift and cultural evolution relation to intercontinental cultural exchanges and climate change in the Hehuang and contiguous regions, northwest China ~3600 years ago: Evidence from Carbon and Nitrogen Stable Isotopic Analysis (2015)
This study traces the extent to which dietary change coincides with intercontinental cultural exchanges in Eurasia, to enhance understanding of the effects of long-distance exchanges on the human diets. Through stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of late Neolithic and early Bronze Age human and animal bone collagen, we find that intercontinental cultural exchanges in Eurasia led to significant changes in diet in the Hehuang and contiguous regions of northwest China. The isotopic evidence...
Differing Methodologies in Computing for Smith's Mean Measure of Divergence Between Chinese and Western Literature (2015)
There is growing international interest in Chinese archaeological research, which establishes a precedent to evaluate the current methods used by local scholars. In terms of Smith’s Mean Measure of Divergence (MMD), which is used to estimate biological distances between groups, majority of recent Chinese publications have used the Grewal-Smith angular transformation method with Bartlett’s correction and an MMD formula with the correction factor 1/n_ik +1/n_jk. Most MMD studies in English...
Digital Archaeology at Çatalhöyük: New Inferential Methods for the Interpretation of Neolithic Buildings (2015)
The 3D-Digging Project started at Çatalhöyük in 2009 with the intent to digitally record in 3D all the archaeological stratigraphy in some areas of excavation assembling different devices and technologies for virtually reconstructing all the process in desktop and virtual reality systems. The introduction of 3D data recording and 3D simulation marks a qualitatively new phase of the research process at archaeological sites. This shall facilitate a new mode of inference that can fundamentally...
Diplomacy, Trade and Power Dressing on the Periphery of the Han Empire (2015)
Dress serves as a potent marker of political, cultural and social identity for both the living and the dead. This paper investigates two very different "social skins" worn by elites after death focusing on the silk cap, tunic and dress found in Krugan 6 at Noin Ula in northern Mongolia (early first century CE) and the jade burial suit worn by Zhao Mo (d. 122 BCE), the King of Nanyue, who was buried in the south of China in modern Guangzhou. Although separated by time and navigating different...
Dirt, dynasties, and devastation in North China: Geoarchaeological perspectives from the Luoyang Basin (2017)
Anthropogenic disturbance of alluvial systems is increasingly influential through time, but the interplay of climatic systems and basin hydrology complicate attempts to fingerprint how humans influence these systems. We evaluate the importance of climate change, fluvial dynamics, and anthropogenic environmental modification in forming the Holocene sedimentary record of the Luoyang Basin, a tributary of the Yellow River, located in western Henan Province, China. Our fieldwork indicates that an...
The Dispersion of Early Painted Pottery in Northwest China (2015)
The dispersion of resource-based goods, such as obsidian and metals, has been a common subject in world archaeological literature and various mechanisms such as migration, gift exchange, and trade have been conjured up to explain it. The dispersion of painted pottery, by contrast, has been glaringly understudied. Although the raw materials for this product are less geographically constrained, its dispersion has not been well appreciated and explained. This paper aims to address the movement of...