A combination of ethnoarchaeology, experimental archaeology and use-wear analysis as a mean to recover testimonies of past human activities in Southeast Asian rainforests.

Summary

In order to recover the activities that took place a long time ago in the rainforests, it is desirable to have an idea of the ones which can possibly be carried out in this specific environment with the resources available. Such knowledge can be acquired by conducting field investigation among forest experts: local populations who currently inhabit it and rely on plants, animals and minerals for their daily subsistence. To be able to identify these activities in the archaeological record, it is also desirable to know what material traces will remain of them, which can be achieved by archaeological experiments.

We conducted ethnoarchaeological fieldwork among Palawan communities in the forested mountains of Palawan, Philippines to know what plants are used nowadays, to achieve what purposes, and following what technical processes. Then, we reproduced selected activities with stone tools made of local red jasper, which is the raw material of many archaeological stone tools in the region. Finally, we recorded the residues and use-wear present on the experimental tools, to document the specific signature of each plant and each activity, in order to be able to recognize them on archaeological artefacts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Forests of Plenty: Ethnographic and Archaeological Rainforests as Hotspots of Human Activity

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