Test Excavation of the 17th Century Provintia, a Dutch Fort in the Southwest Taiwan

Summary

In the 17th century, Taiwan was considered as an outpost for the Dutch East Indies Company to trade with China and Japan, and to compete with its European counterparts in the region. Located in the contemporary Tainan City, Taiwan, Provintia stood as the Island’s first planned city by the Dutch in AD 1625, the second year when they traded the city land with 15 cangan cloth from the indigenous Siraya. In AD 1653, a fort, called Fort Provintia was constructed as a result of Han Chinese rebels against the Dutch colonial governance. Fort Provintia and its immediate surrounding area have continuously been reconstructed and used by various succeeding regimes after the end of the Dutch rule in AD 1662. The excavation of the vicinity of the Fort’s foundation carried out by this study yields evidence of early human existence which extends the antiquity of the area around Fort Provintia further back in time. Based on the new findings, this study clearly demonstrates the prolonged duration of cultural changes from the prehistoric past to the historic present. In addition, the evidence shed new lights on our understanding of the successive occupation and the formation processes of the area through time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• The Archaeology of Global History

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14473