Kinship and Migration in Prehistoric MSEA: Insights from Isotopic Analysis over the Years

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Paradigms Shift: New Interpretations in Mainland Southeast Asian Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Kinship is an important but often under-researched aspect of the rise of complex societies. Whereas early agricultural communities in Neolithic Europe and East Asia were patrilineal and patrilocal, the nature and impact of prehistoric kinship systems in Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) is becoming better understood. This paper will review over a decade of previous work isotopic work on Neolithic skeletons from Thailand and Vietnam that suggests the origins of complex societies in parts of MSEA might lie in matrilineal kinship systems. Isotopic evidence has suggested matrilocality among Neolithic to Iron Age skeletons at some, but not all, sampled sites in northeast Thailand. There is an exciting future ahead for multi-method investigations into prehistoric kinship and social differentiation in MSEA.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paradigms Shift: New Interpretations in Mainland Southeast Asian Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24301