A Trading Post or Craftspeople’s Village? A Ceramic Perspective of the Blihun Hanben Site in Eastern Taiwan

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Elemental Analysis Facility at the Field Museum: Celebrating 20 Years Serving the Archaeological Community " session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Blihun Hanben (BHB) site in ancient Taiwan, dated between 2,000 and 1,200 years ago, contained a wide range of remains that indicate an iron crafting settlement. The excavation yielded over 9,000 kg of ceramics from two cultural layers, indicating a prolonged period of human occupation. This study employed technical typology, geophysical, and geochemical analyses to examine the ceramic assemblage. These analyses unveiled 16 subtypes in seven groups within the upper layer ceramics and 17 subtypes in seven groups within the lower layer ceramics. The specimens were discovered to have originated from four different areas, namely BHB local, northern Taiwan, Ilan Plain, and eastern Taiwan. The quantity and multiple sources of ceramics suggest that the BHB people had continuous and frequent interactions with communities from other regions. Notably, frequent long-distance and intensive interactions were relatively rare in Taiwan's archaeological cases, particularly when nonlocal production represented most of the BHB lower-layer ceramics.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• The Elemental Analysis Facility at the Field Museum: Celebrating 20 Years Serving the Archaeological Community

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39738.0