As expected, not much, yet. There aren’t many channels devoted to archaeology, [...]]]> Last week, Apple announced a revamped iBooks and iTunes U service aimed at bringing textbooks and course materials to the iPad. There’s a fair buzz in the education circles, but how much content is there relating to the archaeology of Southeast Asia?

As expected, not much, yet. There aren’t many channels devoted to archaeology, much less to the archaeology of Southeast Asia. But if you dig deeper, you might be able to find a couple of good lectures and material. Here’s my list of so 7 far:

• Sacred Lands, Sacred Traditions: The arts of Southeast Asia and the Himalayas – a 2005 lecture series by the Society of Asian Art at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Covers topics of the art of Thailand and Indonesia in particular, and the art of early Southeast Asia.
• Southeast Asia-China Interaction – from the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. The lecture series covers a wide variety of topics from the ancient to the contemporary, but some of the lectures relevant to archaeology include talks on Champa in Vietnam and kiln sites in Cambodia.
• Emerald Cities – Another series by the Asian Art Museum, focused on a 2009-2010 exhibition focused on the art of 18-20th century Thailand and Myanmar.
• South and Southeast Asia before 1200 – Part of lecture series on art by Maggie Hobson-Baker of the Montogomery County Community College.
• Arts of Southeast Asia Documentaries – Another one from the Asian Art Museum, one of the the three podcasts in this series is about the temple mountains of Cambodia.
• World Audio Cambodia – Sounds, music and stories from Cambodia. Not exactly archaeological, but there are some locations featured.
• Passport to Asia – Asian Art Museum Lecture series 2008-2009. A wide variety of subjects on Asian sites, but two lectures on Pagan (Myanmar), Borobudur (Indonesia) and the Royal Road of Angkor (Cambodia/Thailand).

That’s a start. It’s not quite seven lectures, as some of the links contain more than one lecture! Do you know of any other content in iTunes U that is related to Southeast Asian Archaeology?

The ‘Other’ Silk Road: China Peers Into Maritime Past NPR, 02 [...]]]> Maritime trade between China and the rest of the world (often passing through Southeast Asia) has been around for nearly 2,000 years, but it has only been in the recent past that China has built up the capability to undertake archaeological investigations underwater.

The ‘Other’ Silk Road: China Peers Into Maritime Past
NPR, 02 July 2010

In China, it is hard to imagine just how much history lies right under your feet. The country has long been a goldmine for archaeologists.

Until recently, they have been confined to digging on land. But in recent years, China has grown into a powerhouse of nautical archaeology, combing its vast coastline for undersea shipwrecks, treasure, and traces of a trade route known as the “Maritime Silk Road,” a less-known parallel to the fabled overland passage.

About 1,000 visitors a day flock to one of China’s newest museums, in Guangdong province’s Yangjiang city. It is called the Maritime Silk Road Museum, and it is on the beach, facing the South China Sea.

The museum houses one of the world’s oldest known merchant ships, dating from the Southern Song Dynasty in the 13th century. It’s been dubbed the South China Sea No. 1.

China’s Forgotten Admiral BBC World Service, 05 February 2010

Zheng He ranks among the world’s greatest seafarers.

Nearly a century before European explorers started [...]]]> The BBC World Service has a podcast on China’s Forgotten Admiral – Admiral Zheng He, who in the 1400s travelled from China to Africa, making stops through Southeast Asia.

China’s Forgotten Admiral
BBC World Service, 05 February 2010

Zheng He ranks among the world’s greatest seafarers.

Nearly a century before European explorers started out, he was commanding great fleets of huge ships

The ships groaned with valuable cargo and travelled epic distances, from China to the coast of Africa.

China has been through periods of overlooking Zheng He. But since the 1980s, he has had a revival in the People’s Republic.

Nick Baker finds out more about the man who was a eunuch, a Muslim, possibly a giant, and one of the world’s most important historic naval figures.

Dispute holds up UNESCO temple listing Radio Australia, 13 June 2008

With just one month to go before Cambodia submits an application for World Heritage listing for another [...]]]> Radio Australia publishes an interview with Thai (and Cambodian?) archaeologists about the ongoing dispute over the Preah Vihear temple. The podcast is also available for download.

Dispute holds up UNESCO temple listing
Radio Australia, 13 June 2008

With just one month to go before Cambodia submits an application for World Heritage listing for another of its magnificent temples, an ongoing border dispute with Thailand threatens to undermine the process.

Little Brains, Big Brains: Latest Flores Hobbit News Scientific American, May 21 2008 You can download the podcast or listen to it straight from the site. Kate Wong, [...]]]> In this week’s edition of Science Talk, the podcast of Scientific American, there’s a segment entitled Little Brains, Big Brains, about the Indonesian hobbit or homo floresiensis.

Little Brains, Big Brains: Latest Flores Hobbit News
Scientific American, May 21 2008

You can download the podcast or listen to it straight from the site. Kate Wong, the resident anthropology expert talks about a recent American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting where the sessions involving the Hobbit was a pretty hot topic. She gives an overview of what is known about the find, but I think there wasn’t enough attention paid to the skeptics and criticisms to the hobbit thesis – in part, this may be since plenty of criticism has come from the Indonesian (read: non-western) scientists themselves.

Get the latest on the Flores Hobbit:
- Genetic structure of Flores island (Azores, Portugal) in the 19th century and in the present day: evidence from surname analysis.: An article from: Human Biology
- The size of scalable brain components in the human evolutionary lineage: With a comment on the paradox of Homo floresiensis [An article from: HOMO - Journal of Comparative Human Biology]
- A big discovery about little people.: An article from: Science News for Kids
- A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the “Hobbits” of Flores, Indonesia

Archaeologists Find Evidence of Origin of Pacific Islanders Voice of America, 31 March 2008 The Austronesian migration was [...]]]> Archaeologist Jiao Tianlong is exploring the origins of the Austronesian people, who spread their language and technology from Southeast China and Taiwan to the rest of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands some 6,000 years ago.

Archaeologists Find Evidence of Origin of Pacific Islanders
Voice of America, 31 March 2008

The Austronesian migration was one of the most significant migration events that we can trace linguistically and archaeologically; from Taiwan, humans moved down Philippines before branching off to the Pacific Islands in the east and to Southeast Asia to the west, going as far as Madagascar.

Migration on this scale would not be possible without sophisticated maritime and seafaring technology that we still do not understand. Jiao’s research goes further back into exploring why such migrations took place.

“Earlier researchers argued that the reason people first left China and crossed to Taiwan, is because over-population pushed them off the coastal plain of mainland China,” he explains, adding that his research takes a different approach. “We’re looking at environmental factors that may have contributed in pushing people [from the coastal plain of mainland China] to look for new land.” He believes rising sea levels may have stimulated interest in a maritime way of life, and gathering food from the sea.

However, it would be a mistake to think that before the Austronesian dispersal, there were no humans living in these areas. There is an growing body of genetic studies that show, at least in the case of Southeast Asia, that humans were already present before the Austronesians came, and could have possibly originated from an out-of-Africa migration 60,000 years ago.

Related books:
- Lost Maritime Cultures: China and the Pacific
- Southeast Asia: From Prehistory to History by P. S. Bellwood and I. Glover (Eds)
- Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago by P. Bellwood

photo credit: Rosino

Discovery Casts Doubt on ‘Hobbit’ Theory NPR, 14 March 2008 When [...]]]> The National Public Radio’s Science Friday programme has a 12-minute interview with Lee Berger, the principal investigator of the Palau skeletons. Find out what this find means for the homo floresiensis debate and for our understanding of humankind in general.

photo credit: Rosino

Discovery Casts Doubt on ‘Hobbit’ Theory
NPR, 14 March 2008

When it comes to discussion about a theory in dispute, Science Friday usually has a couple of panel speakers come together and debate the issue, but this segment was just a straight interview with Dr Berger. The good thing about the interview was that they discussed both sides of the Hobbit debate without leaning to any conclusions, and so it didn’t seem to me as if any particular agenda was being pushed.

Berger’s main point was that the Palau skeletons – given that they are 2,000 to 3,000 years old – seem to indicate that human populations placed in a confined enough environment can possibly develop island dwarfism and display traits of primitivism seen in earlier hominids (perhaps, a kind of regression?). Apparently, there are other similar deposits of skeletons in the archipelago, and perhaps spread throughout the islands of the pacific.

The dating of the Palau skeletons also place them firmly within the expansion of Austronesian-linguistic groups from Taiwan to island Southeast Asia and the pacific islands, which would indicate that the Palau Pygmies may be a lot closer related to Southeast Asian populations than we think. I wonder if there can be any genetic comparisions made between the Palau skeletons and the rest of the Austronesian population. Also, how is the existing population of Palau related to the skeletons?

Related Books:
- Southeast Asia: From Prehistory to History by P. S. Bellwood and I. Glover (Eds)
- Man’s conquest of the Pacific: The prehistory of Southeast Asia and Oceania by P. Bellwood
- A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the “Hobbits” of Flores, Indonesia by M. Morwood and P. van Oosterzee