SEAArch - The Southeast Asian Archaeology Newsblog

20 November 2007 (ABC News in Science, Reuters) - A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals the existence of an extensive interaction network involving Taiwanese jade (nephrite) as far back as 5,000 years ago. The jade artefacts turn up in Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines (where it is known locally as lingling-o). Using a newly-developed process to analyse the jade, the study found that 116 out of the 144 artefacts came from the same source in Taiwan. The predominant source of jade in Taiwan, coupled with the distribution of the jade artefacts throughout Southeast Asia and their relative uniformity of the artefact types, leads to the conclusion that there must have been an extensive degree of interaction between different Southeast Asian populations, even across the sea. What’s left now is to uncover the technique used to create the jade artefacts. Experimental archaeology, anyone?

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If you’re in Singapore between now and March 2008, don’t miss a unique opportunity to drop by the Asian Civilisations Museum for a special exhibition called On the Nalanda Trail, which showcases Buddhism in India, China and Southeast Asia and traces the pilgrimages of three Chinese monks as they travel to India and back. I’ve written about the exhibition’s focus on China and India at yesterday.sg; here, I’ll write about the exhibition in relation to Buddhism in Southeast Asia.

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After nine sessions and 37 papers, the final day was certainly about letting our hair down and enjoying the new friendships made - along with taking the obligatory photos! Day 3 was a tour of the various cultural sites of Johor: the morning was a visit to the Johor Art Gallery as well as the Sultan’s palace museum, while in the afternoon, I hitched a ride with an international group of archaeologists who wanted to make a quick visit to Singapore. In lieu of the free ride home I gave them the grand tour of Singapore (abridged for the five-hour time frame).

Johor Palace Museum

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The second and last of the paper presentations went by today with an near-marathon run of five sessions. By the end of the day I was having a little trouble concentrating already - glad that tomorrow will see a change of pace as we head out for a tour of the archaeological site of Johor!

Today we heard two calls for collaboration; Paul Tacon announced his Eagleandowl network for research themes in human evolution, creativity and cultural heritage research in the Australasian region. And from Vietnam, archaeologist Vu The Long called for the setting up of a network for sharing zooarchaeological information. To back up his appeal, he gave the analogy of communal water pots that are placed outside homes in Myanmar - water is shared and given to anyone who wants a drink. In the same way, he called for a similar spirit in the sharing of information and collaboration.

No papers on rock art presented in this conference - although I learnt that some rock art sites in Sulawesi have been quarried to destuction, much to my dismay. On the brght side, after speaking to archaeologists from Thailand and Vietnam I’ve begun to hear about more sites in the region. There’s certainly a lot more out there that needs to be properly documented!

No Wednesday Rojak for today - back next week!

I’m writing from Johor Bahru, Malaysia, where sessions at the international archaeology seminar organised by the Association of Malaysian Archaeolgists are underway. Monday’s been pretty packed filled with session after session of presentations from the different parts of Southeast Asia - this seminar’s theme is ‘Sharing Our Archaeological Heritage’.

Keynote speech by Dr Stephen Oppenheimer

Yesterday’s sessions began with the keynote speech by Oxford’s Stephen Oppenheimer about Southeast Asia’s role in the various waves of human migration. Explaining from a genetic perspective, he suggested the strong genetic evidence for a single southern route (by hugging the coast via India) out of Africa into Southeast Asia and Asia some 80,000 years ago. In more recent times, he also suggested indigenous expansions of local populations within Southeast Asia instead of a single ‘out of Taiwan’ theory to explain human migration into Australia, New Zealand and Polynesia.

Other presentations that caught my ear today was Dr Rasmi Shoocongdej’s work in Northwestern Thailand - I had a nice chat with her during lunch about conducting my fieldwork surveys in Thailand next year and also received some advice from her. Of course, homo floresiensis had to pop up - and from Dr. Harry Widianto’s presentation. I heard why he didn’t consider the hobbit to be a new species. It seems to me that the divide on opinion is very much based on nationalistic lines - with the Indonesians very much denying that homo floresiensis is a new species.

Another day of presentations on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday, we go on an archaeological tour of Johor!

We’ve got a number of features in this week’s Rojak, we take a look at some Cambodian museums, remember the passing of an Indonesian paleontologist and review the early states of Southeast Asia.

• The Chicago Reader has an article on Ty Tim, an archivist at the Cambodian American Heritage Museum.
• Andy Brouwer blogs about the new Angkor National Museum that is opening in December.
• Tokyohead has an excellent series of pictures and posts about the various temples of Angkor, like this one on Bantaey Srei, or the Citadel of Women.
• Learn about the Cambodian Silkworm Festival, held during the day of the full moon in September from the Institute for Khmer Traditional Textiles
• In the regular Indonesians in Focus series, Barrie from Planet Mole posts an obituary of preeminent Indonesian paleontologist Teuku Jacob, one of the most vocal critics to the homo floresiensis-as-a-new species theory.
• Paul K. Manansala gives us an overview of the Early States in Southeast Asia.

In this series of weekly rojaks (published on Wednesdays) I’ll feature other sites in the blogosphere that are of related to archaeology in Southeast Asia. Got a recommendation for the next Wednesday rojak? Email me!

Related Books:
- A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the “Hobbits” of Flores, Indonesia by M. Morwood and P. van Oosterzee
- Southeast Asia: From Prehistory to History by P. S. Bellwood and I. Glover (Eds)
- Ancient Angkor (River Book Guides) by C. Jaques

Just came across two websites in the past week for those of you who might be interested in early man in Southeast Asia. Anthropology.net just announced the start of a new web initiative, the Hominin Database, which hopes to be a public repository of fossil remains. It’s really at its beginning phases now, and they’re looking for contributors to help with building the database.

Over at our Facebook site, Jeff Almonte from the Philippines shared a site about Human Origins Patrimony in Southeast Asia (HOPSea), a multi-country collaborative project to share research on Hominid Evolution in Southeast Asia. One thing for sure, you won’t find the Johor Bigfoot here!

Related Books:
- A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the “Hobbits” of Flores, Indonesia by M. Morwood and P. van Oosterzee
- Eughne DuBois and the Ape-Man from Java: The History of the First Missing Link’ and Its Discoverer by B.Theunissen, L. T. Theunissen
- Perak Man and Other Prehistoric Skeletons of Malaysia by Z. Majid (Ed.)
- Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago by P. Bellwood
- Little People And a Lost World: An Anthropological Mystery by L. Goldenberg
- Forager-Traders in South and Southeast Asia: Long-Term Histories by K. D. Morrison
- Southeast Asia: From Prehistory to History by P. S. Bellwood and I. Glover (Eds)