What do Dungeons & Dragons have in common with ancient Indonesian ruins, Malay dances and explosion of the Toba volcano? Why, they’re all in this week’s edition of rojak – and more!
photo credit: basibanget
- Wired magazine has a funny take on archaeologists and grad students in commemoration of Dungeons & Dragons creator, Gary Gygax. Hmm… I hope I don’t end up like one!
- John Hawks, who edited last week’s paper on PLOS One about the Palau Skeletons writes about his thoughts of the paper.
- Amanda takes us to Sumatra where she gives us a tour of the typical traditional Palembang House.
- Alison, in Cambodia, pays a return visit to Oudong.
- The Gunong Padang Archaeological Site is a little-known treasure from Sumatra, and the ASEAN travel group posts pictures from this the largest megalithic site in Southeast Asia.
- Faddy gives us an uncut, behind-the-scenes look at the Kuda Kepang, a Malay dance using horse imagery that is employed during festive events – but it also has a mystical side to it as well.
- The saga continues! Kambiz from anthropology.net alerts us to an upcoming paper to be released anytime now that suggests -surprise, surprise- that the Hobbit is an altogether new species. Who wants to bet we’ll hear another media flurryabout it next week?
- Kawadjan explores the Khmer temples of Northern Thailand.
- And lastly, Mathilda’s anthropology blog posts a paper by Stephen Oppenheimer about the prehistoric peoples in Asia before the eruption of Toba. Starring the Perak Man (although we’re quite sure he came some time after that eruption).
In this series of weekly rojaks (published on Wednesdays) I’ll feature other sites in the blogosphere that are related to Southeast Asia and archaeology in general. 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
– Little People And a Lost World: An Anthropological Mystery by L. Goldenberg
– Southeast Asia: From Prehistory to History by P. S. Bellwood and I. Glover (Eds)
– Quaternary Research in Indonesia
– Ancient History (The Indonesian Heritage Series) by Indonesian Heritage
– The Living House
– The Encyclopedia of Malaysia: Performing Arts
– Early History (The Encyclopedia of Malaysia) by Nik Hassan Shuhaimi Nik Abdul Rahman (Ed)
The rock art course sounded interesting………… until I saw the cost!!