via Old World, 09 May 2023: New paper by Higham arguing that the integration of China and Southeast Asia led to the spread of copper-based expertise throughout the region, with copper artifacts such as axes, bangles, and spears being used to display status and later becoming more accessible to broader communities, while during the Iron Age, bronzes were once again associated with societies characterized by social inequality due to regional influences.
As the scholarly border between China and Southeast Asia has dissipated, so the vast region from the Yangtze River to Malaysia has been integrated into a whole. There was an inexorable expansion of copper-base expertise southward, reaching Lingnan and Yunnan by 1400-1200 bc, and Southeast Asia one or two centuries later, with ultimate origins in the Asian steppes via the Chinese Central Plains and Sichuan. As prospectors identified and exploited the Southeast Asian copper mines, a limited range of copper-base artefacts moved along established exchange routes, including socketed axes, bangles and spears. At first rare and used to advertise status in communities advantaged by a strategic location, with increased production and in situ casting within consumer settlements, bronzes were no longer associated with social elites. Only with different regional stimuli during the Iron Age, were bronzes again employed by societies characterized by social inequality.
