What next? Pressing archaeological questions in Austronesian studies in Island Southeast Asia (original) (raw)
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Chapter 5. Austronesian Prehistory in Southeast Asia: Homeland, Expansion and Transformation
Austronesian origins are here presented as an example of a frequent phenomenon in world prehistory, whereby populations who develop agriculture in regions of primary agricultural origins are provided with essential economic advantages over surrounding hunter-gatherers. These advantages allow them to undertake the colonization of very large regions, and the records of such colonizations are visible in the archaeological and linguistic records. The pattern of Austronesian expansion, possible reasons for it, and some major factors influencing subsequent differentiation of Austronesian cultures are all discussed, commencing from about 4000 BC in southern China and Taiwan.
Hukay: Journal for Archaeological Research in Asia and the Pacific Volume 17, 2012
""This paper is a journal review on Austronesian expansion in Southeast Asia. Most archaeological research in the Neolithic Age sites across Island Southeast Asia are geared toward supporting or disproving the hypotheses on the origins and dispersal of Austronesian-speaking people. The most mainstream is the “Out of Taiwan” hypothesis, which is a part of the larger farming/language dispersal hypothesis (Bellwood 2005). The geographical scope of this hypothesis explains the geographical focus of this analysis. On the other hand, the most popular alternative to this hypothesis is known as the “Nusantao Maritime Trading and Communication Networks” hypothesis (Solheim et al. 2006). The discourse on the Austronesian expansion in Southeast Asia during the Neolithic was tracked down in the last 15 years, from 1996 to 2010, in American Journal of Physical Anthropology, American Anthropologist, Current Anthropology, Molecular Biology and Evolution, and Antiquity. The focus is on articles discussing bioarchaeology, genetics, and material culture for examining how the two subfields of anthropology, which are bioanthropology and archaeology, covered this discourse. This analysis discusses the treatment of the topic and trends across the five journals, across time, and across subfields and disciplines. Then, general comparisons across categories and concluding remarks follow.""
Farming and Language in Island Southeast Asia: Reframing Austronesian History
Current Anthropology a World Journal of the Sciences of Man, 2010
Current portrayals of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) over the past 5,000 years are dominated by discussion of the Austronesian “farming/language dispersal,” with associated linguistic replacement, genetic clines, Neolithic “packages,” and social transformations. The alternative framework that we present improves our understanding of the nature of the Austronesian language dispersal from Taiwan and better accords with the population genetics, archaeological evidence, and crop domestication histories for ISEA. Genetic studies do not demonstrate that the dispersal of Austronesian languages through ISEA was associated with large-scale displacement, replacement, or absorption of preexisting populations. Linguistic phylogenies for Austronesian languages do not support staged movement from Taiwan through the Philippines into Indo-Malaysia; in addition, the lexical and grammatical structure of many Austronesian languages suggests significant interaction with pre-Austronesian languages and cultures of the region. Archaeological evidence, including domestication histories for major food plants, indicates that ISEA was a zone of considerable maritime interaction before the appearance of Austronesian languages. Material culture dispersed through ISEA from multiple sources along a mosaic of regional networks. The archaeological evidence helps us to shape a new interpretative framework of the social and historical processes that more parsimoniously accounts for apparent discrepancies between genetic phylogenies and linguistic distributions and allows for more nuanced models of the dispersal of technologies and societies without reference to the farming/language dispersal hypothesis.
Peter Bellwood’s Out-of-Taiwan hypothesis is generally more dominant and accepted model of the Neolithic Austronesian migration. The dispersal and expansion of this population from southern China to Oceania from 6000 BP to 750 BP due to population pressures from an agricultural economy is the general idea for this model. The Nusantao Maritime Trading and Communication Network (NMTCN) concept by Wilhelm Solheim II proposes the general origin area of the Austronesian speakers in the Neolithic in the southern Philippine-eastern Indonesia area where it spread multi-directionally and up to the north to southern China. Both models specifically consult the Lapita Cultural Complex and agree that it was Austronesian speakers who were responsible for it but their associated pottery complex is widely different, and refuted by the other. For Bellwood, this is the Dabenkeng/Tapenkeng culture in Taiwan, for Solheim it is the Sa-hyunh-Kalanay complex of Viet Nam which is tied to the Lapita. In summary, what we have here are two traditions of archaeology producing different perspectives on the Neolithic Austronesian migration, providing insight as well on theory formulation as well as the reflexive implications on archaeology as a whole.
The Development of Austronesian Culture in Southeast Asia and Adjacent Areas
Proceedings of the 2019 International Conference on the Austronesian and Papuan Worlds (ICAPaW 2019): “The Dynamics of the Contemporary Austronesian and Papuan Worlds from Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives", 2019
The development of Austronesian culture was spread out along Southeast Asia and adjacent areas to Pacific Archipelago and Madagascar. This culture originally came f rom Taiwan or Formosa. The topic of this research is how the spreading process of the Austronesian speakers and its influence in culture in Southeast Asia. Focusing the development from Taiwan to all Southeast Asia region within a period of time from 4500 to 1500 years ago by exploring of Austronesia cross the Indian Ocean. This research is using qualitative descriptive methods by analysing Austronesian culture development, which were collected using literature review. The results of the research that Austronesians languages have an important role in various things such as technology of boat building, maritime culture, agrarian culture, burial rituals, and belief in ancestors.
Austronesian Diaspora: A new perspective, 2016
Recent multidisciplinary research on the Palaeolithic to Neolithic transition has confirmed several stages of cultural development dated between 20,000 BC and 1500 BC in southern China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. The patterns of habitation, settlement, subsistence, and material culture underwent remarkable changes at certain points during this long time sequence, and even whole populations were replaced or massively transformed. This updated synthesis of new research findings will focus the discussion on the archaeological evidence from Taiwan and its neighboring regions, especially from northern Luzon in the Philippines, and the Marianas of western Micronesia.