Pottery and the Malayo-Polynesians

Abstract

Data on pottery from prehistoric times and the historic present are compared for the information they may give on the movements and origins of the Malayo-Polynesian speakers. Three pottery traditions have been recognized from prehistoric Southeast Asia and Indonesia, the probable source area of the Malayo-Polynesian speakers. Two of these, the Sa-huynh-kalanay and the "Bau-Malay" Traditions have been found widely scattered over the area with the Sa-huynh-Kalanay earlier in all areas except Palawan in the Philippines where the two may have been contemporary. All three traditions-the third is the Novaliches Pottery Tradition found so far only in a restricted area in the Philippines and at one site in South China-appear to have evolved out of varieties of Lungshan culture in South China, ultimately going back to North China. Pottery manufacture as found today and in the recent past in subdivided into distinct elements and compared statistically over Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Melanesia and Micronesia. Analysis of six complexes of elements associated with six varieties of pottery manufacture points towards two general routes of movement of pottery manufacture in Southeast Asia and western Oceania. Combining the inferences made from prehistoric and historic data on pottery a general hypothesis of the movements of the Malayo-Polynesian speakers in Southeast Asia and western Oceania is presented.