What Does the History of Prehistoric Archaeology in Mainland Southeast Asia Tell Us? Statistical Analysis of Scholarly Publications from 2000 to 2023

Reviewed by: Ancient Southeast Asia by John N. Miksic and Geok Yian Goh Dominik Bonatz Ancient Southeast Asia. John N. Miksic and Geok Yian Goh. London and New York: Routledge, 2017. xxii + 631 pp., illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. Paperback £35, US $36. ISBN 978-0-415-73554-4; Hardback £105, US $112. ISBN 978-0-415-73553-7; eBook £32, US $26. ISBN 978-1-315-64111-9. This book provides readers with the most comprehensive overview of Southeast Asia’s archaeological history since C.F.W. Higham’s (1989) seminal book, The Archaeology of Mainland Southeast Asia. Moreover, Ancient Southeast Asia is the first synthesis to encompass not only the mainland regions but also Island Southeast Asia from Sumatra and Borneo to the Philippines. A work of such breadth and scope demands rich scholarship, which has been guaranteed by the authors’ enormous knowledge of the different regional contexts and their acquaintance with the material and textual evidence and the latest discoveries. The result is a highly useful compilation, which will enable readers to understand the dynamics of social-cultural evolution in a vast and geographically fragmented region. The well-structured content of the book constantly shifts between close perspectives on certain social or political units and an interregional perspective that highlights the entanglement of important cultural, political, or economic processes for almost all periods. Thus, the attempt to define mainland and island Southeast Asia as a key historical region is successfully justified. The authors draw several parallels to other key regions in world archaeology, including adjacent China and India as well as ancient Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica in their comparative perspective. This approach is of great import as it stresses the relevance of Southeast Asia’s past in the context of global history. Several black-and-white illustrations and maps provide further useful information, though their necessarily restricted selection is unable to encompass the immense amount of archaeological finds and monuments mentioned in the book. It is the profound text, not the pictures, that guides readers through Southeast Asia’s fascinating premodern history. The book is divided into eight chapters. The first two chapters serve as a general introduction to the history and arts of Southeast Asia, including its environments, languages, cultures, and people. The following six chapters review the archaeological periods in chronological order: “Prehistory” (2,000,000–2000 years ago), “Protoclassic” (1–600 c.e.), “Early Classic” (600–900 c.e.), “Middle Classic” (900–1200 c.e.), “Late Classic” (1200–1400 c.e.), and “Postclassic” (1400–1600 c.e.). This periodization is based on the development of art styles that appear to have occurred independently in many areas. As true of the overarching systems of periodization used for other parts of the world, this system has a slightly simplifying effect. Without further reflection, it risks suggesting that linear evolution occurred in the region, although in reality there are many instances of lagging or contrary developments. For example, while people in the lowlands of Sumatra joined the production of Hindu-Buddhist influenced artworks in the first millennium c.e., peoples in the highlands of the same island erected monuments (megaliths) with a completely different iconography. Coinage, which was introduced to mainland Southeast Asia early in the first [End Page 311] millennium c.e. later disappeared, but it continued to be used in Java long after it was introduced toward the end of the same millennium. In any case, the authors did well by avoiding a system of periodization based on social-technological developments. Divisions into different stages of metal production, for example, are not very useful because they are not applicable to demarcating cultural stages throughout the whole region. The subdivision into periods built around the term “Classic” seems useful since it indeed matches with important changes in the cultural and socio-political landscape of Southeast Asia. It should not be understood as judgmental, however, especially with respect to the use of the terms “Protoclassic” and “Postclassic.” Neither of these periods should be described as marginal, primitive, or descended from an earlier period. They all are significant in their complexity and lasting importance for the history of Southeast Asia. This becomes even more evident if the interested reader manages...

Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) is often described as the quintessential Sprachbund, or language area, in which languages belonging to different language families converge as a result of contact (Alieva 1984; Enfield 2005). While we hold this to be true in a general sense, we suspect that there is little to be gained in arguing about what defines a language area or in determining the exact boundary of this language area (e.g., should it just include the mainland or insular Southeast Asia as well?). What seems much more interesting to us is to gain a better understanding of how convergence happens for specific features, especially phonological and phonetic features. In this paper, we look in detail at a specific phonological feature, tone, and at two of its phonetic correlates, pitch and voice quality. Based on a database of 197 languages and dialects (§2), we assess the extent of tonal diversity in MSEA languages (§3) and construct a statistical model of the degree to which tonal inventories can be predicted on the basis of geographic proximity, genealogical relatedness and population size (§4).

Reviewed by: Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From the Past to the Present ed. by Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench and Jean-Christoph Galipaud Anton O. Zakharov Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From the Past to the Present. By Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench and Jean-Christoph Galipaud (eds.) Singapore: NUS Press, 2021. Pp. xv, 383, ill. ISBN 978-981-325-125-0 (paperback) Sea nomads of Southeast Asia are vital actors in the history of the region and its neighbours. Sea nomads have had long histories and played crucial roles in forming seascapes and transmitting goods and ideas throughout Southeast Asia and/or the Indian Ocean. The first European accounts of sea nomads and their piratical activities date from the sixteenth century but sea nomadism is still underrated as a field of scientific, especially archaeological research. An international team of scholars under the baton of Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench and Jean-Christoph Galipaud aims to show a huge potential of examining sea nomads from archaeological, genetic, linguistic and historical points of view. Now there are three principal areas inhabited by sea nomads in Southeast Asia: the Mergui Archipelago, the Riau islands and Sumatra, and the area between Borneo, the Sulu Archipelago and northwest Papua (p.11). Bellina, Blench and Galipaud in the introductory chapter 'Sea Nomadism from the Past to Present' (pp.1–27) emphasize various types of sea nomads and difficulties in applying a strict definition of sea nomadism. 'Sea nomadism can be defined by the suite of subsistence strategies of populations based on the exchange of patchy maritime resources, staples and trade goods' (p. 4). The scholars connect the forms of sea nomadism with 'the rise of trading states or trading polities' (p. 6). The first firm evidence of links between sea nomads and a thalassocracy is the seventh-century Malay trading polity of Srivijaya. Bellina, Blench and Galipaud offer three main stages of sea nomadism development in terms of archaeology. The first is movements and circulations between the islands of the Pacific during the Paleolithic times. The second is the epoch of Austronesian expansion and Austronesian 'fisher-foragers'. The third is the time of early trade since 3000 BP (pp. 7–8). The dissemination of Dong Son drums throughout mainland and island Southeast Asia may be connected with the sea nomads. 'To summarise, sea nomads were probably originally coastal forager-traders, characterized by their adaptive capacities' (p. 9). The scholars stress the need of three main types of archaeological evidence for sea nomadism, i.e., material, locational/spatial and physical/biological (p. 10). Sue O'Connor, Christian Reepmeyer, Mahirta, Michelle C. Langley and Elena Piotto discuss 'Communities of Practice in a Maritime World: Shared Shell Technology and Obsidian Exchange in the Lesser Sunda Islands, Wallacea' (pp. 28–50). There are many shell fish hooks, beads and pendants, as well as obsidian artefacts excavated in Timor, Roti and Alor. These shell finds 'shared norms of personal adornment and/or craft production which were remarkably stable through time in terms of the items made, choice of shell taxa, the methods of manufacture and the accompanying use of hematite' (pp. 45–46). The beads were made of shells of Oliva spp., Nassarius spp., and Nautilus pompilius. The almost identical shape of hooks dated to the terminal Pleistocene and found in Alor Island, Indonesia, and Timor-Leste as well as 'their absence in MSEA [Mainland Southeast Asia] and other parts of ISEA [Island Southeast Asia] at [End Page 220] this early date refuted any suggestion of diffusion as the cause of the appearance of these hooks…' (p. 44). The shape of these hooks is a functional adaptation to similar ecological conditions. David Bulbeck examines 'Late Pleistocene to Mid-Holocene Maritime Exchange Networks in Island Southeast Asia' (pp. 51–101). He offers a synthesis of data concerning early habitation of anatomically modern humans in the region since 45,000 BP to middle Holocene. These data include maps and tables showing various sites, artefacts and practices. Artefacts include Pleistocene rock art, early osseous objects, worked marine shells. Bulbeck summarizes mortuary practices of early Island Southeast Asia, including flexed inhumation, cremation and burials as well as Neolithic extended inhumation...

The rapid spread of fall armyworm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda , into Africa and Asia has raised concerns due to its significant damage to maize crops. Despite extensive efforts to combat FAW in Southeast Asia, gaining a comprehensive understanding of its impacts in this region is challenging. This study integrates information on FAW outbreak and maize production, with a particular focus on mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA), to support regional pest management strategies. We assessed the risk of FAW presence in MSEA by mapping its distribution in the Asia-Pacific region and compiled data on maize production and FAW infestation within MSEA. Our focus was on the spread of FAW and its impact on maize production, and ongoing issues following widespread FAW infestations during 2018–2019. The mapping suggests the widespread distribution of FAW in the Asia-Pacific region, posing a significant threat in high maize production areas. In MSEA, maize is crucial due to its extensive cultivation area, relatively high land productivity, and anticipated increase in feed demand. During 2018–2019, FAW infestations were widespread in MSEA, coinciding with decreased maize yields in Thailand. Despite a significant decline in FAW prevalence in Thailand and Vietnam after 2019, the findings indicate a persistent threat from FAW, which could still trigger local outbreaks and high infestation rates during specific maize growing seasons. This study underscores the threat of FAW in MSEA, considering its impact on the Asia-Pacific region and the agricultural economy within MSEA, and emphasizes the importance of regional control measures. Our cross-country research provides a foundation for effective regional cooperation to control FAW.

East and South-East Asia is a vast and diverse region (Fig. 6.1). The northern boundary can be taken as approximately 45 degrees latitude, from the Gobi desert on the west across Manchuria to the northern shores of Hokkaido, the main island of northern Japan. The southern boundary is over 6,000 kilometres away: the chain of islands from Java to New Guinea, approximately 10 degrees south of the Equator. From west to east across South-East Asia, from the western tip of Sumatra at 95 degrees longitude to the eastern end of New Guinea at 150 degrees longitude, is also some 6,000 kilometres. Transitions to farming within this huge area are discussed in this chapter in the context of four major sub-regions: China; the Korean peninsula and Japan; mainland South-East Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, the Malay peninsula); and island South-East Asia (principally Taiwan, the Philippines, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Sulawesi, and New Guinea). The chapter also discusses the development of agricultural systems across the Pacific islands to the east, both in island Melanesia (the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands east of New Guinea) and in what Pacific archaeologists are terming ‘Remote Oceania’, the islands dotted across the central Pacific as far as Hawaii 6,000 kilometres east of Taiwan and Easter Island some 9,000 kilometres east of New Guinea—a region as big as East Asia and South-East Asia put together. The phytogeographic zones of China reflect the gradual transition from boreal to temperate to tropical conditions, as temperatures and rainfall increase moving southwards (Shi et al., 1993; Fig. 6.2 upper map): coniferous forest in the far north; mixed coniferous and deciduous forest in north-east China (Manchuria) extending into Korea; temperate deciduous and broadleaved forest in the middle and lower valley of the Huanghe (or Yellow) River and the Huai River to the south; sub-tropical evergreen broad-leaved forest in the middle and lower valley of the Yangzi (Yangtze) River; and tropical monsoonal rainforest on the southern coasts, which then extends southwards across mainland and island South-East Asia. Climate and vegetation also differ with altitude and distance from the coast.

OVERVIEW: THE RELATION OF MARITIME TO MAINLAND SOUTHEAST ASIA As a historian of mainland Southeast Asia, I began this project in order to compare my region to other sectors of Eurasia. Having considered protected-zone realms and parts of the exposed zone, in this, the final chapter, I return to Southeast Asia to examine its island, or maritime, component. By some yardsticks, mainland and maritime Southeast Asia together constituted a reasonably coherent, distinctive sphere. But while cultural commonalities endured, after 1511 political trends began gradually to assimilate the island world, hitherto part of Eurasia's protected zone, to exposed-zone status. The mainland, by contrast, remained sheltered for another 300 to 350 years, with all that implied for indigenous agency and political continuity. As a region that completes our inquiry into Southeast Asia and bridges both of our main analytical categories, the archipelago, then, seems a particularly fitting area with which to conclude. Consider first cultural and social parallels between mainland and islands. Compared to Europe, China, or India, all of Southeast Asia is fragmented, whether by mountains, jungle, or seas; and stretches of fertile land are modest. Ecological heterogeneity and poor communications ensured that linguistic variety was pronounced and ethnicity was relatively local. Moreover, whether because of limited arable, high mortality, weak immigration, or chronic warfare, population densities in the region at large in 1600 may have averaged only a sixth or seventh those of South Asia and China.

An Atlas of Trafficking in Southeast Asia: The Illegal Trade in Arms, Drugs, People, Counterfeit Goods and Natural Resources in Mainland Southeast Asia Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, ed. London: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2013, x+214p.In the context of regional integration, Mainland Southeast Asia is subject to considerable economic activity and cross border trade. An intimately related question concerns extra-legal cross-border activities, such as the trade in drugs, wildlife, contraband, and people. The scholarly attention to these topics is rather large both within Southeast Asia and beyond. However, few attempts have been made in bringing together these different forms of both conceptually and empiri- cally. This is what An Atlas of Trafficking in Southeast Asia attempts to do. As editor Pierre- Arnaud Chouvy makes clear in the introduction, the aim is not merely to juxtapose these different forms of trade, but to provide a regional and systemic understanding of the variety of smuggling and trafficking activities (p. 3) as well as illuminating synergies between them.The book brings together several authors with considerable expertise within the region. The various chapters cover diverse topics such as the trafficking in drugs, arms, logging, wildlife, counterfeit goods, and humans. These different forms of trade are supplemented by several color- ful maps which visualize trafficking routes and patterns in Mainland Southeast Asia. One of the key claims the book is making is that there is considerable overlap between these trade routes and that they have significant historical trajectories. For example, as argued by David Capie, one cannot appreciate the arms trade in Mainland Southeast Asia without considering the post-conflict situation in several of the countries. Similarly, the contemporaneous drugs trade can only be understood in light of previous drug economies which were often blessed and even actively encouraged by West- ern powers.The book is rich in detail and one of its main strengths is its illumination of the various con- nections between these different economies. In Burma, a country which is subject to considerable inter-ethnic tension, semiautonomous armed groups depend on drug production; similarly drug reduction policies in Thailand are directly related to out-migration, prostitution, and human traf- ficking in Northern Thailand.All the chapters consider policy implications. It would have been interesting if the policy implications of regulation and prohibition had been analyzed more explicitly in a comparative frame- work. For example, Vanda Felbab-Brown's discussion of the certification of logging (p. 134) raises extremely interesting questions in terms of how this relates to its labor-equivalent (i.e. current certification of labor recruitment firms in the context of legalizing labor migration between Thailand and several of its neighbors).The conceptual framework, which is outlined in the introduction, relies on Willem van Schendel and Itty Abraham's influential book Illicit Flows and Criminal Things (2005), where a key conceptual heuristic is the interrelation between the (il)legal and (il)licit. A key concern of Schendel and Abraham's work is to critically interrogate the inherent state-ism which is common- place in much analysis of trafficking and smuggling. For this reason one must avoid treating con- cepts, such as illegality, as self-evident. Although An Atlas of Trafficking is often similarly critical of such concepts, it commonly slips precisely into seeing like a state (Scott 1998) in the way it maps trafficking practices in Mainland Southeast Asia. For example in the context of human trafficking, it argues that it is necessary to examine trafficking routes and key border sites. But this is to echo the state's vision of trafficking which privileges state-borders over the work condi- tions of migrant laborers. The danger here is ironically (yet fortunately) illuminated by David Feingold in his chapter on human trafficking. …

As demonstrated throughout this volume, the types and severity of dilemmas facing states within Southeast Asia can vary enormously depending on their history, culture, politics and level of social and economic development. This is partially true of environmental issues, but many environmental concerns fail to respect the otherwise tangible privileges of economic development, just as they often ignore state boundaries. This situation was amply demonstrated by the choking haze - the worst ever - from primarily Indonesian forest fires engulfing Singapore and other countries in late 2015, and severely interrupting the otherwise largely First World daily existence of its citizens. Transboundary environmental issues are often focused on mainland Southeast Asia, with the sharing of water resources from transboundary rivers a key example (Boer et al. 2016), but the haze covering most of the region clearly demonstrated that oceans are also no barrier to the transit of environmental problems. Similarly, climate change is likely to be the dominant overarching environmental issue for the foreseeable future and in this case regional, and even global, transboundary environmental pollution affects both mainland and maritime Southeast Asia equally. Southeast Asia is particularly at risk to weather extremes exacerbated by climate change; it includes four out of the ten countries globally most affected by extreme weather events between 1993 and 2012 (Kreft and Eckstein 2013).

The world of Southeast Asia presents a variegated cultural pattern. Geographically, the area can be divided into mainland and maritime Southeast Asia with the Malay peninsula as the dividing line, the southern part of which belongs to the island world, whereas its northern part is more continental in nature. As to maritime Southeast Asia, the motto of the modern Republic of Indonesia: Bhinneka Tunggal Ika , freely translated as Unity in Diversity, can be applied to the area as a whole. For, although numerous different languages are used in this vast area, they all belong to the family of Austronesian languages—apart from small pockets of tribal areas. Culturally, too, there is an underlying concept of unity despite the astounding diversity in almost every aspect. The conception of Indonesia as a ‘field of ethnological study’, as formulated by Dutch anthropologists, can be applied to the entire area. As far as religion is concerned, the diversity is less pronounced since Islam strongly predominates in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and the southern Philippines, and Catholic Christianity in the major part of the Philippines. In mainland Southeast Asia, on the other hand, Theravāda Buddhism is the established religion of all states except Vietnam, where both Mahāyāna Buddhism and Confucianism predominate. Yet Hindu-Buddhist religion prevails in Bali, and tribal religions have persisted almost everywhere in the more remote areas. Moreover, the great religions have been influenced by earlier tribal beliefs. It is the task of the historian to describe and, if possible, to elucidate the religious developments in order to enable us to look at the present conditions against their historical background.

Archaeological sites with concentrations of flaked stone dating to the last 5 years, associated with anatomically modern Homo sapiens, have been recorded widely across Southeast Asia. Two main types of industries have been documented: those based on knapping the raw stone to produce distinct cores, used for detaching flakes; and those based on flaking the surface of cobbles. Quality of locally available stone underpinned the distinction between the core-based industries, which used fine materials such as chert and obsidian, and the coarser-grained cobble-based industries. This explains the dominance of core-based industries in Island Southeast Asia and cobble-based industries in Mainland Southeast Asia, and the exceptions such as cobble-based industries in northern Sumatra, Niah Caves (Sarawak), and the North Moluccas. Across Southeast Asia, with certain notable exceptions, stone was rarely used for manufacturing distinctive implement types but instead involved the production of impromptu tools for working animal and vegetable material.

Corpus for the article: 'A semantic typology of locative, existential and possessive verbs in Mainland Southeast Asia: Areal patterns of polysemy in Mainland East and Southeast Asia'. Linguistics 60(1).

<p>How climatic and environmental conditions contributed to early human migration between mainland and island Southeast Asia during the Pleistocene is one of the most hotly debated topics in paleoanthropological communities today. As Peninsular or Southern Thailand is regarded as an obligatory pathway for humans and mammals during their dispersal between these two terrestrial areas, the understanding of paleoenvironments and vegetation covers in this region is highly relevant. The hypothesis of a “savanna corridor” or a band of open vegetation (seasonal forests and grasslands) stretching from Central Thailand to Java during several periods of lowering sea level and exposed land bridges though the Pleistocene has been suggested for explaining the facilitated route of early humans and associated large mammals in migrating out of mainland Southeast Asia towards Sundaland southwards. However, the existence of savanna grasslands in Peninsular Thailand during the Pleistocene has rarely been demonstrated due to the scarcity of available proxies.</p><p>Here we reconstructed the Pleistocene vegetation and environments of the region using stable isotope analyses of mammalian tooth enamel from the channel cave deposits of Tham Phadan (Nakhon Si Thammarat Province in Peninsular Thailand) where diversified large mammal fossils were collected. The mammal fauna is tentatively attributed to a late Middle to early Late Pleistocene age according to the presence of an extirpated spotted hyaena <em>Crocuta crocuta ultima</em>. The stable carbon isotope results, ranging from -13.9‰VPDB to +4.3‰VPDB, reveal that an open vegetation/forest-grassland mosaic was dominant in this region, unlike the present-day landscapes that are mostly covered by rainforests, thus confirming the existence of a savanna corridor in Peninsular Thailand during that time. The extreme southward distribution of some grassland-related taxa (such as spotted hyaenas and Himalayan gorals), which were common in mainland Southeast Asia during the Pleistocene, reflects the habitat continuity from north to south of Thailand. However, the lack of fossil records of these two taxa in Peninsular Malaysia and the islands of Indonesia suggests that the open vegetation band did not extend far beyond the transequatorial region. Further investigations of the Pleistocene mammal faunas in the Thai-Malay Peninsula will be helpful to identify such a corridor and to examine the paleobiogeographic affinities of Southeast Asian large mammals in the future, providing empirical data for understanding the timing and pathways of human migrations into island South-East Asia.</p>

Corpus for the article: 'A semantic typology of locative, existential and possessive verbs in Mainland Southeast Asia: Areal patterns of polysemy in Mainland East and Southeast Asia'. Linguistics 60(1).

Observational rain gauge/satellite and reanalysis datasets since the 1950s are evaluated for trends in mean and extreme rainfall in and around Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA). Rain gauge data indicate strong increases exceeding 50% in both annual mean precipitation and various extreme precipitation indices over Vietnam and the northwestern part of the peninsula since 1979. The remote influence of ENSO may partially explain the recent precipitation trend toward a more intense regional hydrological cycle, in response to predominant La Niña states over recent decades. Increasing precipitation in MSEA is also associated with increased monsoon intensity in southeast Asia and a northward shift of the monsoon activity center toward MSEA over 1979–2018. Warming-driven evaporation increases were obtained over the adjacent seas typically feeding precipitation over MSEA associated with a shift toward predominantly positive phases of the two major natural climate variability modes of the tropical Indian Ocean, namely the Indian Ocean Dipole and the Indian Ocean Basin Mode. A moisture budget analysis using ERA5 re-analysis data showed increasing oceanic moisture transports along the typical winter and summer moisture pathways toward the MSEA. However, results show that during summer the major part of increased moisture from the oceanic moisture sources ends up as precipitation over the oceanic regions adjacent to MSEA with ERA5 not being able to produce the observed positive trends in summer continental precipitation. On the other hand, ERA5 reveals pronounced increases in winter precipitation over the MSEA, in accordance with rain-gauge data, associated with strongly increasing transport of moisture originated from the western tropical Pacific and the South China Sea.

The Indo-Malaysian region is a hot spot of rapid land-cover and land-use change (LCLUC) with little consensus about the rates and magnitudes of such change. Here we use temporal convolutional neural networks (TempCNNs) to generate a spatiotemporally consistent LCLUC data set for nearly thirty-five years (1982–2015), validated against two reference data sets with over 80 percent accuracy, better than other LCLUC products for the region. Our results both confirm and complicate estimates from earlier work that relied on decadal, rather than interannual, changes in regional land cover. We find forests decrease in mainland and maritime Southeast Asia and increase in South China and South Asia. Consistent with geographic theory about the drivers of land-use change, we find cropland expansion is a driving force for deforestation in mainland Southeast Asia with savannas playing a superior role, suggesting widespread forest degradation in this region. In contrast to earlier work and theory, we find that South China’s increasing forest cover comes principally from savanna (rather than cropland) conversion. The explicit interannual LCLUC patterns, rates, and transitions identified in this study provide a valuable data source for studies of land-use theory, environmental and climate changes, and regional land-use policy evaluations.