Wooden material culture and long-term historical processes in Heping Dao (Keelung, Taiwan)

Abstract

Despite being a perishable material, wood can nonetheless show in its full complexity the materiality of daily life activities, identity construction, economic exploitation, and adaptation in colonial processes. The study of two sets of wood samples in well-defined archaeological colonial contexts from the site of Heping Dao, on the northern coast of Taiwan, has unveiled otherwise unknown aspects of native exchange, adoption of indigenous practices, and differences and similarities between early European colonialism and Japanese imperialism in Asia-Pacific. Despite the constraints of taxonomic identification in subtropical (and tropical) areas, the use of different coniferous wood types has been recorded: Cupressaceae, cf. Chamaecyparis spp., cf. Cryptomeria japonica and cf. Cunninghamia spp. The paper highlights the close relationship between wooden objects and diachronic historical processes and stresses the complexity of their study in colonial contexts, with implications toward the prehistoric period.