Southeast Asia ranks among the most significant regions in the world for tracing the prehistory of human endeavor over a period in excess of two million years. It lies in the direct path of successive migrations from the African homeland that saw settlement by hominin populations such as Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis. The first Anatomically Modern Humans, following a coastal route, reached the region at least 60,000 years ago to establish a hunter gatherer tradition that survives to this day in remote forests. From about 2000 BC, human settlement of Southeast Asia was deeply affected by successive innovations that took place to the north and west, such as rice and millet farming. A millennium later, knowledge of bronze casting penetrated along the same pathways. Copper mines were identified and exploited, and metals were exchanged over hundreds of kilometers. In the Mekong Delta and elsewhere, these developments led to early states of the region, which benefitted from an agricultural revolution involving permanent ploughed rice fields. These developments illuminate how the great early kingdoms of Angkor, Champa, and Funan came to be, a vital stage in understanding the roots of the present nation states of Southeast Asia. Assembling the most current research across a variety of disciplines--from anthropology and archaeology to history, art history, and linguistics--The Oxford Handbook of Early Southeast Asia will present an invaluable resource to experienced researchers and those approaching the topic for the first time.
Southeast Asia ranks among the most significant regions in the world for tracing the prehistory of human endeavor over a period in excess of two million years. It lies in the direct path of successive migrations from the African homeland that saw settlement by hominin populations such as Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis. The first Anatomically Modern Humans, following a coastal route, reached the region at least 60,000 years ago to establish a hunter gatherer tradition that survives to this day in remote forests. From about 2000 BC, human settlement of Southeast Asia was deeply affected by successive innovations that took place to the north and west, such as rice and millet farming. A millennium later, knowledge of bronze casting penetrated along the same pathways. Copper mines were identified and exploited, and metals were exchanged over hundreds of kilometers. In the Mekong Delta and elsewhere, these developments led to early states of the region, which benefitted from an agricultural revolution involving permanent ploughed rice fields. These developments illuminate how the great early kingdoms of Angkor, Champa, and Funan came to be, a vital stage in understanding the roots of the present nation states of Southeast Asia. Assembling the most current research across a variety of disciplines--from anthropology and archaeology to history, art history, and linguistics--The Oxford Handbook of Early Southeast Asia will present an invaluable resource to experienced researchers and those approaching the topic for the first time.
This volume reports on the initial settlement of Ban Non Wat and represents a further step towards illuminating the prehistoric societies of the upper Mun Valley during the two millennia of cultural changes that led ultimately to the swift transition to the state as represented at Phimai and beyond, to the civilisation of Angkor. It begins by describing the mortuary sequence. One of the many surprises encountered during the excavations was the presence of burials laid out in a flexed position. This was a widespread practice of hunter-gatherers in Southeast Asia, and it is likely that a group of hunters and gatherers occupied the area and used the mound of Ban Non Wat as a cemetery. Paradoxically, the radiocarbon determinations for these are contemporary with those of the Neolithic occupation. There are two phases of Neolithic occupation, which began in the 17th century BC and ended about six centuries later. These differ on the basis of the orientation of the human graves and the nature of the mortuary offerings placed with the dead. It proceeds with a consideration of the economy and the material culture of the Neolithic inhabitants who occupied the site from the 17th to the 11th centuries BC. This is the first complete report on a Neolithic site in Southeast Asia.
Nong Nor is a prehistoric coastal site located in the Chonburi Province, Southeast Asia. It was excavated between 1991 and 1993 and shows two phases of occupation: the first, c.2500 BC, a brief stay by a community of hunter-gatherers living on shellfish, dolphins and sharks; the second, an extensive cemetery of 170 graves dating to 1100-700 BC, some with grave goods and a small group of unusually wealthy ones. The authors, in their conclusion, suggest that the first inhabitants of Nong Nor may have been ancestral to the later inhabitants of nearby Khok Phanom Di.
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