SOUTHEAST ASIA'S FIRST ISOTOPICALLY DEFINED PREHISTORIC COPPER PRODUCTION SYSTEM: WHEN DID EXTRACTIVE METALLURGY BEGIN IN THE KHAO WONG PRACHAN VALLEY OF CENTRAL THAILAND?

Southeast Asian metallurgical developments have been a focus of international academic interest since Solheim (1968 ) and Bayard (1972 ) first published bronze artefacts in claimed early/middle third millennium bce contexts from northeastern Thailand, igniting a regional ‘origins’ of metallurgy debate that has smouldered for 40 years (e.g., White and Hamilton 2009 , Higham in press ). In this paper, we present the results of a lead isotope pilot study centred on the Khao Wong Prachan Valley of central Thailand—currently Southeast Asia's only documented prehistoric copper smelting locale. These preliminary data indicate that our ongoing regional metal exchange research programme may be able to elucidate interaction networks between copper‐producing and ‐consuming societies within and beyond Southeast Asia from c. 2000 bce to c. 500 ce . Furthermore, we are able to offer tentative evidence relevant to White and Hamilton's (2009 ) ‘Rapid Eurasian Technological Expansion Model’ for the Sino‐Siberian derivation of regional metal technologies around the turn of the third/second millennium bce .     

The Transmission of Early Bronze Technology to Thailand: New Perspectives

In the four decades since the discovery that a discrete Bronze Age preceded the Iron Age in mainland Southeast Asia, much has been learned about the dating, technology, production, organization, and use of bronze metallurgy in the region, particularly in prehistoric Thailand. Although independent invention of copper smelting in Southeast Asia has not been considered likely by most regional archaeologists since the 1980s, the source of copper-base technology and the mechanisms of adoption remain poorly understood. Arguments claiming that the primary stimulus for the appearance of copper-base metallurgy in Southeast Asia came from early states in the Central Plain of China have dominated recent discussions, but anthropological approaches to technology transmission, adoption, and adaptation have yet to be systematically explored. After summarizing the current evidence for early bronze metallurgy in Thailand, this paper proposes an alternative to the predominant Sinocentric view of the source for Southeast Asian bronze technology. It will be proposed on both chronological and technological grounds that the first bronze metallurgy in Southeast Asia was derived from pre-Andronovo late third millennium BC Eurasian forest-steppe metals technology, and not from the second millennium, technologically distinctive, élite-sponsored bronze metallurgy of the Chinese Erlitou or Erligang Periods. Hypotheses for a transmission route and a research agenda for resolving debates on bronze origins in Southeast Asia are offered.     

The Origins of the Bronze Age of Southeast Asia

White and Hamilton (J World Prehist 22: 357–97, 2009) have proposed a model for the origin of the Southeast Asian Bronze Age founded on seven AMS radiocarbon determinations from the Northeast Thai site of Ban Chiang, which would date the initial Bronze Age there to about 2000 BC. Since this date is too early for the derivation of a bronze industry from the documented exchange that linked Southeast Asia with Chinese states during the 2nd millennium BC, they have identified the Seima-Turbino 3rd millennium BC forest-steppe technology of the area between the Urals and the Altai as the source of the Southeast Asian Bronze Age. We challenge this model by presenting a new chronological framework for Ban Chiang, which supports our model that the knowledge of bronze metallurgy reached Southeast Asia only in the late 2nd millennium BC, through contact with the states of the Yellow and Yangtze valleys.     

BIMSTEC and emerging patterns of Asian regional and interregional cooperation

The first phase of India's Look East Policy in 1991 was exploratory in nature and tinged with more idealism and optimism to break out of the South Asian region which was stagnating in economic growth. The second phase of India's Look East policy took stock of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 to 1998 and China's growing linkages with the Southeast Asian region. In 1997, mainly through the diligence of Thailand, a new grouping that could act as a bridge between Southeast and South Asia was established called BIMSTEC. The objective of the paper will be to argue that BIMSTEC balances India's engagement with Southeast and South Asia but it also counters China's growing influence among ASEAN members, in particular Myanmar. Thailand is the driving force behind BIMSTEC activities as this would enhance its trade hub status and engagement policy with Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam (CMLV) states.     

A review of archaeology in mainland Southeast Asia

This article outlines recent advances in establishing and understanding the prehistoric sequence in mainland Southeast Asia. Research has been unevenly distributed, varying from virtually none in Cambodia to a marked intensity in Hong Kong and the adjoining mainland. A new pattern is becoming apparent, due in no small part to the new findings in southern China. It is argued that despite its long history of occupation, beginning withHomo erectus almost a million years ago, tropical Southeast Asia was occupied by scattered inland groups and larger, possibly sedentary coastal foragers until exposed to intrusive agricultural societies during the third millennium BC. These communities, which originated ultimately in the Yangzi Valley, brought with them rice cultivation and were responsible for the wide distribution of Austroasiatic languages. The three divisions of this language superfamily are now distributed from eastern India to southern China. Following a relatively brief Neolithic period, small and autonomous communities, particularly in Lingnan and Bac Bo (Guangdong and Guangxi provinces of China and the area of the Red River Delta), were exposed to exchange contact with the Shang state of the Chinese Central Plains, and this brought exotic jades and bronzes. Within this context, a local bronze industry was established between 1500 and 1000 BC over much of Southeast Asia, but without any obvious social developments until the middle of the first millennium BC, when several major changes occurred. These incorporated iron smelting and forging and exposure in the southern parts of the region to Indian mercantile contact and along the northern margins to the expanding Chinese empire. Adaptations varied regionally, from the establishment of warrior chiefdoms to counter the Chinese to the construction of water control systems in the arid heart of Southeast Asia to alleviate environmental unpredictability. It is within these regional changes that we can identify trends toward the establishment of states, some of which persisted in an unbroken lineage to the present.     

Isotopic and technological variation in prehistoric Southeast Asian primary copper production

The ‘Southeast Asian Lead Isotope Project’ (SEALIP) is intended to provide reliable geochemical proxies for late prehistoric through early historic (2nd/1st millennium BCE and 1st millennium CE) local, regional, and inter-regional social interactions, in an archaeological arena lacking established ceramic typologies with which to cross modern national boundaries. We present lead isotope characterisations of the three currently known Southeast Asian prehistoric primary (mining/smelting) copper production centres: Phu Lon and the Khao Wong Prachan Valley in Thailand, and the recently discovered Xepon complex in Laos. Kernel Density Estimation shows that these production centres can be clearly distinguished isotopically, as such fulfilling the core tenet of the ‘Provenance Hypothesis’ (Wilson and Pollard, 2001: 508) and permitting SEALIP to proceed as a research programme tracing regional copper/bronze/lead exchange and provenance patterning. In addition we provide a provisional technological reconstruction of copper smelting processes at Phu Lon to complement our more established understanding of the Khao Wong Prachan Valley. Combined lead isotope and technological datasets allow us to tentatively identify trends in the evolution of Southeast Asian metal technologies and of regional social perceptions of metal exchange.     

东南亚史研究的新史料、新方法和新视角——以哈里·本达奖获奖著作为例

哈里·本达奖是美国亚洲研究学会旨在表彰东南亚研究领域杰出成果的国际学术大奖,代表了当代国际学界东南亚历史研究的重要成果。本达奖获奖著作涵盖东南亚殖民主义史、社会史、文化史等领域,并不断拓展到宗教史、女性史等专题史研究,反映第二次世界大战后东南亚史研究范式的重大转向,并从史料、方法、视角领域探讨了东南亚历史发展的本土性、自主性与能动性。获奖作品在当代东南亚史研究领域的理论探讨与实践研究方面都做出了积极贡献,值得中国东南亚史学界进一步学习与借鉴。     

Lasting Monuments and Durable Institutions: Labor, Urbanism, and Statehood in Northern Vietnam and Beyond

Archaeological research on monumentality, early urbanism, and emergent statehood in Southeast Asia and Vietnam has grown dramatically in recent years, and our understanding of social evolution in Southeast Asia has moved beyond traditional models of Sinicization and Indianization. Although many researchers recognize the significance of the historic and classical states of the first and second millennia AD, the seeds of statehood and urbanism can be seen in a moated settlement pattern during the first millennium BC. The largest in this category of Iron Age settlements, the heavily fortified Co Loa site in Vietnam’s Red River Valley, is emblematic of a tradition of settlements marked by earthworks and moat systems. The scale and extent of Co Loa’s massive earthen rampart system, involving a complex construction enterprise, reflect planning and implementation by a highly centralized, multigenerational, and institutionalized authority. Dating to the last centuries BC, Co Loa represents one of the earlier ancient state-level societies in Vietnam and the wider Southeast Asian region. Ultimately, the durability of Co Loa’s institutions of power and governance is suggested by the nature of its rampart system and construction process, and a package of variables contributed to emergent complexity. In particular, the presence of a monumental system of defensive works, combined with other archaeological markers for intraregional competition and violence, underscores the potential role of warfare and physical coercion in the course of political centralization.     

Contextualizing Early Urbanization: Settlement Cores,Early States and Agro-pastoral Strategies in the Fertile Crescent During the Fourth and Third Millennia BC

This paper employs data from selected sample survey areas in the northern Fertile Crescent to demonstrate how initial urbanization developed along several pathways. The first, during the Late Chalcolithic period, was within a dense pattern of rural settlement. There followed a profound shift in settlement pattern that resulted in the formation of large walled or ramparted sites (‘citadel cities’) associated with a more dynamic phase of urbanization exemplified by short cycles of growth and collapse. By the later third millennium BC, the distribution of larger centres had expanded to include the drier agro-pastoral zone of northern and central Syria, termed here the ‘zone of uncertainty’. This configuration, in turn, formed the context for Middle Bronze Age settlement, and the pattern of political rivalries and alliances that typified the second millennium BC. Evidence is marshalled from archaeological surveys and landscape analyses to examine these multiple paths to urbanization from the perspectives of (a) staple production within major agricultural lowlands; (b) the shift towards higher risk animal husbandry within climatically marginal regions; (c) changes in local and inter-regional networks (connectivity); and (d) ties and rights to the land. Textile production forms the core of the proposed model, which emphasizes how the demand for wool and associated pasture lands opened up new landscapes for agro-pastoral production and settlement. The resultant landscapes of settlement are then compared with the picture in the southern Levant where a more restricted zone of uncertainty may have limited the opportunities for agro-pastoral production.     

The Thai Lao – Thailand's largest unrecognized transboundary national ethnicity

In 1900, the Lao ethnonym, and thus the Lao, ‘officially’ disappeared from Siam. However, Lao culture and identity persisted at local, regional, and national levels. As Keyes (1967) discovered, ‘a Northeast Thailand‐based ethno‐regionalism’ emerged post‐World War II. This regionalism, which we re‐term ‘Thai Lao’ and specify to the majority ethnic community, exists in a contested relationship with both ‘Thai’ and ‘Lao’ identity. The survival of the Lao ethnic community's cultural identity occurred despite the best efforts of the Royal Thai Government (RTG) to eradicate aspects of Lao culture. These aspects included Lao language, religion, and history, using the school system, the Lao Buddhist Sangha, and the bureaucracy. Beginning in the 1990s, buoyed by a multitude of factors, the Lao ethnic community reappeared as the ‘Thai Lao’ or ‘Lao Isan’. This reappearance was noted in the RTG's Thailand 2011 Country Report (RTG 2011) to the UN Committee responsible for the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. For nearly four decades now, ‘Laoism’ has recurred in Thai academia, the media, the public sphere, popular traditions, and even Lao apocalyptic millenarianism. Following Smith (1986, 1991, 1999), this article utilizes a historical ethno‐symbolist approach to analyse this recurrence.     

The adoption of cattle pastoralism in the Arabian Peninsula: A reappraisal

The translocation of livestock into the Arabian Peninsula was underway by the sixth millennium BC. It remains unclear, however, whether nascent pastoralism in Arabia focused on specialised cattle herding, intensive caprine husbandry, or more extensive forms of sheep, goat and cattle management. Here, the role of Bos in Neolithic animal exploitation systems in the Arabian Peninsula is re-examined in the context of fisher-hunter-gatherer groups inhabiting the coasts of the Arabian Gulf, agro-pastoralist settlements located in the Jordanian highlands, and hunter-herder communities in adjacent Jordanian steppe (badia). By the late sixth millennium BC, cattle from southern Mesopotamia were imported to the Arabian littoral via Ubaid exchange networks but remained a relatively unimportant part of local hunter-gatherer-herder subsistence for at least a millennium. New zooarchaeological evidence indicating cattle herding in the Jordanian highlands by the late eighth millennium BC suggests a southern transmission route originating out of Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B settlements and the subsequent spread of cattle along the Sarawat mountains into the interior or down the relatively arid Red Sea coast via land or boat. Cattle eventually played a central role in the symbolic and ritual lives of herders in southern Arabia, but the use of the term ‘cattle pastoralism’ to describe early Neolithic subsistence systems in the region is premature.     

King Bhumibol: The Symbolic “Father of Water Resources Management” and Hydraulic Development Discourse in Thailand

The present Thai monarch’s reputation in matters hydrological is an integral element of the mythology and symbolism that have characterised his reign. Royalists have carefully constructed the king as a semi-deified “Father of Thai Water Management”, “Royal Rainmaker”, wise inventor of hydraulic technology and planner of “royal initiatives” over a period of six decades. Yet, despite the links that are often drawn between water resources control, spiritual cosmology and political governance surrounding pre-modern Southeast Asian rulers, there has been surprisingly little critical scholarship undertaken on this contemporary aspect of kingship and state-making in Thailand. This paper examines the evolving discourse surrounding the monarchy and hydraulic development as a response to a perceived neglect regarding the central role of water in cementing the king’s power and legitimacy. It argues that King Bhumibol’s apparent hegemony in the national water resources governance paradigm has been an essential element underpinning the longevity and authority of his reign, partly facilitated through the workings of a network of allied strategic interests. Drawing from a range of sources, this paper makes a cautious start in addressing the subject and attempts to open up a space for further critical reflection and discussion regarding the significance of water resources control to Thailand’s royal statecraft.     

Metallurgical traditions and metal exchange networks in late prehistoric central Myanmar,c. 1000 BC to c. AD 500

Myanmar has been notably underrepresented in recent studies of archaeometallurgy in Southeast Asia, despite its richness in both mineral and cultural resources and its potentially central role in long-distance exchange networks linking India, China and peninsular neighbours. Here, we present original analytical data on copper-base artefacts from several Bronze Age and Iron Age sites in Myanmar. Observed microstructures range from as-cast, worked, to fully annealed; compositions include leaded copper, low-tin to high-tin bronzes, and arsenical copper/bronze. Lead isotope analyses indicate that the metal originates from different geological sources, including several that match the lead isotope signatures of known prehistoric copper mines in Thailand and Laos. These archaeometallurgical data, including evidence for secondary copper-base production, more than double those currently available for Myanmar and document the presence of multiple local alloying and working traditions, perhaps chronologically differentiated, as well as identifying possible links to primary mineral sources across the region. Overall, this adds significant new information to the emerging picture of Southeast Asian prehistoric metallurgy at the crossroads of several major ancient cultures.     

Asia's century and the problem of Japan's centrality

Japan has long been regarded as a central component of America's grand strategy in Asia. Scholars and practitioners assume this situation will persist in the face of China's rise and, indeed, that a more ‘normal’ Japan can and should take on an increasingly central role in US‐led strategies to manage this power transition. This article challenges those assumptions by arguing that they are, paradoxically, being made at a time when Japan's economic and strategic weight in Asian security is gradually diminishing. The article documents Japan's economic and demographic challenges and their strategic ramifications. It considers what role Japan might play in an evolving security order where China and the US emerge as Asia's two dominant powers by a significant margin. Whether the US–China relationship is ultimately one of strategic competition or accommodation, it is argued that Japan's continued centrality in America's Asian grand strategy threatens to become increasingly problematic. It is posited that the best hope for circumventing this problem and its potentially destabilizing consequences lies in the nurturing of a nascent ‘shadow condominium’ comprising the US and China, with Japan as a ‘marginal weight’ on the US side of that arrangement.     

Bodies,beaches and bars: negotiating heterosexual masculinity in southern Thailand's tourism industry

This article explores the gender politics of heterosexual masculinity by detailing the practices of masculinity and heterosexuality among a group of Thai men working in the tourism industry in Thailand's south. The research is based on ethnographic data obtained during a number of field visits between October 2000 and January 2007 to Pha-ngan Island in southern Thailand. It is positioned within the geography literature on masculinities and heterosexuality, extending the current literature on cross-cultural negotiations of masculinity by exploring negotiations of heterosexual masculinity in a context where differing cultural notions of hegemonic masculinity come into dialogue. Specifically, I detail the articulation of heterosexual masculinity by Thai bar workers through their encounters with three key ‘Others’: Thai transgendered people; tourist women; and tourist men. These encounters provide a context through which the complexity and instability of both hegemonic and subordinated masculinity can be explored. In particular, I argue that the delineation of these masculinities is both contextually and culturally specific. The encounters also provide an opportunity to investigate the importance of spatiality to the performance of heterosexual identities.     

Regional Responses to the Southeast Asian Financial Crisis: A Case of Self-Help or No Help?

The currency-cum-financial crises of the 1990s, particularly that which hit Southeast Asia after the devaluation of the Thai baht on 2 July 1997, are suggestive of the relevance and pervasiveness of contagion or negative spillover effects that are largely regional in scope. As such, one of the mantras since the onset of the Southeast Asian financial crisis has been the need for 'regional solutions to regional problems'. Given that the two focal institutions in Southeast Asia, namely the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), were perceived as being successful in their past attempts in problem-solving, there were high expectations that such regionalism would be the key in finding solutions to the Southeast Asian financial crisis and mitigating the aftershocks. Accordingly, this paper evaluates the regional responses to the crisis, taking stock of both preventive and curative initiatives of significance. While the focus is on ASEAN and APEC, consistent with the concept of 'loose' or 'non-institutionalised' regionalism in Southeast Asia and the larger Asia-Pacific regions, other ad hoc unilateral or bilateral initiatives of significance by other Asian member countries in APEC are also examined, particularly those by the region's dominant economic power, Japan. Current regional responses have not been very successful. This has led to a shift in the emphasis to unilateral and bilateral arrangements. Japan's contribution has been by far the largest relative to others. The crisis and the responses to it have revealed that unless there is greater institutionalisation, ASEAN countries would continue to look outside the region for assistance to facilitate their recovery.     

Prehistoric iron production technologies in the Upper Thai-Malay Peninsula: metallography and slag inclusion analyses of iron artefacts from Khao Sam Kaeo and Phu Khao Thong

This article presents a preliminary attempt to characterise Upper Thai-Malay Peninsula prehistoric iron technologies based on assemblages from two recently excavated coastal sites: Khao Sam Kaeo and Phu Khao Thong. These are the earliest known sites involved in the early trans-Asian exchange that connected the eastern Indian Ocean to the South China Sea from the mid-first millennium bc. It is from this period that iron assemblages start appearing at both continental and insular Southeast Asian sites. Three models have been offered confronting an indigenous vs. Chinese or South Asian impetus for the introduction of iron metallurgy in Southeast Asia. These models are discussed in the light of the metallographic and compositional analyses of iron and slag assemblages from these two sites using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectrometry, energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence and slag inclusion analysis techniques, together with other production materials from these and other contemporaneous Southeast Asian sites.     

On the Origins and Dissemination of Domesticated Sorghum and Pearl Millet across Africa and into India: a View from the Butana Group of the Far Eastern Sahel

Four decades have passed since Harlan and Stemler (1976) proposed the eastern Sahelian zone as the most likely center of Sorghum bicolor domestication. Recently, new data on seed impressions on Butana Group pottery, from the fourth millennium BC in the southern Atbai region of the far eastern Sahelian Belt in Africa, show evidence for cultivation activities of sorghum displaying some domestication traits. Pennisetum glaucum may have been undergoing domestication shortly thereafter in the western Sahel, as finds of fully domesticated pearl millet are present in southeastern Mali by the second half of the third millennium BC, and present in eastern Sudan by the early second millennium BC. The dispersal of the latter to India took less than 1000 years according to present data. Here, we review the middle Holocene Sudanese archaeological data for the first time, to situate the origins and spread of these two native summer rainfall cereals in what is proposed to be their eastern Sahelian Sudan gateway to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean trade.     

The Bakau wreck: an early example of Chinese shipping in Southeast Asia

Very few early Chinese shipwrecks have been discovered in Southeast Asia, despite the enormous volume of trade with China. This article describes the surprising hull features of one such wreck, and its diverse ceramic cargo. The Bakau Wreck dates to the early 15th century, and was bound from southern China to Indonesia via a Thai entrepot port.