Mortuary practices: Their social,philosophical-religious,circumstantial, and physical determinants

Recent, mainstream, American mortuary archaeology, in its paradigmatic outlook, middle-range theory, analytic methodology, and case studies, has emphasized social organization as the primary factor that determines mortuary practices. Broader anthropological and social science traditions have recognized philosophical-religious beliefs as additional, important determinants. The historical roots of mortuary archaeology's focus on the social, and the consequence of this on theory development, is reviewed. Then, through a Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) cross-cultural survey, the kinds of philosophical-religious, social organizational, circumstantial, and physical factors that affect specific kinds of mortuary practices, and the relative importance of these factors, are documented. The data are also used to test basic premises that mortuary archaeologists routinely use today to reconstruct social organization. A balanced, more holistic, and multidisciplinary approach, which considers many kinds of causes beyond social ones, is found necessary to interpret mortuary remains and to reconstruct the past from them.     

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.     

The later prehistory of mainland Southeast Asia

Until the recent expansion of research into the prehistory of mainland Southeast Asia, the development of civilizations employing Indian religious and political concepts had been seen as a major fulcrum in the area's history. The prehistoric sequence in the area is reviewed, with particular attention being paid to evidence for ritual, display, exchange, and ranking behavior within lowland sedentary communities. These date to the two or three millennia preceding Indian contact. It is argued that already by the end of the prehistoric period, there were complex centralized societies with a long tradition of recognizing status differentials among individuals, affiliated groups, and communities. The sequence incorporates the exploitation of rice, and bronze and iron working. The chronology of these innovations is compared with that in China. It is not possible at present to argue for single or multiple origins, but the area of southern China is suggested as a crucial one in further research to resolve these issues.     

东南亚宗教的特点及其在中国对外交流中的作用——兼谈东南亚华人宗教的特点

论文介绍了东南亚国家宗教的基本情况和特点,阐述了东南亚区域发展中宗教在整合意识形态、维护地区国家主权、促进地区经济合作与交流等方面的积极作用,进而对宗教在促进中国与东南亚国家交流中的积极作用提出了具体建议。认为儒教、道教、佛教作为维系华人社会的重要纽带,促进着华人社会的稳定和发展,对儒教、道教、佛教的宗教感情实际上寄托了华人的民族感情。东南亚华人宗教与中国传统宗教血脉相连,要在平衡发挥五大宗教作用的基础上,注重发挥东南亚国家华人宗教在与中国交流中的独特作用。     

Filling a Gap in the Ife–Benin Interaction Field (Thirteenth–Sixteenth Centuries AD): Excavations in Iloyi Settlement, Ijesaland

Previous archaeological studies have indicated that the Yoruba polity of Ile–Ife and the Edo polity of Benin, both in southwest Nigeria, belonged to the same sphere of sociocultural interactions before the nineteenth century AD. The spatial and temporal dimensions of this interaction sphere have not, however, been understood, because the archaeological sequences of the areas between the two polities are largely unknown. One of these intervening areas is Ijesaland. The excavations conducted in Iloyi settlement, northern Ijesaland, provide a new set of data that not only fills a gap in the Ife–Benin interaction sphere but also offers new perspectives on the process of material culture homogenization in the Yoruba–Edo region during the first half of the second millennium. Calibrated radiocarbon dates show that Iloyi was occupied during the thirteenth–sixteenth centuries AD. Using the stylistic and iconographic characteristics of ceramics and the patterns of burial and sacrificial rituals as evidence, it is demonstrated that Iloyi was a sociopolitical and cultural frontier of Ile–Ife, and that Ijesaland was part of the Ife–Benin cultural corridor. The paper strengthens the earlier suggestions that the development of a kingship institution at Ile–Ife helped to widen the interaction networks in the region, an historical process that culminated in the trend toward regional cultural homogenization between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries.Des études archéologiques antérieures ont indiqué que l'état Yoruba de Ile-Ife et l'état Edo du Benin, les deux dans le sud ouest du Nigeria, appartenaient à la même sphére socio-culturelle avant le dix-neuvième siècle après J.-C. Pourtant, les dimensions spacio-temporelles de cette interaction n'ont pas encore été entièrement comprises, car les séquences archéologiques des régions entre les deux états restent à découvrir. L'une de ces régions est Ijesaland. Les fouilles entreprises à Iloyi, situé au nord de Ijesaland, ont divulgué l'information nouvelle sur la sphére d'interaction entre Ife et Benin ainsi que révélé des nouvelles interprétations du développement de l'homogéneisation de la culture matérielle dans la région de Yoruba-Edo durant la premiére partie du deuxiéme millénaire. Sur la base de tests de carbone, on sait que Iloyi fut occupé de treizième au seizième siècle AD. Les caractéristiques stylistiques et iconographiques de la céramique ainsi que les procédés d'enterrement et les rites de sacrifices laissent à penser que Iloyi était situé à la frontiére socio-politique et culturelle de Ile-Ife et que Ijesaland faisait partie de la zone culturelle de Ife-Benin. Ceci renforce l'hypothése que le développement d'une institution royaliste à Ile-Ife à étendu les réseaux d'interaction de cette région—un processus historique qui culmina avec la tendance à l'homogéneisation régionale culturelle du treizième au seizième siécles.     

东南亚地区农业起源研究综论

自20世纪50年代始,东南亚地区的农业起源探索历程至今已半个多世纪。大量考古发现表明,东南亚早期农业的性质是依赖于根系作物的驯化和块茎作物的栽培,该地区早期农业的特点与树木栽培的实践紧密相连,但农业起源的时间尺度仍未很好地建立。基于东南亚地区植物遗存和农业性质的特殊性,多种研究方法得以运用,也相继提出了许多不同的理念。东南亚地区农业起源的研究对中国华南地区早期农业的探索具有很好的启示作用。     

明代郑韩两座藩王墓遗存的调查

2018年12月和2019年1月,笔者对河南沁阳明代郑藩某王墓、甘肃泾川明韩恭王墓的墓室残体进行了简单的测绘,这两座墓虽然均已残毁,但墓室主体部分尚存,分别代表了明代不同藩府、不同年代、不同特征的王墓形态,对于明代墓葬考古学研究具重要价值。     

Sit,Cook, Eat,Full Stop: Religion and the Rejection of Ritual in Auhelawa (Papua New Guinea)

ABSTRACT The Auhelawa people of Normanby Island (Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea) typically observe the death of an individual through a series of feasts in which the lineage of the deceased and its lateral relatives exchange food and perform rituals of mourning. Recently, a number of people have decided to reject all forms of ‘custom’ in favor of a practice of ‘Christian custom’ in which no food is exchanged and no rituals are performed. This paper examines the way people view custom and its Christian alternative. It argues that the basis for Christian forms of mortuary feasting is a shift away from thinking of feasts in terms of reciprocity and towards thinking of them in terms of traditional customary rules. In this context, active church members have begun to represent the absence of markers of custom as itself a marker of an alternative Christian custom. I argue that this reformulation of the relationship of custom and change is meant to give concrete form to the value of Christian individualism as the basis for sociality. The paper then concludes that in order to explain historical changes in ritual systems, the study of ritual needs to examine ritual in relation to the values that underlie it.     

我国城市住区社会经济空间结构的变化

随着城市住房改革的不断深化,我国城市住区的社会经济空间结构正在发生巨大的变化。本文从分析城市住区社会经济空间结构的变化及其原因入手,探讨了这种变化对城市社会经济的影响。     

Economic crises in the ASEAN area: types and responses

Southeast Asia, the world region covering the countries of ASEAN, lies at the crossroads between China and India. Since early times it has been part of the global economy, going through cycles of boom and bust at least from the nineteenth century onwards. This essay compares three successive economic crises during the 1880s, 1930s and late 1990s. It shows how different types of crisis reflected as well as produced changes in the connectivity between production factors and institutional arrangements. Whereas the crisis of the 1880s was ‘local’, that of the 1930s was both ‘national’ and ‘delegated global’ and that of the 1990s ‘regional’ in nature. The types of crisis and the ways in which they were handled reflected structural changes in the institutional architecture of the global economy.     

The ethics, politics, and realities of maritime archaeology in Southeast Asia

There is a constant battle between maritime archaeologists and commercial salvors throughout the world. In many developed countries, the arguments of archaeologists are valid, and their actions fully justify their stance. This is not so in Southeast Asia. In this region, archaeological information is being lost on a massive scale. Co-operation between the two groups, and with regional governments, is essential to prevent more irreparable damage.     

郑和下西洋与东南亚华侨华人

根据笔者实地考察,东南亚至少有15个郑和寺庙和近30个有关郑和的传说。它们反映了早期南洋中国移民的生活状况、他们与当地妇女的通婚、华侨宗教信仰的特点以及华侨华人在中外文化交流中所发挥的重要的桥梁作用。东南亚华人纪念郑和活动的特点是“四个结合”,即将纪念郑和与继承中华传统文化、吸收定居国文化相结合,与宣扬祖籍国和定居国的友好关系相结合,与发扬华人创业精神相结合以及与争取华族正当权益、促进族群和睦、繁荣当地经济相结合。虽然郑和在东南亚影响很大,但海外对郑和的了解仍十分有限,因此,在海外全面、深入地介绍郑和任重而道远。     

Developing Complex Societies in Southeast Asia: Using Archaeological and Historical Evidence

A number of archaeologists are making significant advances in the historical archaeology of Southeast Asia. The papers presented in this issue, and the one that preceded it, provide new insights and exciting directions for future research.