Hsiao-chun Hung

The first settlement of Remote Oceania: the Philippines to the Marianas

The authors compare pottery assemblages in the Marianas and the Philippines to claim endorsement for a first human expansion into the open Pacific around 1500 BC. The Marianas are separated from the Philippines by 2300km of open sea, so they are proposing an epic pioneering voyage of men and women, with presumably some cultivated plants but apparently no animals. How did they manage this unprecedented journey?

Ancient jades map 3,000 years of prehistoric exchange in Southeast Asia

We have used electron probe microanalysis to examine Southeast Asian nephrite (jade) artifacts, many archeologically excavated, dating from 3000 B.C. through the first millennium A.D. The research has revealed the existence of one of the most extensive sea-based trade networks of a single geological material in the prehistoric world. Green nephrite from a source in eastern Taiwan was used to make two very specific forms of ear pendant that were distributed, between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D., through the Philippines, East Malaysia, southern Vietnam, and peninsular Thailand, forming a 3,000-km-diameter halo around the southern and eastern coastlines of the South China Sea. Other Taiwan nephrite artifacts, especially beads and bracelets, were distributed earlier during Neolithic times throughout Taiwan and from Taiwan into the Philippines.

The Neolithic of Southern China–Origin, Development, and Dispersal

According to direct evidence from archaeology and supporting evidence from comparative linguistics, the Neolithic cultures of the Yangtze alluvial plain played a significant role in the origins of rice cultivation and agricultural populations in East and Southeast Asia. The ultimate results of these developments, according to many authorities, were the dispersals of Austroasiatic and Austronesian-speaking peoples into Mainland and Island Southeast Asia. New archaeological discoveries suggest that some of the earliest pottery in the world also occurred in southern China. Therefore, the historical significance of this region cannot be overlooked. This paper provides a brief review of cultural developments and settlement histories in southern China from the early Neolithic (c. 11,000–8000 b.c .) to the terminal Neolithic (2000 b.c .). Geographically, we examine the middle and lower Yangtze alluvial plain, the Lingnan (southern Nanling Mountains) and Fujian region, and the Yungui Plateau of southern China. Against the backdrop of the waxing and waning of Neolithic cultures in the Yangtze Valley we plot the spread of material culture, rice farming and animal domestication out of the Yangtze region to the Lingnan-Fujian region and the Yungui Plateau, and later into Taiwan and Southeast Asia. This study suggests that the origins of rice agriculture and the process of farming dispersal were more complicated than previously assumed. Keywords: Neolithic, southern China, Yangtze alluvial plain, farming, migration, dispersal.

Are 'Cultures' Inherited? Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Origins and Migrations of Austronesian-Speaking Peoples Prior to 1000 BC

This chapter examines the evidence for the movement of Austronesian-speaking peoples from Taiwan into the Philippines and beyond, drawing upon data from comparative linguistics, archaeology and genetics. The chronological focus is mainly on the period between 2500 and 1000 bc. These three disciplines in combination make a migration of Austronesian-speaking communities a more likely conclusion than independent movements of languages, genes and items of material culture. This implies that a non-exclusive cultural tradition that can be defined archaeologically was transmitted through space and time via inheritance, and render insufficient all explanations for Austronesian patterning that are based entirely on interaction models without migration.

The Pottery Trail From Southeast Asia to Remote Oceania

ABSTRACT A set of unique circumstances created a durable archaeological record of ancient human migration from Southeast Asia to Remote Oceania, useful as a global model of population dispersals. Finely made pottery with a very specific decorative signature is found in multiple locations in the Philippines and western Oceania, constituting a shared cultural trait that can be traced, both geographically and chronologically, to a specific homeland. Especially important for human migration models, this decorated pottery is linked to a system of cultural origin, so the spread as a diagnostic tradition can be related to the spread of a cultural group. Even more important, this decorated pottery appeared with the first peopling of the remote Pacific Islands, thus providing a clear and datable chronicle of where and when people spread from one location to another. The pottery trail points to a homeland in the Philippine Neolithic about 2000–1800 BC, followed by expansion into the remote Mariana Islands 1500 BC, and then slightly later into the Lapita world of Melanesia and Polynesia.

A 4000 year-old introduction of domestic pigs into the Philippine Archipelago: implications for understanding routes of human migration through Island Southeast Asia and Wallacea

New research into the Neolithic of Island Southeast Asia is broadening the old models and making them more diverse, more human – more like history: people and animals can move through the islands in a multitude of ways. The domestic pig is an important tracker of Neolithic people and practice into the Pacific, and the authors address the controversial matter of whether domestic pigs first reached the islands of Southeast Asia from China via Taiwan or from the neighbouring Vietnamese peninsula. The DNA trajectory read from modern pigs favours Vietnam, but the authors have found well stratified domestic pig in the Philippines dated to c. 4000 BP and associated with cultural material of Taiwan. Thus the perils of relying only on DNA – but are these alternative or additional stories?

Coastal Connectivity: Long-Term Trading Networks Across the South China Sea

ABSTRACT Long-distance coastal interactions have shaped much of world history, most evident in social and economic ties through sea-lanes and trade-routes that connect to other regions and potentially throughout the world. In this way, separate coastal communities on distant shores of the same sea, lake, river, or ocean can share more in common with each other than with their adjacent inland neighbors. The South China Sea presents one case in point, where cultural practices and histories have been shared across remotely separated areas but not necessarily among nearest-neighbor communities. The South China Sea has been one of the worlds busiest zones of cross-regional commerce, at least since the Iron Age if not much earlier. During the operation of the so-called Sa Huynh-Kalanay Interaction Sphere, about 500 BC through AD 100, sites in both Mainland and Island Southeast Asia shared distinctive styles of pottery, precious-stone and baked-clay jewelry, and other tangible markers of a sea-crossing trading network. Upon closer examination, the evidence from Vietnam and the Philippines suggests origins of cross-regional exchange at least as early as 1500 BC. Over time, different items were mobilized into systems that emphasized the same long-distance contact nodes in shifting configurations, creating complicated and evolving networks. Here we consider how trading partnerships were formed and maintained over successive generations and centuries, made possible by social and economic networking across the South China Sea.

Jiahu 1: Earliest farmers beyond the Yangtze River

The authors summarise the latest evidence for the introduction of rice cultivation into northern China, and show that it most probably began there in the early seventh millennium BC as a result of influence or migration from the Yangtze Valley.

Foragers, fishers and farmers: Origins of the Taiwanese Neolithic

The Neolithic of Taiwan represents the first stage in the expansion of Austronesian-speaking peoples through the Pacific. Settlement and burial evidence from the Tapenkeng (TKP) or Dabenkeng culture demonstrates the development of the early Taiwanese Neolithic over a period of almost 2000 years, from its origin in the pre-TPK of the Pearl River Delta and south-eastern coastal China. The first TPK communities of Taiwan pursued a mixed coastal foraging and horticultural lifestyle, but by the late TPK rice and millet farming were practised with extensive villages and large settlements. The broad-spectrum subsistence diversity of the Taiwanese Neolithic was an important factor in facilitating the subsequent expansion of Austronesian-speaking peoples to the Philippines and beyond

Introduced Domestic Animals in the Neolithic and Metal Age of the Philippines: Evidence From Nagsabaran, Northern Luzon

ABSTRACT The faunal remains recovered from the Neolithic and Metal Age Nagsabaran shell midden site in Cagayan, Northern Luzon Philippines were analyzed to gain insights into the arrival of managed animal populations, subsistence patterns, and animal processing during the occupation of the site around 2000 cal BC to within the last 1,500 years. Introduced pigs are present from the earliest recognized phases of settlement, but dogs are only evident from the Late Neolithic/Metal Age onwards. The faunal assemblage is dominated by wild taxa suggesting the reliance on hunting for subsistence even up to the Late Metal Age (1350 BP). There was no intensification in animal husbandry, even in the presence of domestic animals, which is in contrast to other sites in the region dating to the same period and demonstrates regional variability in the resource importance of introduced domestic taxa. Analysis of skeletal element representation in the assemblage revealed that whole carcasses were being brought to the site and processed, and systematic analysis of the butchery marks permitted the description of carcass processing sequences. Over-representation of certain skeletal elements, and the presence of finished tools suggests the on-site manufacture of bone implements during the later phases of site occupation.