Session 37: Southern China and Southeast Asia in Archaeological Perspective

Organizer and Chair: TzeHuey Chiou-Peng, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Discussant: Jean M. James, University of Iowa

Keywords: archaeological materials, southern China and Southeast Asia, Pacific, regional groups, cultural interactions.

The papers included in this panel are recent studies of archaeological materials taken from sites situated in regions south of the Yangzi River in Mainland Asia and Southeast Asia. The sites in discussion cover a wide span from the Neolithic and Bronze Ages to the beginning of the historic period. They delineate cultural aspects of regional groups, which developed relatively independent of impacts from the mainstream Chinese cultural sphere while maintaining active communications with their respective neighbors, including some divided from the mainland by oceans. The data gained through scientific analysis of stone and metal artifacts, along with studies of mortuary practices and artifacts at the sites, provide important clues for the authors to interpret the cultural contexts these materials represented. The studies offer insights for understanding the rise of proto-Austronesians in the Pacific, social preeminence of female gender in Bronze Age Yunnan, metallurgical technologies and communications in regions bordering Yunnan and the Dongson area of Vietnam, and discernible Chinese affinities in the substrata of a Cham site in the Indochinese Peninsula. The inclusion of a wide spectrum of rare subjects and of large temporal space and geographic areas in the discussions hopefully will generate interest as well as provide inspiration for studying Asian cultures in broad perspectives.

Tracking the Neolithic Interactions in Southeast China: Evidence from Stone Adze Geochemistry

Tianlong Jiao, Bishop Museum

The Neolithic interactions in Southeast China provide significant clues for studying the origins of the proto-Austronesian speakers, whose descendents later colonized nearly all the habitable islands in the Pacific. The traversing of Neolithic populations across the Taiwan Strait has been speculated to mark the debut of the extraordinary Austronesian seafaring tradition. However, due to the lack of tangible evidence, previous studies of possible interactions between the Mainland and the Island of Taiwan were conjectured mainly on the basis of typological similarities of artifacts from both areas. Data gained through our geochemical analysis of newly discovered adzes from the Damaoshan site in Fujian Province, China, have now provided most updated data for studying the earliest diffusion of Austronesians. For the first time, concrete evidence is made available to support the view that Neolithic cultural traits indeed had crossed the Taiwan Strait via two-way traffic.

Another Look at Bronze Age Yunnan: Who’s Buried in That Bronze Casket?

Penny M. Rode, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

In the past half-century, Chinese archaeologists working in Yunnan Province have unearthed dozens of Bronze and Iron Age cemeteries with mortuary practices and grave furnishings decidedly local in character. Most studies of the material have focused on the so-called Dian culture, which flourished around Kunming in the last centuries BCE. Numerous earlier or contemporaneous sites to the west and north of the Dian center, however, are markedly unlike the Dian, and are seen to constitute distinct archaeological cultures. The relationships of these peoples with their more flamboyant neighbors remain unclear, despite the burgeoning amount of archaeological data reported from the region.

One of these problematic burial grounds is Dabona in Xiangyun, which has undergone several series of excavations since its discovery in 1964. Although small in scale, Dabona remains intriguing to scholars of pre-Han Yunnan primarily because the bronze casket found there is the largest metal object recovered in the province. Traditions shared with neighboring groups present a confused picture of regional interaction: Is Dabona more closely related to the Erhai cultures to the West, or the Dian to its East? This paper reexamines the evidence connecting Dabona with the Dian in light of recent scholarship and new discoveries. This evidence reinforces the link between the two archaeological cultures, which share a preference for naturalistic imagery, a distinct, probably gendered, iconography, traditions of valued textile production, and the possibility of women achieving elevated social status. Each of these factors distinguish Dabona from its Erhai neighbors, while the totality of the data suggests that the occupant of that bronze casket may well have been a woman.

An Archaeometallurgical Investigation of Yunnan Artifacts: China or Dongson?

TzeHuey Chiou-Peng University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

This paper summarizes a systematic metallographic investigation of 200 samples taken from scientifically excavated Bronze Age sites in eastern Yunnan. The study focuses the following topics: corrosion of metal objects, tin or silver enriched bronze surface, bronze casting and manufacturing techniques, alloying techniques and chemical composition of bronzes, repousée and gliding techniques with gold materials, and ancient mining and smelting activities in Yunnan. The work is conducted as part of a research project aiming at deciphering the full metallurgical process used to produce metal artifacts in ancient Yunnan. It reviews the long debated questions pertaining to the origin of these material goods, in particular issues on the relationship between Yunnan and Dongson sites of Vietnam, which, being geographically linked to Yunnan by the Yuan/Upper Red River, had progressed as part of Southeast Asian continuum while shared similar artifact types and artistic ideas with ancient Yunnan cultures. The lab analysis of the Yunnan artifacts, completed at the University of Science & Technology Beijing in 2003 and 2004, has produced data to address technical issues not thoroughly understood previously. The study has now provided insights for accurately interpreting the Yunnan artifacts in their socio-economic and historical contexts, as well as allowed a comparative study with a number of Dongson bronzes that are currently undergoing similar metallographic analysis in Beijing. The investigation suggests that the Yunnan artifacts used in the analysis clearly were manufactured locally, although exchanges of ideas between the two cultures indeed have occurred.

Excavations at Go Cam, Quang Nam Province, Vietnam, 2000–2003

Ian Glover, University College, London

Go Cam lies on a sandy riverbank 3.5 km east of the ancient walled Cham city at Tra Kieu. Work in March 2000 after the discovery of complete ovoid pottery jars close to the ground surface. Similar vessels were found in the lowest levels at excavations at the Tra Kieu citadel where they have been dated to the 2nd–3rd centuries AD. Twenty-six largely complete ovoid jars, a mass of roof tiles, broken glazed and unglazed Han Chinese vessels, two with a Chinese Wu Zhu coin-stamp design, triangular bronze crossbow bolt heads, a bronze dagger guard, glass beads and waste, iron hooks and "ehrtang" ear ornaments with high-fired geometric and textile-impressed jars and local, Sa Huynh low-fired pottery. Organic residue analysis shows the ovoid jars to have been oil storage jars.

An outstanding find was a clay sealing cord marked on the reverse, with four characters read as "Huang Shen Shi Zhe Zhang" (Seal of the Envoy of the Yellow God). A second, very damaged, clay Han sealing with parts of a personal name was also found in 2002.

Substantial timbers of a large burnt wooden structure were found, extending over 13 m by 7.8 m. with over 60 carbonized floor planks, 16 wooden posts, and small stakes marking wall ends, more bronze crossbow bolts, glass and metal waste, iron slag and a bloom, roofing tiles and local pottery.

Four charcoal samples gave 2-sigma calibrated radio carbon dates that range from 755 BC to AD 73, but these include a significant "old wood factor." Two more recent AMS dates from a laboratory in Korea gave uncalibrated dates of 2020+-60 BP and 2060+-40BP, closer to the age indicated by the artifact finds, but still too early on account of the "old wood factor."