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The dating of the Island Southeast Asian Neolithic: an attempt at chronometric hygiene and linguistic correlation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Matthew Spriggs
Matthew Spriggs*
Affiliation:
Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia
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Extract

As with conventional definitions of the Neolithic anywhere, the concept in this region relies on there being an agricultural economy, the traces of which are largely indirect. These traces are artefacts interpreted as being linked to agriculture, rather than direct finds of agricultural crops, which are rare in Island Southeast Asia. This definition by artefacts is inevitably polythetic, particularly because many of the sites which have been investigated are hardly comparable. We can expect quite different assemblages from open village sites as opposed to special use sites such as burial caves, or frequentation caves that are used occasionally either by agriculturalists while hunting or by gatherer-hunter groups in some form of interaction with near-by agricultural populations. And rarely is a full range of these different classes of sites available in any one area.

Type
Special section
Information
Antiquity , Volume 63 , Issue 240 , September 1989 , pp. 587 - 613
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1989

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