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ABSTRACTS
Rice in 13th - 14th century Porac, Pampanga, Philippines
Jane Carlos
Archaeological Studies Program, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines 1101
This presentation will focus on the settlement site of Dizon 1 in Porac, Pampanga where remains of charred rice caryopsis were recovered in contexts dating to the 13th to 14th century. Rice imprints on earthenware pottery sherds were likewise found suggesting a subsistence system involving rice agriculture. This data on plant remains contributes to previous studies which established the area as a settlement and habitation site with tradeware and earthenware ceramics, metal artifacts, middens, hearths and graves.
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Archaeobotany in Southeast Asia: Thinking big in a details specialization
Cristina Castillo Cobo
UCL, Institute of Archaeology, London, UK
Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Kobe University, Kobe, Japan
The Early Rice Project aims to understand the origins, development and spread of rice agriculture in Asia. In the past seven years, the project has focused on archaeobotanical research conducted in South, East and Southeast Asia intending to reconstruct past rice cultivation methods.
In this paper, I examine results from the project particularly related to Southeast Asia. Case studies from prehistoric and historic sites in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia provide fine resolution interpretations of the archaeological plant remains such as diet, craft production, and farming systems. However, when data is aggregated, regional sequences form, permitting broad discussions.
I examine the Neolithic site Rach Nui in South Vietnam, which provides evidence of a settled community gathering and hunting wild resources, but also engaged in the importation of domesticated cereals. The results from this site counter the long held view of a dichotomy between hunting-gathering and farming. It is also with Non Pa Wai the only Neolithic site in Mainland Southeast Asia with evidence of foxtail millet.
Khao Sam Kaeo and Phukhao Thong in Peninsular Thailand date to the Metal Age. Rice is the staple cereal and it is farmed in a dryland system. Crops originated from India
such as mungbean, horsegram and sesame are also found here for the first time in Mainland Southeast Asia. There is extensive evidence showing maritime links between South, East and Southeast Asia.
Ban Non Wat in Northeast Thailand has a long chronology from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. Archaeobotanical analysis from Ban Non Wat and the Iron Age site, Non Ban Jak, provide evidence of a transition from dryland to wetland rice farming. The results are viewed with the backdrop of changing climatic conditions and social changes.
Samples taken from the Terrace of the Leper King at Angkor Thom, Cambodia dating from the 14th to 15th centuries show continuity in habitation and reliance on rice. Rice, mungbeans and sesame were also used for ritual purposes, which is furthermore indicated in inscriptions. So far, all morphometric analyses of rice from prehistoric sites in Mainland Southeast Asia indicate Oryza sativa spp. japonica rice. This result is confirmed by aDNA for a few sites. In Angkor Thom, the morphometric study indicates the presence of Oryza sativa spp. indica rice. This shift from japonica to indica remains open due to a lack of archaeobotanical research in early historical sites and provides an opportunity for future studies.
It is hoped that in the future, fieldwork conducted in Southeast Asia will integrate archaeobotanical research in the same manner as other archaeological artefact sampling so that soil samples are collected for processing in the field and then analysis.
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Climate in mainland Southeast Asia between the last glacial maximum and the early Holocene
Akkaneewut Chabangborn
Morphology of Earth Surface and Advanced geohazard in Southeast Asia research unit, Department of Geology, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) has been considered to be an important site for climate study in many reasons. Firstly, this area is located near the boundary between the two Asian monsoon sub-systems, which consist of the Indian Ocean and the East Asian monsoon. The summer monsoon onset occurs earlier in MESEA than other continental region. Moreover, the significant change in MSEA paleo-coastline is a potential trigger of the synoptic scale climate modification. In this study, the published pollen records in MSEA have been assembled and evaluated in order to reconstruct the semi-quantitative precipitation and temperature.
Pollen records indicate that the eastern part of MSEA had higher precipitation than in the west during the last glacial maximum (LGM). These results differ from the latitudinal decrease in the LGM precipitation simulated by climate model. However, pollen cannot demonstrate a spatial pattern of temperature variation during the LGM. The wetter conditions have been reconstructed in MSEA from 19 to 15 ka BP. Despite precipitation gradual decrease from 15 to 13.5 ka BP, MSEA again had increase in precipitation from 13.5 to 11 ka BP. In the deglaciation, MSEA temperatures are generally warmer than that during the LGM. The exception was a cold excursion at about 17 ka BP, which corresponds well in time with Heinrich event 1 (H1) in the northern hemisphere. The warmer temperature at 16.5 ka BP was occupied by the gradual cooling in MSEA from 16.5 to 11.5 ka BP.
Keywords: mainland Southeast Asia, Asian monsoon, pollen, the last glacial maximum, the deglaciation
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Resilience, resource range & rice: evolving socio-economic systems of early agricultural communities in the Upper Mun River Valley, NE Thailand.
Nigel Chang
James Cook University, Queensland, Australia
Recent research is making clear that the process of rice agriculture technology introduction and change in the Mun River Valley involved several stages, and that intensive wet-rice agriculture appeared relatively late in the prehistoric/protohistoric sequence. With this in mind, this presentation reconsiders the balance of resource acquisition and use through prehistory at sites such as Ban Non Wat. What was the role of rice, relative to other resources, in the Neolithic and Bronze Age? How did this change through the Iron Age; a period when it seems that the long process of agricultural intensification was actually playing out? Throughout these periods we consider various uses of rice; ritual, cultural reproduction, 'resource-gap' filling, an exchange item tying small communities together, and (eventually?) as a reliable staple underwriting early complex society in the area.
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The Prominence of Waxy Leafy Plants in the Culinary Practices of Prehistoric Mekong Delta
Michelle S. Eusebio (may add co-authors)
Archaeological Studies Program, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines 1101
Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA FL 32611-7800
This paper presents the results of the organic residue analysis conducted on sampled pottery vessels recovered from two Neolithic sites (Rạch Núi and An Sơn) and two Metal Age sites (Lò Gạch and Gò Ô Chùa) in Long An, Southern Vietnam, which demonstrate the prominence of waxy leafy plants in culinary practices during the prehistory in Mekong Delta. This is based on the presence of lipid compounds peculiar to plant sources, which are the series of mid-to-long-chain fatty acids, alkanes, and alcohols, as well as a wax ester. The detection of these plant waxes provides novel archaeobotanical evidence at the molecular level of the exploitation of waxy leafy plant food sources. It also establishes the continuity of a culinary practice from Neolithic to Metal Age that involves the usage of pottery for preparing and serving a common plant food source available within the vicinities of the three inland sites of An Sơn, Lò Gạch, and Gò Ô Chùa. What these findings mean for human-plant relationships in prehistoric Southeast Asia as well as for the fields of archaeobotany and biomolecular archaeology in the region will also be discussed.
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Advances in studying rice domestication and early agricultural systems:
methodological advances and their application in India and China
Prof. Dorian Q Fuller
UCL, Institute of Archaeology, London)
Over the past decade or so empirical evidence for early rice cultivation and domestication has undergone rapid improvement, although there remains a number of areas of confusion and debate, especially with regards to what can reliable with regards to early domestication. Clarity of evidence for differentiating morphological domestication from evidence for cultivation and agricultural dependence will be reviewed. Improved recovery of spikelet bases allows direct quantification of a key defining feature of domestication, whereas other morphological changes, in grain size and in phytolith morphology, provide additional proxies for change. Cultivation can be inferred from archaeological evidence such as preserved field systems and tillage tools, but arable weed flora provides a strong basis for inferring ecological conditions of cultivation. While identification of seeds is particularly useful phytolith assemblages provide useful proxies such as the fixed/sensitive index that correlates with relative dryness of the fields.
Keywords: spikelet base, grain size, bulliform, husk phytolith, pre-domestication cultivation
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Ropes and Baskets: Raw materials, manufacturing processes and uses. A comparative study of craft traditions in the Batanes Islands, Philippines and Lanyu Island, Taiwan, Republic of China
Céline Kerfant, PhD Candidate, University Rovira I Virgili, Taragona, Spain
This ethnobotanical study aims at providing a better knowledge of basketry traditions and plant-based raw materials that were used for this craft in the Batanes islands. Batanes and Lanyu Islands are both isolated contexts and host numerous vegetal taxa, most of which are indigenous or even endemic and can be used as markers of contact. Handicraft is mostly made out of vegetal fibres of specific properties, such as flexibility, strength, un-putrescibility, among others. These fibres are usually prepared through the use of different techniques and are made into containers, nets, ropes, garments, and others, with every kind of production representing a unique knowledge. Creating a reference collection of Ivatan (Batanes Islands) and Yami-Tao (Lanyu Island) present-day handicraft will be useful in identifying and comparing plants and the techniques used for manufacturing ancient handicrafts. Moreover, this type of analysis can be applied to archaeological artefacts where botanical microremains- such as anatomical parts, starch grains and phytoliths- may have been preserved.
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Rice Agriculture before the Emergence of Early Complex Society in Central Thailand
Thanik Lertcharnrit
Department of Archaeology, Silpakorn University, Bangkok
* thanik.lertcharnlit@gmail.com
Extant archaeological evidence on prehistoric past after the middle Holocene in Thailand and Southeast Asia indicates relatively gradual economic, technological, social, and cultural changes over time until around the second half of the first millennium BC. This talk presents and discusses how prehistoric humans adapted in diverse geomorphological and environmental zones in central Thailand as seen in various subsistence strategies during the later prehistoric times or the time that might have paved a way to early complex and urbanized communities, with an emphasis on rice farming during the Iron Age that saw agricultural intensification.
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Paleoenvironmental study in Vietnam: approaching by pollen analysis from archaeological sites
Nguyen Thi Mai Huong
Institute of Archaeology, Vietnam
Research of paleo-environment at archaeological sites in Vietnam has had encouragement results. From study on pollen and spores of archaeological sites in Vietnam, it may rebuild a picture of vegetation and environment during prehistory, history. It can also help study on relationship between human and environment in the past. Besides pollen study, we also study on plant remains from archeological sites. We had established a reference collection of modern pollen specimens. They are precious documents for Vietnamese and foreigner reference for their research.
Keywords: Vietnam • Palynology • Paleo-environment
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Palynological characteristics in several cores in the Red River Delta in relation to sea level change and cultivation in Holocene
Nguyen Thuy Duong
Historical Geology Department, Faculty of Geology, VNU University of Science, Hanoi
Palynological study in several cores in the Red River Delta, Vietnam provides evidences on sea level change and cultivation in Holocene. This study presents high-resolution palynological analyses from a transect reaching from the inland to the coastal zone of the Red River delta and reconstructs vegetation and paleoenvironmental development in the Red River catchment area during the Holocene. To optimally separate the signals from various parts of the catchment area, we used a pollen sum of types attributable to taxa only growing above 100m altitude. The palynological analyses of the cores reveal that the environmental development in the Red River Delta during the Holocene clearly dependent on the changes in sea level. In relation to the three stages of sea level change, three major periods of environmental development of the Red River Delta during the Holocene are revealed by the palynological analysis: transgression time was recorded from 12.000 years BP to 8.000 years BP; high standing time was recorded from 8.000 years BP to 6500 years BP and regression time was recored from 6000 years BP. Noticable is the abundance of CAMPTOTHECA ACUMINATA in several cores during the high standing time and disapearance of the type in the uppermost part of all cores may indicate cultivation activities in this area at the corresponding time. Moreover, the increase of ALNUS in the uppermost part of the cores points at a larger human impact.
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Late Holocene Interpretation of High-Resolution Oxygen Isotope Derived from Tropical Trees
Nathsuda Pumijumnong
Faculty of Environment and Resource Studies, Mahidol University, Thailand
Southeast Asia is influenced by the monsoon. This is due to the difference in convection between the land and the oceans. Since the Holocene, the climate has changed dramatically. Thailand is one of the countries is located on the path of the monsoon. Therefore, the understanding of the monsoons affecting the patterns of rain, which directly affects the lives and occupations of the population, is of paramount importance. Oxygen isotopes in tree rings cellulose is a powerful tool that can detect the source of the moisture. This study presents the potential of oxygen isotopes in tree ring cellulose of tropical trees, Thailand, responding to the changing Asian monsoon, drought and the impact of El Niño back in time. The verification of the accuracy of the data on the events that had occurred in the area that has been extensively documented.
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Application of botanical remains in the study of environmental changes and human interactions with coastal ecosystems
Paramita Punwong1,2
1. Faculty of Environment and Resource Studies, Mahidol University, Salaya,
Nakhon Pathom, 73170, Thailand;
2. York Institute of Tropical Ecosystems, Environment Department, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK
*punnbio@gmail.com; paramita.pun@mahidol.edu
Coastal habitats, being a dynamic environment, are biologically diverse and subject to sea level fluctuations. Pollen preserved in sediment cores from these areas may be used as a proxy to investigate how plant communities changed over time, leading to the reconstruction of changes in sea level and coastal configuration. Pollen analysis can also be used to unravel anthropogenic activities of the coast. In addition to pollen, charcoal fragments, which are incomplete combustion of plants, are used to investigate climate variability and possible human interactions with the ecosystems. The botanical remains combined with stratigraphical investigations and radiocarbon dating allow a detailed environmental reconstruction to be undertaken.
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Interaction between Humans and Environments in Highland Pang Mapha, Northwest Thailand
Rasmi Shoocongdej
Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Archaeology, Silpakorn University, Bangkok
Highland Pang Mapha is very rich biological, physical, and ethnic diversity. The region falls into seasonal tropical environments characterized by one or two dry seasons per year and highly yearly average temperature. Many plants and animals are available and abundant during particular seasons. Therefore, highland Pang Mapha is known to scientists as a natural laboratory. The long-term archaeological research projects have been carried out since 1998 and investigated the interaction between humans and environments led to the discovery of a large number of archaeological sites.
This paper will focus on cultural dynamics in Highland Pang Mapha, Mae Hong Son Province, Northwest Thailand. The archaeological records show that populations with different scale of organization and subsistence economies existed in highland Pang Mapha since late Pleistocene to late Holocene covering time from 32,000-300 years ago. The results also show that during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene periods, mobility is one of many adaptive strategies for coping with environmental variability. While during the late Holocene (an Iron Age Log Coffin culture), sedentism is an adaptive strategy which may adopted food-production and maintained their hunting-gathering subsistence economy.
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Wisdom around the Spines
Sasivimon Chomchalow Swangpol, Paweena Traiperm, Aussanee Pichakum and Wisuwat Songnuan
Department of Plant Science, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Ratchathewi,
Bangkok 10400, Thailand
Lives at the Chao Phraya riverbanks in Nonthaburi, Thailand, have been surrounded by fruit orchards for more than 300 years. Among several favorite produces, durian, spiny tropical one, has been on top of all choices and called the king of fruits. Vast diversity of durian genetic resources, carefully selected and passed on from generations to generations, are the invaluable heritage of the gardeners. Additionally, appropriate folk management of orchards have sustained Nonthaburi's untainted environment at least since the Ayuddhaya era. Our research team observed durian orchard management and interviewed individual and groups of gardeners prior to and after the 2011 Great Flood, which almost completely destroyed all durian orchards in Nonthaburi area. The study revealed that the Nonthaburi gardeners have meticulously handled their gardens in the ways that differ from gardeners in other provinces. Planting ground and stock preparation, maintenance, irrigation, weed and pest controls, and harvesting methods are diverse even within the province. This may be due to differences in physical conditions of the areas. Due to rarity of durian cultivars unique to Nonthaburi, prices are raised and allured the gardeners to restore their orchards after the Great Flood. Presently, the gardeners of Nonthaburi have brought back and replanted commercial and conserved durian cultivars. The urgent mission is to persuade youths of Nonthaburi to treasure and take pride in their local orchards and unique durian cultivars, and inherit indigenous wisdom in the garden management in order to preserve gardener lifestyle and food security for future generations.
Keywords: Nonthaburi, Thailand, Durio zibethinus L., fruit plantations, gardener culture
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The Ban Chiang ethnobotanical collection and its potential role for archaeobotanists
Joyce White
Institute for Southeast Asian Archaeology, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6324
An ethnobotanical collection undertaken by Joyce White during the period 1978-1981 in the agricultural region surrounding the archaeological site of Ban Chiang, Udon Thani Province, in northeast Thailand. More than 1000 specimens were collected emphasizing plants with edible and/or industrial uses and data was recorded on plant habit, exploitation strategies, seasonality, and other topics. The collection included forty-three mature rice specimens of both cultivated (38) and non-cultivated (five) varieties during a single harvesting season from October 9 through December 15, 1980. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the collection has not been developed to its full potential, although a number of scholars have sampled from it for isotope, phytolith, carbonization, and other studies. The original objective of this collection was to provide a rich comparative collection for use by archaeobotanists. For the collection to fulfill that need, additional collaborative work is needed. This paper introduces this collection to the workshop attendees and invites feedback for next steps.