Southeast Asia ranks among the most significant regions in the world for tracing the prehistory of human endeavor over a period in excess of two million years. It lies in the direct path of successive migrations from the African homeland that saw settlement by hominin populations such as Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis. The first Anatomically Modern Humans, following a coastal route, reached the region at least 60,000 years ago to establish a hunter gatherer tradition that survives to this day in remote forests.
From about 2000 BC, human settlement of Southeast Asia was deeply affected by successive innovations that took place to the north and west, such as rice and millet farming. A millennium later, knowledge of bronze casting penetrated along the same pathways. Copper mines were identified and exploited, and metals were exchanged over hundreds of kilometers. In the Mekong Delta and elsewhere, these developments led to early states of the region, which benefitted from an agricultural revolution involving permanent ploughed rice fields. These developments illuminate how the great early kingdoms of Angkor, Champa, and Funan came to be, a vital stage in understanding the roots of the present nation states of Southeast Asia. Assembling the most current research across a variety of disciplines--from anthropology and archaeology to history, art history, and linguistics--The Oxford Handbook of Early Southeast Asia will present an invaluable resource to experienced researchers and those approaching the topic for the first time.
Introduction Charles F. W. Higham and Nam C. Kim 1. Humans in Island Southeast Asia Prior to Homo Sapiens Settlement, With Special Reference to Java Island François Sémah, Anne-Marie Sémah, Truman Simanjuntak, and Harry Widianto 2. Homo floresiensis Matthew W. Tocheri, Thomas Sutikna, Jatmiko, E. Wahyu Saptomo 3. The Archaeogenetics of Southeast Asia Pedro Soares, Maru Mormina, Teresa Rito, Martin B. Richards 4. The early settlement of Island Southeast Asia Graeme Barker 5. Stone Industries of Mainland and Island Southeast Asia David Bulbeck and Ben Marwick 6. The Hoabinhian: The Late and Post-Pleistocene Cultural Systems of Southeast Asia Rasmi Shoocongdej 7. Later hunter-gatherers in Guangxi Province Xie Guangmao 8. The Neolithic of Vietnam Philip J. Piper, Lâm Thi My Dung, Nguyen Khánh Trung Kiên, and Peter Bellwood 9. Coastal Settlement in Thailand Charles F. W. Higham 10. Hunter-Gatherer Mortuary Variability in Vietnam Marc F. Oxenham, Anna Willis, Lân Cuong Nguyen, and Hirofumi Matsumura 11. Community and kinship during the transition to agriculture in Northern Vietnam Damien Huffer, R. Alexander Bentley, Marc F Oxenham 12. Cereals of Southeast Asia Dorian Q. Fuller and Cristina Castillo 13. Language Families of Southeast Asia Laurent Sagart 14. The expansion of rice and millet farmers into Southeast Asia Fiorella Rispoli 15. The Neolithic of Mainland Southeast Asia Charles F.W. Higham 16. The Expansion of Farmers into Island Southeast Asia Peter Bellwood 17. The Origins of the Bronze Age in Mainland Southeast Asia Roberto Ciarla 18. Social change with the initial Bronze Age Charles F.W. Higham 19. Prehistoric Copper Production and Exchange in Southeast Asia Vincent C. Pigott and Thomas Oliver Pryce 20. Southeast Asian evidence for early maritime Silk Roads exchange and trade-related polities Bérénice Bellina 21. Social Change in Southeast Asia during the Iron Age Charles F.W. Higham 22. A New Chrono-Cultural Approach to the Iron Age in Myanmar Anne-Sophie Coupey and Jean-Pierre Pautreau 23. The Dongson Culture of Vietnam Nam C. Kim 24. The Sa Huynh culture and related cultures in Southern Vietnam and Cambodia Andreas Reinecke 25. The Iron Age in Central Thailand Fiorella Rispoli 26. The Dian Culture in Southwest China TzeHuey Chiou-Peng 27. The Co Loa Polity in Northern Vietnam Nam C. Kim 28. Mainland Southeast Asia's Earliest Kingdoms and the Case of
C.F.W. Higham is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Otago, whose previous books include The Bronze Age of Southeast Asia and The Origins of the Civilization of Angkor. Nam C. Kim is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of The Origins of Ancient Vietnam.
