A CONSERVATION PERSPECTIVE ON THE BA DINH ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE

This paper presents one of the four recommendations on the conservation and presentation management of the Ba Dinh Archaeological Site drafted during the 2nd Asian Academy for Heritage Management Field School in Hanoi in 2005. It presents the site’s background and identifies heritage issues, significance and values. It also covers the appropriate international charters and protocols on cultural conservation of heritage sites. It concludes with a statement on the impact of Ba Dinh to the people of Vietnam as regards their cultural and historical heritage and its worth in nation building

Shell tool technology in Island Southeast Asia: an early Middle Holocene Tridacna adze from Ilin Island, Mindoro, Philippines

Shell artefacts in Island Southeast Asia have often been considered local variants of ground-stone implements, introduced in the Late Pleistocene from Mainland Southeast Asia. The discovery of a wellpreserved Tridacna shell adze from Ilin Island in the Philippines, suggests, however, a different interpretation. Using radiocarbon dating, X-ray diffraction and stratigraphic and chronological placement within the archaeological record, the authors place the ‘old shell’ effect into context, and suggest that shell technology was in fact a local innovation that emerged in the early Middle Holocene. The chronology and distribution of these artefacts has significant implications for the antiquity of early human interaction between the Philippines and Melanesia. It may have occurred long before the migrations of Austronesianspeaking peoples and the emergence of the Lapita Cultural Complex that are traditionally thought to mark the first contact

First Directly Dated Rock Art in Southeast Asia and the Archaeological Implications

This paper integrates the first rock art directly dated with radiocarbon (14C) in Southeast Asia with the archaeological activity in the area and with stylistically similar rock art in the region. Peñablanca is a hotspot of archaeological research that includes the oldest dates for human remains in the Philippines. The caves in Peñablanca with known rock art were revisited and only 37.6% of the original recorded figures were found; the others are likely lost to agents of deterioration. A sample was collected from an anthropomorph and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dated to 3570–3460 cal BP. The date corresponds to archaeological activity in the area and provides a more holistic view of the people inhabiting the Peñablanca caves at that time. A systematic review was used to find similar black anthropomorph motifs in Southeast Asia to identify potential connections across the region and provide a possible chronological association

Adaptation and foraging from the Terminal Pleistocene to the Early Holocene: Excavation at Bubog on Ilin Island, Philippines

The recently discovered human remains from Callao Cave, northern Luzon, Philippines securely date the migration of hominins into the Philippines to ca. 70 kya (thousands of years ago). The direct route to reach Luzon from the Asian mainland is via Borneo, Palawan, through Mindoro and into Luzon. Our research focuses on Mindoro Island as a potential stepping stone to the main Philippine Archipelago. While Palawan and Luzon have produced evidence for early human occupation, no systematic research on the prehistory of Mindoro has been conducted until now. We report on recent archaeological investigations at the Bubog rockshelter sites on the small island of Ilin just off the coast of Mindoro. The excavations produced evidence of stratified sequences of human habitation at the two rockshelter sites in the form of dense shell middens that date to ca. 11 kya onwards. They provide direct evidence on how variability in landscape formation, sea levels, and landmass during the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene influenced the behavior of early human populations. Numerous species of molluscs were recorded and provisional results indicate variations in the invertebrate faunas throughout the stratigraphic sequences, resulting from sea level rise and the establishment of coral reefs between Ilin and Mindoro at the end of the Pleistocene. Our results contribute substantially to our understanding of the processes of human island adaptation, complement ongoing research into Island Southeast Asia's paleogeography, and enhance current knowledge of prehistoric subsistence strategies across the region