Trade Diaspora in Prehistoric Eastern Taiwan Taiwan

The Archaeology of Asia-Pacific Navigation Volume 3 Series Editor Chunming Wu, 2019

This book considers the prehistory of Taiwan from a maritime perspective, and positions Taiwan as a key cultural link between the Asian continent and islands in the Pacific over many millennia. Through a synthesis of the latest archaeological discoveries and researches in Taiwan, and based on an understanding accumulated over many years of work, the author has reconstructed a comprehensive framework for cultural sequences that matches Taiwan’s prehistory based on an understanding of its archaeological cultures and those of surrounding areas. Through a comparison of earlier and later archaeological cultures, the author encapsulates both the inheritance of local cultural features and the appearance of new elements, places these new elements in an interactive network with the Asian continent and islands in the Asia-Pacific region so as to examine their origins and their maritime cultural contacts. With Taiwan as its regional focus, this study reveals both cultural contents and their temporal and spatial changes, as well as the maritime exchanges and interactions that took place during prehistory. This volume, researching matters of Taiwan’s archaeology from a maritime perspective, undertakes a unified and integrated reconstruction, and considers the diverse, plural, and bilateral maritime interactions of prehistoric Taiwan.

Journal of Global History, 2023

This article analyses recent archaeological work on the flow of materials and their influences on the communities in the South China Sea maritime regions, primarily from a local, Taiwanese perspective. The intertwined Austronesian Routes and maritime Silk Road acted as the primary conduit for the movement of both people and materials. Archaeological findings demonstrate intermittent interaction and cultural exchange between Taiwan and the regions around the South China Sea during the period 1,500-500 BCE. However, starting from 500 BCE, the gradual increase of glass beads, agate beads, and metal products which were made in mainland Southeast Asia and adjacent regions indicate an intensified interaction between Taiwan and Southeast Asia via the Maritime Silk Road and the Austronesian Routes. The author hypothesizes that trade diasporic craftspeople were the carriers of these exotic materials and knowledge, and that external cultural elements had a profound impact on the development of contemporary prehistoric Formosan society. This can be seen most notably in the shifting of decoration systems, the changing methods of subsistence, and technological leaps. Some of the impacts have faded into the archaeological records, but others are still traceable in the modern Indigenous society of Taiwan.

New Frontiers in the Neolithic Archaeology of Taiwan (5600–1800 BP), 2019

This book considers the prehistory of Taiwan from a maritime perspective, and positions Taiwan as a key cultural link between the Asian continent and islands in the Pacific over many millennia. Through a synthesis of the latest archaeological discoveries and researches in Taiwan, and based on an understanding accumulated over many years of work, the author has reconstructed a comprehensive framework for cultural sequences that matches Taiwan’s prehistory based on an understanding of its archaeological cultures and those of surrounding areas. Through a comparison of earlier and later archaeological cultures, the author encapsulates both the inheritance of local cultural features and the appearance of new elements, places these new elements in an interactive network with the Asian continent and islands in the Asia-Pacific region so as to examine their origins and their maritime cultural contacts. With Taiwan as its regional focus, this study reveals both cultural contents and their temporal and spatial changes, as well as the maritime exchanges and interactions that took place during prehistory. This volume, researching matters of Taiwan’s archaeology from a maritime perspective, undertakes a unified and integrated reconstruction, and considers the diverse, plural, and bilateral maritime interactions of prehistoric Taiwan.

The current model of the prehistory of Taiwan assumes that it was first settled some 25,000 years ago by a population of unknown affinities, who reached what is now an island via a landbridge, at a time of much lower sea-levels. Some 5500 years ago, the Ta Pen Keng (TPK) culture, attested on the Peng Hu islands in the Taiwan Strait, apparently represents an incoming Neolithic population. Similar TPK sites are recorded around the shores of Taiwan in the centuries immediately following this. The pervasive assumption has been that these early settlers were the bearers of the Austronesian languages, which then diversified. If so, related Austronesian languages were formerly spoken on the Chinese mainland and these subsequently disappeared as a consequence of the Sinitic expansions. The indigenous Austronesian languages of Taiwan are claimed to reconstruct to a single proto-language, PAN, and from these reconstructions we can derive hypotheses about the lifestyle and subsistence of the earliest settlers. This paper will argue that the single migration model is mistaken, and that it is not consistent with either the archaeology or the lexicon. If Formosan languages appear to reconstruct to a proto-language it is because they have been interacting over a long period, but they actually represent a continuing flow of pre-Austronesian languages from the mainland. Part of the evidence for this is the exceptional diversity of lexical items which are supposedly part of basic subsistence vocabulary. Three phases of migration are distinguished, the TPK, the Longshan type culture and the Yuanshan, all of which originate on different places on the Chinese mainland. A further back migration from the Philippines may be responsible for the primary settlement of Green island and parts of the east coast, resulting in the present-day Amis population.

Ya Tai yan jiu lun tan, 2005

Examining …, 2002

Insular Southeast Asia’s (ISEA) Neolithic past invokes the idea of the “Austronesian expansion” into the Malay Archipelago, and the consequent supplanting of a preexisting, hunter-gatherer population by migrating, agriculturalist Austronesian-speaking peoples (ANP). Today, speakers of Austronesian languages (AN) dominate the linguistic landscape of ISEA, such that tracing the origin of their ancestors, determining their Neolithic migration routes, and locating an AN “homeland,” have become key to studying the region’s prehistoric past. Some theories posit an AN homeland in South China and Taiwan; some claim an ISEAn point of origin; while others even suggest a Melanesian origin of the AN language family. This investigation was thus aimed at taking these various theories into consideration, and examining them in conjunction with the region’s archaeological record, and human genetic studies to derive a more holistic understanding of the region’s Neolithic past, and the origin of the A...

Austronesian Diaspora: A new perspective, 2016

Recent multidisciplinary research on the Palaeolithic to Neolithic transition has confirmed several stages of cultural development dated between 20,000 BC and 1500 BC in southern China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. The patterns of habitation, settlement, subsistence, and material culture underwent remarkable changes at certain points during this long time sequence, and even whole populations were replaced or massively transformed. This updated synthesis of new research findings will focus the discussion on the archaeological evidence from Taiwan and its neighboring regions, especially from northern Luzon in the Philippines, and the Marianas of western Micronesia.

Journal of Austronesian Studies, 2005

This paper summarises the archaeological results of the Batanes fieldwork undertaken between 2002 and 2005 by teams from the Australian National University, the National Museum of the Philippines, and the University of the Philippines. (1) The evidence is believed to support a Neolithic settlement of the Batanes from Taiwan before 4000 BP, followed by continuing contacts, lasting until at least 1300 BP, that involved a movement of slate and nephrite from Taiwan (possibly via Ludao and Lanyu Islands) to Batan and Itbayat. Evidence that initial Neolithic settlement of the Batanes came from the south, via Luzon, is not indicated in the assemblages so far excavated.

The current model of proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) holds that a unitary language was spoken in the Luzon Straits roughly four thousand years ago and that this diversified into all the extra-Formosan languages and was responsible for the Neolithic settlement of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) and Oceania. The paper suggests that this is supported by neither linguistics, archaeology nor the distribution of material culture. Archaeology of ISEA after 4000 BP points to near simultaneous settlement in a wide variety of sites, while analysis of individual lexical items points to geographically biased distributions, suggesting they were selectively carried to different regions. Distributions of material culture items associated exclusively with Austronesian culture show strong geographical biases. Recent phenotypic results from Remote Oceania suggests a direct connection with some populations of Taiwan and Northern Luzon, contrary to previous models of complex mixing at intermediate stages, calling into question elaborate nested models of Austronesian phylogeny. This points to a rather different model of time and place, here called the ‘boiling pot’ which assumes the Luzon Strait was an centre of innovative maritime technology and the starting point for voyages in canoes with multi-ethnic crews. This would then see PMP as a network of related subgroups, which can never fully reconstitute a unitary PMP, because no such entity existed.