Debating a great site: Ban Non Wat and the wider prehistory of Southeast Asia

Antiquity ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 89 (347) ◽  
pp. 1211-1220 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.F.W. Higham
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
Rice Farming ◽  
Copper Base ◽  
The Past ◽  
North East ◽  
Key Sites ◽  
Bronze Casting

Almost half a century has elapsed since the first area excavation of a prehistoric site in north-east Thailand at Non Nok Tha (Bayard & Solheim 2010) (Figure 1). A long and still unresolved debate has ensued, centred on the chronology of the establishment of rice farming and bronze casting, that has dovetailed with further controversies on the pace and nature of social change. Results obtained during the past 20 years of fieldwork focused on the upper Mun Valley of north-east Thailand, together with a new series of AMS radiocarbon determinations from key sites, have thrown into sharp relief contrasting interpretations of two issues: one centres on the timing and origin of the Neolithic settlement; the other on the date and impact of copper-base metallurgy. A consensus through debate would bring us to a tipping point that would see Southeast Asian prehistory turn to more interesting issues of cultural change.

An ‘Age of Commerce’ in Southeast Asian History

1990 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Reid
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Economic History ◽  
External Factors ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Increased Sensitivity ◽  
Asian History

Since the end of World War II the study of Southeast Asia has changed unrecognizably. The often bitter end of colonialism caused a sharp break with older scholarly traditions, and their tendency to see Southeast Asia as a receptacle for external influences—first Indian, Persian, Islamic or Chinese, later European. The greatest gain over the past forty years has probably been a much increased sensitivity to the cultural distinctiveness of Southeast Asia both as a whole and in its parts. If there has been a loss, on the other hand, it has been the failure of economic history to advance beyond the work of the generation of Furnivall, van Leur, Schrieke and Boeke. Perhaps because economic factors were difficult to disentangle from external factors they were seen by very few Southeast Asianists as the major challenge.

Horned Objects in Anatolia and the Near East and possible connexions with the Minoan “Horns of Consecration”

1969 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 147-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Diamant ◽  
Jeremy Rutter
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Near East ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
The Past ◽  
North East ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
East Anatolia

Numerous interpretations of the meaning, function, and derivation of the Minoan “horns of consecration” have been put forward since Evans discovered the first object of this kind in his excavations at Knossos. As yet, not one of the various theories proposed has been universally accepted. Consequently, the authors of this article would prefer not to be so presumptuous as to claim that they have indeed solved the problem of the usage and origins of the Minoan “horns”; on the other hand they believe that excavations in the past twenty years have strongly suggested that the Minoan “horns” have their origins in Anatolia and that the object's function, originally at least, was a pot-support in a hearth.In Anatolia, horned objects which we consider served as precursors of the Minoan “horns of consecration” fall into three classes. Examples of the first of these classes have been found in EB II hearths at Beycesultan and at Tarsus. Survivals of this type of “horns” are also found in Late Bronze Age [hereafter LB] Kusura C and Beycesultan III–II. The second class consists of the pot-stands or andirons connected with Khirbet Kerak ware in the 'Amuq, Palestine, north-east Anatolia, and the Caucasus.

Genocidal Warfare in North‐east Africa

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex de Waal
Keyword(s):  
Major Part ◽  
Final Section ◽  
The Other ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
The Past ◽  
North East ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Past Half

The modern history of the Horn of Africa is marked by protracted violence. The two powerful states of the region, Ethiopia and Sudan, are hybrid imperial creations from African and European colonialisms. For centuries, the dominant states of the Ethiopian highlands and the Nile Valley have been predators on the peoples of their peripheries, inflicting slavery, subjugation, and massacre upon them. The other states of the Horn, Eritrea and Somalia were forged out of resistance to the centres of state power, and each exists insofar as it can dispense violence. This article consists of four sections. The first outlines the key themes. A second part briefly surveys the position of the Horn of Africa within scholarly and legal approaches to genocide. The major part outlines twenty-two episodes of extreme violence, including mass killing and group-targeted repression, over the past half century. The final section draws some general conclusions.

Avatars of Indian Research

1970 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard G. Fox
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Science ◽  
South Asia ◽  
The Other ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Face

Like differing versions of Vishnu, the same difficult problems continuallyreappear in the scholarly literature on India. The nature of caste, itsresiliency or dissolution in the face of modernization; the quality oftraditional Indian civilization, its adaptation or collapse in response toeconomic development and industrialization, are two questions whichcontinue to haunt the specialist on South Asia. What hangs in the balance is not only our understanding of social change or non-change in industrializing societies, but the validity of anthropology and the other social sciences as adequate methods of description and analysis in the contemporary world. If the ‘ethnographic present’ always remains only the past, then is not the value of anthropology and social science immeasurably diminished?

Strange Parallels and the Big Picture: “Asia” Writ Large Over a Turbulent Millennium

2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 939-963 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Tagliacozzo
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Specific Area ◽  
The Other ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
Mainland Southeast Asia

Every now and again a book comes along that “shakes foundations”, as it were. Such volumes let us know that something novel has appeared on the scene, in terms of new ways of knowing the shape and landscape of the past, the great “undiscovered country” of the proverb.Strange Parallels– not one book, but two – is this kind of project. In an age of hyperbole it is easy to believe the breathless hype of publishers when they tell us, the reading public, that such work has arrived. Many of us often end up feeling deflated, though, when the volume finally gets to our desks. On occasion, though, such books do live up to the praise, and happily this is the case with Victor Lieberman's absorbing two volumes. Lieberman is a well-respected historian of Burma; in recent years, his tastes have been ranging further afield, however, as he has sought to connect Burma to larger stories and themes.Strange Parallelsis the result of that philandering eye, an occasion when infidelity of one's locus of choice cannot only be forgiven, but applauded because of the result. Lieberman did not just covet his neighbors in this exercise – Siam and Vietnam and the other polities of mainland Southeast Asia. He ended up coveting Eurasia, or the expanse of an entire continent. What happens when you marry a very specific area studies expertise to this kind of vastly expanded vision? What paradigms can be shifted, and what new patterns can be seen? Perhaps most importantly, what new things can be discerned about the “undiscovered country” of the past that previously were hidden, even tocognoscenti?

The Fate of 'Backwardness'

2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-113
Author(s):  
Catarina Frois
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Actual Truth ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Modus Vivendi ◽  
The Right

In Portugal, terms such as 'modernisation', 'progress' and 'development' are continually invoked by a wide range of social actors, representing the right path and ultimate goal of all political and social change, but on the other hand conceal the actual truth that, to use Latour's expression: 'We have never been modern'. The result is that the demand for modernisation is accompanied by the parallel reification of 'backwardness'. Alluding to Portugal's peripheral condition, to its distance from the rest of Europe and so forth, is part of common everyday discourse, and the country is typically portrayed as a kind of European backwater, forever lagging behind more advanced states. This article aims to present and discuss how backwardness and modernisation are recurrently present in political discourse as a leitmotiv for social, economic and cultural change and the way it is incorporated into a broader and rooted self-representation of the Portuguese modus vivendi and national features.

scholarly journals DATING THE BRONZE AGE OF SOUTHEAST ASIA. WHY DOES IT MATTER?

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Franklin Higham ◽  
Thomas Franklin Higham ◽  
Katerina Douka
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Human Bone ◽  
Rice Grains ◽  
Key Sites ◽  
Ban Chiang ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Mainland Southeast Asia

<p class="BasicParagraph"><em>We have dated human bone, freshwater shell, charcoal and rice grains from key sites in mainland Southeast Asia in order to establish the chronological scaffolding for later prehistory (ca 2500 BC-AD 500). In a recent report on the metal remains from the site of Ban Chiang, however, this chronology has been challenged. Here, we respond to these claims and show that they are unfounded and misleading. We maintain the integrity of the Bayesian-modelled radiocarbon results that identify the arrival of the first rice and millet farmers in mainland Southeast Asia towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC, with the first evidence for the casting of bronze by about 1100 BC. Social change that followed the establishment of metallurgy was rapid and profound.  </em></p>

Perfections (Six and Ten) of Bodhisattvas in Buddhist Literature

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
James B. Apple
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
The Other ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Sanskrit Literature ◽  
Buddhist Literature ◽  
Loving Kindness ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Era ◽  
Standard List

The etymology of the Sanskrit and Pāli term pāramitā was a contested issue in classical India. One representation considered that the term was derived from pāram, “other (side),” plus the past participle ita, “gone.” This derivation is later preserved in the standard Tibetan translation pha-rol-tu phyin-pa, “gone to the other shore,” implying that such virtues lead to the blissful shore of nirvāṇa and away from the side of saṃsāra, the conditioned world of repeated rebirth and redeath. Other interpretations advocated that this etymology was misguided, and derived pāramitā from the term parama, “excellent, supreme.” The noun pāramitā is translated in early Chinese through “double translation” composed by tu wu-chi, meaning “crossed over” (tu) plus “limitless” (wu-chi), which brings together both of the traditional etymologies. The conception of the perfections as a specific set of practices is not found in the earliest layers of Buddhist literature. Rather, the perfections as a set of practices developed sometime before the common era as an alternative group of spiritual practices in conjunction with revised notions of buddhahood as well as newly considered notions of what constitutes the path leading to buddhahood. The lists of perfections varied according to the genre of literature in which they appeared. What practices constituted the varied lists of perfections and how the perfections were conceived differed not only among groups but also among scholarly authors. The perfections appear in Buddhist literature as a group in varying lists, but the lists of perfections are notoriously unfixed, with six and ten perfections being the most common. The Theravāda tradition recognizes ten, although only eight are listed in the Buddhāpadāna and seven in the Cariyāpiṭaka. The ten perfections in the Theravāda tradition are (1) generosity (dāna), (2) morality (sīla), (3) renunciation (nekhamma), (4) insight (pañña), (5) energy (viriya), (6) patience (khanti), (7) truthfulness (sacca), (8) resolution (adhiṭṭhāna), (9) loving-kindness (metta), and (10) equanimity (upekkhā). This list differs from the list of ten perfections found in Buddhist Sanskrit literature. A set of six perfections became common among some genres of mainstream Buddhist literature and developed into a standard list in a number of Mahāyāna sūtras. However, other lists of four, five, or seven perfections also occurred. In time, a set of six perfections became standard in Mahāyāna sūtras. The six are (1) generosity (dāna), (2) morality (śīla), (3) patience (kṣānti), (4) vigor (vīrya), (5) concentration (dhyāna), and (6) wisdom (prajñā). This list was expanded to complement the ten stages (bhūmi) traversed by a bodhisattva in the course leading to full buddhahood. The additional perfections were (7) skill-in-means (upāya-kauśalya), (8) resolution (praṇidhāna), (9) strength (bala), and (10) knowledge (jñāna). The manner in which the perfections were understood in different Buddhist cultures, such as in East Asia, Tibet, or Southeast Asia, was dependent on the Buddhist literature that was accessible or acceptable to the particular culture and the interpretative attention given to that literature.

On The Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia

1961 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. W. Small
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

It is generally accepted that history is an element of culture and the historian a member of society, thus, in Croce's aphorism, that the only true history is contemporary history. It follows from this that when there occur great changes in the contemporary scene, there must also be great changes in historiography, that the vision not merely of the present but also of the past must change.

Immunoferritin localization of intracellular antigens in positively stained frozen sections

1978 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-169
Author(s):  
K. T. Tokuyasu
Keyword(s):  
Surface Tension ◽  
Water Surface ◽  
Thin Layers ◽  
The Other ◽  
Positive Staining ◽  
Frozen Sections ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ultrathin Frozen Sections ◽  
Definition Of

During the past investigations of immunoferritin localization of intracellular antigens in ultrathin frozen sections, we found that the degree of negative staining required to delineate u1trastructural details was often too dense for the recognition of ferritin particles. The quality of positive staining of ultrathin frozen sections, on the other hand, has generally been far inferior to that attainable in conventional plastic embedded sections, particularly in the definition of membranes. As we discussed before, a main cause of this difficulty seemed to be the vulnerability of frozen sections to the damaging effects of air-water surface tension at the time of drying of the sections.Indeed, we found that the quality of positive staining is greatly improved when positively stained frozen sections are protected against the effects of surface tension by embedding them in thin layers of mechanically stable materials at the time of drying (unpublished).

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