Dong Son drums from Timor-Leste: prehistoric bronze artefacts in Island Southeast Asia

Previous research indicates that the human genetic diversity found in Wallacea - islands in present-day Eastern Indonesia and Timor-Leste that were never part of the Sunda or Sahul continental shelves - has been shaped by complex interactions between migrating Austronesian farmers and indigenous hunter-gatherer communities. Here, we provide new insights into this region's demographic history based on genome-wide data from 16 ancient individuals (2600-250 yrs BP) from islands of the North Moluccas, Sulawesi, and East Nusa Tenggara. While the ancestry of individuals from the northern islands fit earlier views of contact between groups related to the Austronesian expansion and the first colonization of Sahul, the ancestry of individuals from the southern islands revealed additional contributions from Mainland Southeast Asia, which seems to predate the Austronesian admixture in the region. Admixture time estimates for the oldest individuals of Wallacea are closer to archaeological estimates for the Austronesian arrival into the region than are admixture time estimates for present-day groups. The decreasing trend in admixture times exhibited by younger individuals supports a scenario of multiple or continuous admixture involving Papuan- and Asian-related groups. Our results clarify previously debated times of admixture and suggest that the Neolithic dispersals into Island Southeast Asia are associated with the spread of multiple genetic ancestries.

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Fataluku

Journal of the International Phonetic Association ◽

10.1017/s0025100316000190 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 49 (3) ◽

pp. 419-425

Author(s):

Tyler M. Heston ◽

Stephanie Locke

Keyword(s):

Southeast Asia ◽

New Guinea ◽

East Timor ◽

The West ◽

Island Southeast Asia ◽

Timor Leste ◽

West Timor ◽

Eastern Half

Fataluku ([fataluku], ISO 639-3: ddg) is a language spoken by approximately 37,000 people on the eastern end of Timor-Leste (Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2016). Timor-Leste, also known as East Timor, is an independent nation that occupies the eastern half of the island of Timor in island Southeast Asia, which it shares politically with Indonesia in the west. Timor is located north of Australia, between the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Bali in the west and New Guinea in the east.

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Ideology, Ritual Performance and Its Manifestations in the Rock Art of Timor-Leste and Kisar Island, Island Southeast Asia

Cambridge Archaeological Journal ◽

10.1017/s0959774317000816 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 28 (2) ◽

pp. 225-241 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Sue O'Connor ◽

Mahirta ◽

Daud Tanudirjo ◽

Marlon Ririmasse ◽

Muhammad Husni ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Southeast Asia ◽

Rock Art ◽

Symbolic System ◽

Ritual Performance ◽

Design Elements ◽

Island Southeast Asia ◽

Timor Leste ◽

Neighbouring Island ◽

Metal Age ◽

The Western Pacific

Painted rock art occurs throughout the islands of the Western Pacific and has previously been argued to have motif and design elements in common, indicating that it was created within the context of a shared symbolic system. Here we report five new painted rock-art sites from Kisar Island in eastern Indonesia and investigate the commonalities between this art and the painted art corpus in Timor-Leste, the independent nation that forms the eastern part of the neighbouring island of Timor. We examine the motifs in the Kisar art and suggest that, rather than being Neolithic in age, some of the figurative motifs more likely have a Metal Age origin, which in this region places them within the last 2500 years.

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Faces in the Stone: Further Finds of Anthropomorphic Engravings Suggest a Discrete Artistic Tradition Flourished in Timor-Leste in the Terminal Pleistocene

Cambridge Archaeological Journal ◽

10.1017/s0959774320000323 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-14

Author(s):

Sue O'Connor ◽

Nuno Vasco Oliveira ◽

Christopher D. Standish ◽

Marcos García-Diez ◽

Shimona Kealy ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Social Identity ◽

Material Culture ◽

Southeast Asia ◽

Population Expansion ◽

Early Holocene ◽

Island Southeast Asia ◽

Timor Leste ◽

Terminal Pleistocene ◽

Artistic Tradition ◽

Rock Shelters

Engraving sites are rare in mainland and Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) where painted art dominates the prehistoric artistic record. Here we report two new engraving sites from the Tutuala region of Timor-Leste comprising mostly humanoid forms carved into speleothem columns in rock-shelters. Engraved face motifs have previously been reported from Lene Hara Cave in this same region, and one was dated to the Pleistocene–Holocene transition using the Uranium–Thorium method. We discuss the engravings in relation to changes in technology and material culture that took place in the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene archaeological records in this region of Timor as well as neighbouring islands. We suggest that the engravings may have been produced as markers of territorial and social identity within the context of population expansion and greater inter-group contacts at this time.

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The dating of the Island Southeast Asian Neolithic: an attempt at chronometric hygiene and linguistic correlation

Antiquity ◽

10.1017/s0003598x00076560 ◽

1989 ◽

Vol 63 (240) ◽

pp. 587-613 ◽

Cited By ~ 123

Author(s):

Matthew Spriggs

Keyword(s):

Southeast Asia ◽

Full Range ◽

Southeast Asian ◽

Agricultural Crops ◽

Agricultural Economy ◽

Island Southeast Asia

As with conventional definitions of the Neolithic anywhere, the concept in this region relies on there being an agricultural economy, the traces of which are largely indirect. These traces are artefacts interpreted as being linked to agriculture, rather than direct finds of agricultural crops, which are rare in Island Southeast Asia. This definition by artefacts is inevitably polythetic, particularly because many of the sites which have been investigated are hardly comparable. We can expect quite different assemblages from open village sites as opposed to special use sites such as burial caves, or frequentation caves that are used occasionally either by agriculturalists while hunting or by gatherer-hunter groups in some form of interaction with near-by agricultural populations. And rarely is a full range of these different classes of sites available in any one area.

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