Austronesian Mariners and Early Trans-Indian Ocean Crossings

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwyn Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Language Family ◽  
Austronesian Language ◽  
Asian Region ◽  
Boat Building ◽  
Maritime Technology ◽  
The Indian Ocean

This essay attempts to answer the question of whether the Austronesian people - referring to the Southeast Asian region connected by the Austronesian language family - were capable of making direct trans-Indian Ocean voyages, and if so, when these voyages began. Austronesian migration across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar frequently invites scholarly debate over the timing, route, and cause. By exploring the rise and development of shipbuilding and the navigational ability of Austronesians, the essay seeks answers through developments in maritime technology. It draws on boat-building practices, sail technology, and navigational strategies to assert that Austronesians did indeed possess the appropriate maritime skills to make such a voyage, and concludes that the first human activity on the island may indeed be Austronesian, though further research must still be undertaken to establish this as fact.

Cultural Geographies of the Malay World

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 370-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sumit K. Mandal
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Cultural Geography ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Collaborative Effort ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Southeast Asian Studies ◽  
The Indian Ocean

This essay explores the cultural geography of the Malay world writ large by examining the trajectories of texts beyond the conventional national and regional boundaries of Southeast Asian studies. Although the Malay world could be studied in relation to a number of transregional orientations, this essay highlights its interconnectedness with the Indian Ocean. This orientation offers a broad enough frame to examine the transregional scale without losing sight of the local. The essay focuses on a collaborative effort at examining textual trajectories. It proposes a rethinking of the normative vocabulary of the nation-state by exploring the subterranean histories of the present. The essay proposes the term “Malay world” as a helpful vehicle for exploring the transregional connections that are not captured by the language of territory and boundedness. The cultural geography of the Malay world that emerges in this essay is multifarious as its interconnectedness with the Indian Ocean has taken complex and diverse forms. The trajectories of the texts examined have traced a world that has been enmeshed in the transregional traffic of people, goods, and ideas. The pervasiveness of the thinking and practice of the nation-state, has undermined, but not eliminated the multifarious cultural geography of the Malay world.

Maritime Archaeology of the Indian Ocean

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Himanshu Prabha Ray
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Maritime Archaeology ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Marine Resources ◽  
Coastal Structures ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
Ethnographic Studies ◽  
Boat Building ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Fish Remains

The interface between the sea and the land and the communities that have historically traversed the Indian Ocean form the focus of this article. Maritime communities have been sustained by a variety of occupations associated with the sea, such as fishing and harvesting other marine resources, pearling, salt making, sailing, trade, shipbuilding, piracy, and more. The communities of the sea negotiate land-based issues through a variety of strategies, which are evident in the archaeological record. Fishing as an adaptation dates to the prehistoric period, and fish remains have been found in abundance at several coastal prosites dating from the 5th millennium bce. In eastern Saudi Arabia, for example, they constitute 85 percent of the total faunal inventory at some sites. A significant factor facilitating the integrative potential of these communities was their large cargo-carrying vessels, which not only facilitated transformation of the local settlements into centers of commerce and production, but also linked the local groups into regional and trans-regional networks. Underwater archaeology has contributed to an understanding of the boat-building traditions of the Indian Ocean, further supplemented by ethnographic studies of contemporary boat-building communities. Monumental architecture along the coasts served dual functions. Not only did they provide spaces for the interaction of inland routes with those across the ocean, but the structures themselves were also used as major orientation points by watercraft while approaching land. The larger issue addressed underscores the need to include coastal structures such as wharfs, forts, shrines, and archaeological sites as a part of the maritime heritage and to aid in their preservation for posterity.

scholarly journals The Influence of Initial Consonants on the Intrinsic Pitch of High and Low Vowels in the Malay Dialect Spoken in Pathumthani Province, Thailand

MANUSYA ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-25
Author(s):  
Phanintra Teeranon
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Language Family ◽  
Austronesian Language ◽  
High Vowels ◽  
Asian Languages

High vowels tend to have higher intrinsic F0 (pitch) than low vowels (e.g. Lehiste, 1970; Whalen and Levitt, 1995). Higher intrinsic F0 occurs on vowels which follow voiceless consonants, lower intrinsic F0 occurs on vowels which follow voiced consonants. When high vowels follow voiced consonants and low vowels follow voiceless consonants, the voicing of initial consonants has been found to counterbalance the intrinsic F0 value of high and low vowels. In other words, voiced consonants will lower F0 values of high vowels, and voiceless consonants will raise F0 values of low vowels to the extent that the average F0 of these high vowels is actually lower than the average F0 of the low vowels under examination (Clark and Yallop, 1990; House and Fairbanks, 1953; Lehiste, 1970; Lehiste and Peterson, 1961; Laver, 1994). To test whether this counterbalance finding is applicable to Southeast Asian languages, the F0 values of high and low vowels following voiceless and voiced consonants were studied in a Malay dialect of the Austronesian language family spoken in Pathumthani Province, Thailand.

Commercial Networks Connecting Southeast Asia with the Indian Ocean

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Hoogervorst
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Commercial Networks ◽  
The Indian Ocean

Southeast Asian history has seen remarkable levels of mobility and durable connections with the rest of the Indian Ocean. The archaeological record points to prehistoric circulations of material culture within the region. Through the power of monsoon sailing, these small-scale circuits coalesced into larger networks by the 5th century bce. Commercial relations with Chinese, Indian, and West Asian traders brought great prosperity to a number of Southeast Asian ports, which were described as places of immense wealth. Professional shipping, facilitated by local watercraft and crews, reveals the indigenous agency behind such long-distance maritime contacts. By the second half of the first millennium ce, ships from the Indo-Malayan world could be found as far west as coastal East Africa. Arabic and Persian merchants started to play a larger role in the Indian Ocean trade by the 8th century, importing spices and aromatic tree resins from sea-oriented polities such as Srivijaya and later Majapahit. From the 15th century, many coastal settlements in Southeast Asia embraced Islam, partly motivated by commercial interests. The arrival of Portuguese, Dutch, and British ships increased the scale of Indian Ocean commerce, including in the domains of capitalist production systems, conquest, slavery, indentured labor, and eventually free trade. During the colonial period, the Indian Ocean was incorporated into a truly global economy. While cultural and intellectual links between Southeast Asia and the wider Indian Ocean have persisted in the 21st century, commercial networks have declined in importance.

scholarly journals Ecotourism as a Means of Conservation of the Landscape of Rodrigues Island

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-13
Author(s):  
Jean-Michel Jauze
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Agricultural Practices ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Environmental Resources ◽  
Ocean Island ◽  
Indian Ocean Island ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Island Territory

Abstract The Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues provides an interesting landscape case study. It offers a characteristic example of a small island territory whose natural and environmental resources have been overexploited by human activity and whose inhabitants are now clinging to the remains of its symbolic heritage in an attempt to implement conservation and sustainable reconstruction. From this perspective, rurality, with its attendant agricultural practices, its traditional gardens and its natural or humanized landscapes, has become an essential asset; one which the island is trying to promote by means of a tourist strategy based on the enhancement of economic and identity-focused parameters.

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