Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Archaeology of Asia'

Ceramic technologies of Myanmar and South China were analyzed in order to determine characteristic traits and technological origins. Given Myanmar’s geographically strategic position between China and Southwest Asia, its ceramic history needs to be reevaluated among the distinct traditions of Southeast Asia. The ceramics of Myanmar show evidence of imitation China and Southwest/Central Asia using locally sourced materials, giving support to Dr. Myo Thant Tyn’s theory of the convergence of the Chinese and Southwest/Central Asian ceramic traditions in Myanmar.

Seven ceramic technologies of Myanmar were analyzed: celadons, black-glazed jars (lead-barium and lead-iron-manganese glazes), brown ash glaze ware, green and opaque white-painted glaze ware and turquoise-glazed, coarse-bodied white earthenware. Celadon glazes and brown glazes were made with ash, similar to the Chinese celadon tradition. Green-and-white opaque ware utilized copper-green colorant glaze decoration with tin and lead oxides as opacifying agents on low-fired oxidized bodies. Both these traditions are probably derived from Southwest Asian ceramic and glass traditions. High-soda, copper-turquoise glazes on coarse white earthenware bodies are influenced by Southwest and Central Asian low-fire ceramic and glass traditions. Black-glazed, “Martaban”-style storage jars were variable in body and glaze technology and are still of indeterminable technological origin. A phase-separated glaze was analyzed that had a similar phase-separated appearance to northern Chinese Jun ware.

Additionally, two black-glazed ware types from South China with vertical streaking phase separation were analyzed: Xiba kiln of Sichuan and Jianyang kilns of Fujian. The recently discovered and excavated Xiba kiln made experimental and striking stoneware bowls similar to Jianyang “hare’s fur” ware. Reverse engineering the manufacture of Xiba kiln ware determined that Xiba was an innovative site that imitated Jianyang ware aesthetically but not technologically. Xiba and Jianyang do not have any connection to the six Burmese glaze styles, however, future analyses of Southeast Asian ceramics can use the data for comparison and variability research.

This is a story about Lao Pako. Lao Pako is located on a small hill on the southern bank of the river Nam Ngum in central Laos. Four seasons of archaeological fieldwork have yielded considerable amounts of pottery, metallurgical remains, glass beads, stone artefacts, spindle whorls as well as other material and structural information that have created a foundation for interpretation. The archaeological interpretation presents Lao Pako as a place where people came to perform rituals c. 1500 years ago. In these rituals, sophisticated combinations of pottery depositions, infant burials and iron production produced a narrative about what it means to be in the world. Things in and on the ground created, and continue to create, non-verbal sentences about life and death, fertility, decay and worldly reproduction.

The archaeological interpretation is, however, not the only valid story about Lao Pako. This is a place where spirits are; it is also a tourist resort and a national treasure. These other stories all work to create Lao Pako as a place of interest and are used in this thesis to define the archaeological story, and to visualize the aims and agendas inherent in the production of archaeological knowledge.

Using the conceptual apparatus of postcolonial and other critical theory, the thesis aims to critically deconstruct the archaeology performed by the author and others. It entails an explicit critique of the deterministic temporal unilinearity that is inherent in the archaeological narrative of the evolution of humankind, as well as against essentialist notions of culture and the dissociation of the past as exotic otherness. Thus, the stories about Lao Pako demonstrate the need to critically revise the role of archaeology in a postcolonial world, and create archaeological stories by which we are touched, moved and disturbed, without resorting to imperialist notions of time and progress.

This thesis proposes an alternative perspective to the general neglect of toy materials from deeper analysis in archaeology. Based on a study of selected toy artefacts from the Classical Harappan settlement at Bagasra, Gujarat, it suggests a viable way of approaching the objects when considering them within a theoretical framework highlighting their social aspects. The study agrees with objections in e.g. parts of gender archaeology and research on children in archaeology to the extrapolating from the marginalized child of the West onto past social structures. Departing from revised toy definitions formulated in disciplines outside archaeology, it proceeds with the objects’ toy identifications while rejecting a ‘transforming’ of these into other interpretations. Thus entering a quite unexplored research field, grounded theory is used as working method. As the items indicate a regulated pattern, the opinion on toy artefacts as randomly scattered around becomes questioned. Using among others the capital concept by Bourdieu, the notion of micropower by Foucault and parts of the newly developed ideas of microarchaeology, the toy-role of the artefacts is emphasized as crucial, enabling the items to express diverse social uses in addition to their possible function as children’s (play)things. With this, the notion of the limiting connection of toys to playing children becomes unravelled, opening for a discussion on enlarged dimensions of the toys and a possible re-naming of them as the materialities of next generation. While suggesting the items to indicate various social strategies and structurating practices, the need for traditional boundaries and separated entities successively becomes eliminated. The traditionally stated toy obstacles with cultural loading and elusive distinctions can with this be proposed as constructions, possible to avoid. The toy concept simultaneously emerges as particularly useful in highlighting the notion of change and continuity within the social structure and children’s roles in this.

In this study, I re-tell the life stories of two Khmer high school “dropouts,” Thom and Kevin. Through the collection and reflection of their life stories, I specifically discovered what led Thom and Kevin to “drop out” and uncover whether either had planned on pursuing or dreamt of a four-year postsecondary education in high school. Through interviewing, surveying, and participant-produced visual art, I offered glimpses into their everyday experiences and hopes and dreams for their futures. Based on the stories of Thom and Kevin and Khmer stories in the literature, I provided “Khmer-up,” culturally responsive, and proactive actions to see educational justice for Khmer lives. Issues of invisibility, loneliness, lack of a sense of belonging, personal hardships, challenges in school and community, and their desires for better lives for themselves ricocheted from their stories.

This study is based on the extraction and sequencing of the mitochondrial DNA from 132 ancient human samples from central Mongolia dating to the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age (Xiongnu) and Mongol Empire periods. The data collected were compared to mtDNA gene pools from multiple published studies of ancient and modern human populations from across Eurasia with particular focus on Eurasian steppe populations. The results of these analyses support a model of human migration showing an original eastern population on the Neolithic Mongol Steppe that admixed with a western population, which had migrated onto the eastern Eurasian steppe zone during the Neolithic. This study demonstrates western Eurasian DNA on the eastern Eurasian steppe as far as the Mongol Steppe by the Late Neolithic, and reveals a significant western component in the Bronze Age population of Central Mongolia. It supports an indigenous population as the origin of the Xiongnu, confirms that the Xiongnu had a strongly admixed mtDNA gene pool, and indicates that a significant shift towards eastern mtDNA occurred between the Xiongnu Empire and Mongol Empire periods, which has continued up to the present.

A paleodemographic analysis was conducted using skeletal data from J?mon period sites in Japan. 15P5 ratios were produced as proxy birth rate values for sites throughout the J?mon period. Previous studies based on numbers of residential sites indicated a substantial population increase in the Kant? and Ch?bu regions in central Japan, climaxing during the Middle J?mon period, followed by an equally dramatic population decrease, somewhat resembling changes that occurred during a Neolithic Demographic Transition (NDT). The J?mon are viewed as a relatively sedentary, non-agricultural group, and provided an opportunity to attempt to separate the factors of sedentism and agriculture as they relate to the NDT. Skeletal data showed fairly stable trends in birth rates, instead of the expected increase and decrease in values. This discrepancy calls into question the validity of previous studies. The stable population levels suggest that sedentism alone was not the primary driver of the NDT.

My research uses a case study of Hemudu culture (7,000-5,000 BP) in eastern China to explore technological constraints of earth-working implements as a factor to explain the prolonged processes towards Neolithic agricultural land use and sedentary settlements.

Early Hemudu populations lived in small villages and cultivated rice in the lowlands. They employed earth-working implements made from water buffalo scapulae; however, these implements were replaced with stone variants after 6,000 BP. These phenomena invited the following questions: (1) how did bone earth-working implements become a tradition and persist until 6,000 BP; (2) why was use of these artifacts replaced by use of stone spades; and (3) how did the choices of earth-working implements affect land use? Following ideas from Human Behavioral Ecology, Dual-Inheritance Theory, and Behavioral Archaeology, I examined bone implements' use contexts, raw material availability and procurement, costs and benefits in manufacture, techno-functional performance characteristics, and the Hemudu people's social learning strategies. These investigations involved soil science, bone and stone technologies, use-wear analysis, and zooarchaeology, along with many controlled experiments. Multiple sources of evidence led to the conclusion that the early adoption of bone spades was encouraged by scapulae's convenient morphology and acquisition, and they fulfilled the functional needs at the beginning of Kuahuqiao (8,200-7000 BP) and Hemudu exploitation of lowland environments. Frequency-dependent bias helped ensure the persistence of bone spades in Hemudu even when raw material became scarce and other artifacts would have provided marginal functional advantages. This tradition imposed significant technical and conceptual constraints that inhibited the communities from adopting other forms of agriculture and settlement construction.

My research has broad implications to archaeological theories and methods for studying technological choices and our understanding of the pathways to agriculture and sedentism. It shows that although Human Behavioral Ecology and Dual-Inheritance Theory are useful for studying and interpreting technological choices, applying the framework proposed by Behavioral Archaeology helped lead to a stronger argument. Many of the analytical tools that I developed in this project can be used to investigate relevant questions in other times and cultures. My experimental designs can also be used as templates in future research.