Asian Perspectives, 2020 - Volume 59, Number 1 (Spring)
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Item IN MEMORIAM Martin Thomas Bale(2020-04-09) Lee, Rachel; Byington, MarkItem IN MEMORIAM HUNG LING-YU 洪玲玉 (25 FEBRUARY 1975 – 26 APRIL 2018)(2020-04-09) Kidder, Tristram R.; Friedman, SaraItem Ban Chiang, Northeast Thailand, Volumes 2Aand 2B: A Review Essay(2020-04-09) Higham, CharlesItem Item Recovering Plant Microfossils from Archaeological and other Palaeoenvironmental Deposits: A Practical Guide Developed from Pacific Region Experience(2020-04-09) Horrocks, MarkPresented are revised procedures for recovering pollen and spores, phytoliths, and starch and other plant material from archaeological and other palaeoenvironmental deposits for microscopic analysis. The procedures are based on lengthy experience of preparing numerous samples of deposits from Malesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. The procedures are designed as a simple laboratory guide, outlined in detail and summarized to provide a practical, time-efficient, step-by-step method. The method has been carried out successfully on many types of soils and other deposits from Pacific Islands, including: clays, silts, and sands; waterlogged, porous, peaty, volcanic, and coralline soils; and sediment cores, tools, pot sherds, dental calculus, and coprolites from a range of environmental settings in tropical, sub-tropical, and temperate climates. Also included in the procedures are mounting recovered microfossils on microscope slides and preparing and mounting modern reference samples.Item Antenna-Style Daggers in Northeast Asia from the Perspective of Interregional Interaction(2020-04-09) Mi, Park SunThis article examines the process of diffusion of bird-pair antenna-style daggers and swords in southern Manchuria, the Korean peninsula, and northern Kyushu, analyzing the distribution of the daggers and swords, classifying them, and establishing a chronology. The daggers are classified into three types and sub-divided based on blade, handle, and pommel characteristics. Each form was produced and used at different time periods and in different areas, emerging first in the Jilin-Changchun region, then expanding into the Northern Liao region, Pyongyang, and as far as Tsushima and northern Kyushu. The bird-pair antenna-style dagger of Northeast Asia is unlikely to have been a trade item imported from outside of the region. It is more likely a local development as indigenous cultures that manufactured mandolin-shaped or slender bronze daggers were influenced by the bronze cultures of northern Asia and Ordos, the upper part of the Yellow River. This new type of dagger possibly represented a symbolic or prestige good reflecting political or economic alliances within the Puyŏ state of southern Manchuria or the early Wiman Chosŏn state in Pyongyang or among the statelets of Pyŏnhan and Chinhan in the Yŏngnam region. The bird-pair antenna-style daggers eventually flourished in the Yŏngnam region, where a local style developed. These daggers in turn diffused via immigration and trade to Tsushima in the mid-first century B.C.E.Item Integration and the Regional Market System in the Early Chinese Empires: A Case Study of the Distribution of Iron and Bronze Objects in the Wei River Valley(2020-04-09) Wenchong, LamThis article studies the economic structure of early Chinese empires (Qin and Western Han) by focusing on the contribution of market exchange to the distribution and transportation of metal goods. Emphasis is placed on the part played by market forces in integrating and connecting communities on a regional level, an issue that has not been comprehensively addressed in the literature but was essential to market exchange in ancient China. A tripartite framework is proposed for conceptualizing three forms of market exchange or regional integration: dendritic, administrative-integrated, and fully integrated. These models may also be applied to the study of interregional interaction. An analysis of distribution patterns of everyday iron and bronze items from burial contexts within the capital region (Wei river valley) of the Qin andWestern Han empires reveals a major shift in the development of the market system and sub-regional integration between the Qin and Western Han periods. The change in degree of integration shows that the region went from a more dendritic to a fully-integrated model, though one still dominated by major administrative centers (especially Chang’an). The new approach for investigating market exchange used in this article offers a framework through which the structuring principles of ancient markets, forces driving change in market systems, and underlying mechanisms of administrative control over the movement of material culture can all be explored in the context of ancient China. The discussion of integration at a regional level sheds new light on the market system during the formation of massive, unified, early Chinese empires.Item Traditional Land Use and Resistance to Spanish Colonial Entanglement: Archaeological Evidence on Guam(2020-04-09) Dixon, Boyd; Welch, Danny; Bulgrin, Lon; Horrocks, MarkDocumenting the continuity of traditional land use practices on Guam, from before Spanish Contact in 1521 to after the Colonial La Reducción ca. 1700, is provocative. La Reducción refers to a period after Spanish settlement in 1668 when all indigenous inhabitants of northern Guam were removed from their traditional homes and sent to six southern villages under the watchful eye of administrative and religious authorities, except those residing on the island of Rota. Recent geoarchaeological excavations at Site 66-08-0141, located on the northern plateau in South Finegayan, have exposed at least two latte sets or pre-Contact habitations with traditional Micronesian earth ovens postdating Spanish settlement. Artifacts included Latte Period pottery, marine shell adzes, a limestone sling stone, and historic to modern refuse from WWII to the modern era. Microfossil evidence of pandanus, coconuts, and likely cultivation of rice and taro have expanded our understanding of subsistence farming in micro-environments within the tropical forest a generation or more after 1700 and La Reducción. This suggests that archaeological evidence of land use continuity and indigenous resistance and accommodation to Spanish Colonial entanglement exists, while challenging prior historiography across the Pacific; such sites hold much potential to bring native voices to early communities long disenfranchised by the colonization experience.