Dear IPPA Community,
This is a second and final call for sessions and papers. The Congress will open on Sunday 23 September and sessions will run on Monday 24, Tuesday 25, Thursday 27 and Friday 28 September. Following IPPA tradition, we will keep Wednesday 25 September free for rest and local tours in and around the World Heritage city of Hue, where there is plenty to do and see. There is a good range of accommodation, from very inexpensive to higher-cost. Vietnam has an excellent tourist industry, so all tours (including pre- and post-Congress tours) will be the responsibility of individual IPPA delegates, not the conference organisers.
Program space is still available. There will be four 90-minute session blocks each day, with parallel sessions running in each time-block as required. A standard single session will be 90 minutes, ending in a coffee or lunch break. Sessions may take up more than one 90 block as required, but only in whole blocks. The session format is up to session organisers (ie standard group of presentations, discussion panel, forum etc). Individual papers that are not part of an organised session will be aggregated in unthemed general sessions.
Individual delegates may have their name on any number of sessions or papers but to keep the organisation of the program manageable each delegate will be limited to two (2) presenting/speaking roles only (such as presenter/speaker, discussant, panel member, forum member, facilitator, moderator, chair).
Please have your suggestions to me by no later than 31 March 2018. Acceptance of late submissions cannot be guaranteed.
Formal letters of invitation will be provided by the Vietnamese conference hosts as required after sessions and papers have been accepted. Funding assistance will be very limited, with priority given to currently-enrolled students.
The Metal Age of Southeast and East Asia was a momentous period, marked by significant cultural transformation including the emergence of novel forms of sociopolitical entities, which would form the basis for historic era kingdoms, states and empires. In the material records of present-day northern Vietnam and southern China, the period spanning the late second to the late first millennia BC saw the development of specialized production skills in key handicrafts such as bronze objects, which allowed various agents to accentuate social status and political power. Exchanges across and within these regions were more numerous, and cultural contact fostered the transfer of technological knowledge across territories, along with the development of innovative technologies and social organizations. In this panel, we aim to highlight pertinent sites and new discoveries related to these two interconnected cultural spheres. Such findings can enhance efforts to underscore emergent globalizing networks and processes. These efforts rely upon examinations of the manufacture and exchange of key products and commodities, from metal ores to finished goods, as well as of varied social practices, such as funeral rites and architectural styles.
The South and Southeast Asian regions have long been of interest to researchers of archaeology due to the cultural, linguistic, biological, genetic diversity they possess; the presence of intriguing archaic populations (e.g. Homo floresiensis, and the Callao cave and Narmada fossils); and even the potential introgression of ancient hominins (i.e. Denisovans) with anatomically modern Homo sapiens (AMHs). In recent years, growing research has put the regions under the limelight to elucidate its crucial role and strategic position in understanding AMHs movement(s) within the Indo-Pacific region.
This session seeks to highlight and discuss recent developments on modern human dispersals, population histories, and early material evidences in South and Southeast Asia. By promoting an interdisciplinary perspective and holistic understanding of the current debates of this theme, papers regarding palaeoanthropological, genetic, linguistic, and material evidences -- including those dealing with indicators of possible modern human behaviour, art and symbolism, that highlight their movement and exploitation of these regions -- are invited. Studies employing novel scientific methods such as 3D analyses are also welcomed.
A multidisciplinary effort in tackling debates involving the timing, routes, migration event(s), biological-cultural affinities of modern human arrival(s) into this region is most encouraged, and is
the primary objective of this session.
Session Convenors:
Andrea Dominique COSALAN
Manila, Philippines
admcosalan@yahoo.com
Akash SRINIVAS
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Mohali, India
akashs91@yahoo.co.in
Function follows Form? – On the resemblance of prehistoric artefacts (Birte Meller, Hamburg)
Contact and communication between forager communities in the Pleistocene world and the beginning of the Holocene seem to be broader than in later times. This seems to be supported by the archaeological record, for example within the toolkits – which might just be due to the resources or the spread of pottery, which is similar in form and decoration. But some innovations take a different route than the transition to agriculture or ideas of antiquity. This paper will look at the connections in prehistoric times and tries to describe the ways of interaction often overlooked by historiography.
Birte Meller is a prehistoric archaeologist at the University of Hamburg. As the research associate for pre- and early history at the Institute of Prehistoric and Early Archaeology her main focus is on the conception of the Paleolithic world and the transition from foragers to famers.
From Athens to Angkor and back (Jacobus Bracker, Hamburg/Freiburg)
Comparing large and architectural sculpture from ancient Greece and Cambodia seems to be an odd task at first. However, when taking a closer look at stylistic elements or narrative structures astonishing similarities are revealed. Fascinating examples for such comparisons are the styles of sculpture from Phnom Da (6th century CE) and the Aphaia temple on Aegina (6th century BCE) or the narrative structures of mythological reliefs from Banteay Chhmar or Angkor and classical Greece. Of course, no simple explanation is at hand considering the vast distances in time and space between these cultures. However, the paper will investigate how methods of comparative archaeology can contribute to the understanding of the similar phenomena in different cultures and indicate pathways for migrating images.
Jacobus Bracker is a classical archaeologist at the Archaeological Institute at the University of Hamburg and pursuing his PhD-project “Narratology for ancient images”. He is also co-editor of the online-journal VISUAL PAST, co-organiser of interdisciplinary conferences on visual culture, and currently a guest lecturer on “Visual Culture and Anthropology in Archaeology” at the University of Freiburg.
Economic & cultural trade between South Asia and the Mediterranean in the first Centuries BCE (Lilian Schönheit, Hamburg)
While the history of economy and culture of both regions – South Asia and the ancient Mediterranean – are well studied, the connections between them are barely recognized. Already in the first years BCE trading connections from Greece and Rome to India and Sri Lanka were well established. These contacts grew during the following centuries and provoked not only an economic, but also a cultural exchange from one end of the known world to the other. This effect is reflected in archeological remains from western China via the Thai-Malay-Peninsula and India to Egypt and Rome and will be discussed in the paper.
Lilian Schönheit is a classical archeologist at the Hamburg University. She finished her PhD on cultural contacts in South Italy in 2017. Her current research field is focused on cross-regional contacts in antiquity.
In recent years archaeologists have begun to push the timescale for the earliest occupation of insular Southeast Asia by anatomically modern humans back beyond 70,000 years ago. Yet, this date contrasts with widely accepted ages from the molecular clock using DNA from contemporary populations of closer to 50,000 years ago. All of this potentially raises many questions about the sources, timing, population affinities, behavioural complexity and ecology of the earliest people to inhabit the region. However, the Pleistocene human fossil and archaeological records continue to be sparse across insular Southeast Asia with scarcely few discoveries published internationally for many decades. Suggestions of an early arrival also put into sharp focus the increasing complexities of using dating methodsat existing sites and the old spectre of site stratigraphic complexity and difficulties associated with reconstructing provenience. This symposium will explore recent developments in archaeology, palaeoanthropology, genetics and geochronology about the timing, settlement, ecology and behaviour of Pleistocene modern humans in insular Southeast Asia. Presentations outlining new Middle or Late Pleistocene human fossil or archaeological discoveries, no matter how preliminary, reanalyses of existing sites or fossils, or ancient or contemporary DNA studies,will be most welcome.
Rebecca Kinaston (University of Otago, New Zealand. rebecca.kinaston@gmail.com)
Charlotte King (University of Otago, New Zealand. charlotte.king@otago.ac.nz)
Melanie Miller (University of Otago, New Zealand.melanie.miller@otago.ac.nz)
Monica Tromp (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany. tromp.monica@gmail.com)
Anna Willis (James Cook University, Australia. anna.willis1@jcu.edu.au)
Panel Abstract:
Bioarchaeology is a rapidly developing field in the Asia-Pacific region. Through the direct analysis of human remains, bioarchaeologists are producing human stories. Researchers can build models of human biosocial change when bioarchaeological information is combined with other lines of evidence from archaeological, linguistic and ethnographic records. The incorporation of cutting-edge techniques (such as aDNA, proteomics and isotopic analysis), with more established osteological techniques allow bioarchaeologists to address the ‘big questions’ surrounding human migrations, histories of disease, development of social hierarchy and inequality, and subsistence change. This session will bring together bioarchaeologists from different regions and time periods to discuss emerging trends within their areas of research.
Number of talks: 28
Number of 90-minute blocks required: 4
In the pages following we present the abstracts submitted to us by our participants, and provisional titles from others who have confirmed their involvement but have not had the time to submit their abstracts to us. Currently they are in no particular order, running order will be decided upon when/if the panel is accepted.
1parth73@gmail.com & 2gaoxing@ivpp.ac.cn
In the last decade, new paleoanthropological discoveries have drastically changed our theoretical and interpretative perceptions on Pleistocene hominin evolution and adaptations in Asia. This includes extending the dates of the earliest hominin occupation and previously collected fossils, pinpointing the earliest Acheulean evidence outside Africa, respective discoveries of Modes 2 and 3 lithic technologies east of the ‘Movius Line’, possibly extending the respective dates of modern human arrival in southern, eastern and southeastern Asia, earliest modern human adaptations to rainforests, new evolutionary interpretations of previously-discovered specimens and geochronological revisions of select sites and specimens, thus all challenging traditional evolutionary paradigms. Some of these discoveries and studies dovetail with new genetic and paleoenvironmental data and offer views complementary to the African and European records. Nonetheless, prevalent debates and criticisms continue to persist between different researchers, partially due to missing required evidence (e.g. lithics at human fossil sites and vice versa) or general disagreement on various grounds. In addition, vast geographic zones of Asia continue to remain terra incognita and require more focused field surveys and multidisciplinary applications. This session offers a platform to present various recent discoveries, discuss their paleoanthropological implications, and how we can jointly confront existing methodological challenges and empirical limitations in Asian paleoanthropology. This session is dedicated to the dynamic scientific contributions of Robin W. Dennell to Asian paleoanthropology.
South Sulawesi offers an unparalleled window on the development of complex societies in the Austronesian-speaking world. The province has a rich indigenous historiographical tradition that developed in the absence of significant Indic or Islamic influences. These written sources offer a unique perspective on the interpretation of South Sulawesi archaeological sites. This panel seeks to summarize, analyze and contextualize recent archaeological research on the development of complex societies, and attempt to link our present knowledge to the extant historiographic sources. Three papers present recent work in Mandar, the Cenrana Valley, and the Makasar-speaking areas to the south. Two more papers examine the development of complex societies within the theoretical frameworks of political anthropology and Southeast Asian archaeology.
Anton Ferdianto, Balai Arkeologi Bandung, West Java, Indonesia
Vida Pervaya Rusiyanti Kusmartono, ANU, Canberra, Australia and Balai Arkeologi Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, Indonesia
Session Abstract
Homo erectus was take a long span chronological occupation in this region, beginning from the ‘archaic’ Homo erectus after 1.8 Ma which brought Oldowan and Acheulean technology from Africa, to the extinct of progressive Homo erectus around 70-40 Ka. And after follow by the anatomical modern human which started to colonize this island presumed to be as early 125 Ka following a new faunal group from Asian Mainland in the early Late Pleistocene at maximum interglacial period, and through to Sahul Land around 60 Ka. Early anatomical modern human occupation in Island of Southeast Asia were reflected by Niah (45 Ka), Tabon (40 Ka) and Wajak (35 Ka) fossils. Another important late Pleistocene human fossil was discovered in 2003 in Liang Bua, Flores, located in Wallace zone which date back to 70 Ka and identified as a new human species caused by a complexity of endemism and isolation.
noerwidi@arkeologijawa.com
antonferdianto18@gmail.com
vida.kusmartono@gmail.com
Institute of Imperial Citadel Studies (IICS) – Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences (VASS)
Abstract:
In that context, Institute of Imperial Citadel Studies plans to organize a panel focusing on Vietnamese ceramics in the context of Asian Trading ceramics. This panel aims to bring together Vietnamese and international scholars specialized in Vietnamese and Asian trading ceramics with novel and multidisciplinary approaches to address the following issues: the chronology and characteristics of Vienamese ceramics; the technique and production of Vietnamese ceramics; the engagement of Vietnamese ceramics in the international ceramic markets in pre-modern period. Apart from Vietnamese ceramics, this panel also seeks the contributions from experts in the field of Asian trading ceramics to discuss about the influence, exchange and competition of various ceramic traditions in the region.
