The appearance and reality of academic freedom in Southeast Asian archaeology

Abstract

For several decades, there has been an ongoing debate over the degree to which the Neolithic in Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) should be associated with the immigration of early Austronesian speakers from Taiwan who introduced farming practices into ISEA and absorbed or replaced the indigenous foragers of ISEA. This ' Austronesian package' scenario faced its early opposition from scholars who located the early Austronesians or their immediate ancestors within ISEA. Later, with widespread scholarly rejection of a (pre-) Austronesian homeland south of Taiwan, the ' Austronesian package' scenario emerged as the dominant paradigm by default. This scenario, however, is currently being re-evaluated from a variety of perspectives including the degree to which the early Austronesian immigrants (from Taiwan) practised a farming economy, the extent to which they contributed to the gene pool of the modern inhabitants of ISEA, and whether the first plant and animal domesticates within ISEA were introduced prior to the Austronesian immigration and/or derived from sources other than Taiwan Show more