Cave archaeology in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Archaeological research in caves and rockshelters has been the major source of data about cultural developments in Southeast Asia during late Pleistocene and early Holocene times. Despite the numerous cave excavations in nearly every Southeast Asian country over the last 100 years, however, the earliest general archaeological schemes were ironically based on rather cursory findings from poorly dated open air sites. In recent years ongoing excavations and analyses of archaeological materials from caves and rockshelters have finally come into their own, and newer interpretations have superseded some of the more speculative aspects of the earlier archaeological schemes. During Late Pleistocene times, caves were used only as brief campsites, often selected for their inaccessibility; in the early Holocene Epoch they were frequently used as dwelling sites; in the middle Holocene time the more accessible caves and rockshelters were often used as burial sites. One site, the Lang Rongrien Rockshelter, southwestern Thailand, serves as a case study for pointing out problems encountered in cave and rockshelter excavations in Southeast Asia. This 3500–>43000-year-old site is also used as the basis for exploring some more general issues concerning the lifeways of late Pleistocene Homo sapiens in the region and possibilities of preagricultural rainforest adaptation of their early Holocene descendants. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.