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Abstract At Serutu Island, a recently discovered stone inscription refers to an unusual voyage of the Mongol troop dispatched by Kublai Khan to conquer Java. This article reports the content of this intriguing inscription, as a way to reconstruct the 4000-km-long journey of the Mongol fleet composed of 500 ships, led by the General SHI Bi and the Uyghur navigator IKE Mese, from Quanzhou to Java in CE 1293. We contextualize this event in relation with the Mongol Empire in China, the Singhasari Kingdom in Java, and the cultural history of the indigenous islanders in the Karimata Archipelago.

Abstract Thousands of carved stone jars dot the landscape of Northern Laos, yet little is known about this expansive megalithic culture, the people who carved and transported the jars, or where they lived. The jar sites, now numbering in excess of 120, are identified primarily by the presence of exposed 1–3 m tall stone jars, with stone discs and exotic grave-marker boulders also recorded at some sites. Much less common is in the incidence of buried stone jars, noted from as few as eighteen sites, though it is likely more exist, concealed beneath dense forest cover. In this paper, we present the findings from a site known as Site 67, located near the village of Ban Pha Tai in Xieng Khouang Province, where nine jars including three buried jars are located. A rescue excavation on one of these buried jars was undertaken in 2020. Found near or within the vessel, were iron tools, ceramic sherds, glass beads and fragmented, cremated bone. The presence of these artefacts suggests a ritual use of the jar and charcoal and bone samples were retrieved providing dates that fall within the Iron Age (c. 500 BC-500 AD) and the historic period (post-100 AD). These periods are times of dynamic change in Southeast Asia with evidence of increasing complexity and, in the historic period, the rise of states including Angkor. The existence of both buried and exposed jars at the site suggests that temporal variation in mortuary ritual may have existed, or perhaps re-purposing of previously exposed jars is indicated, and should be explored further.

Abstract The population of Indonesia grew dramatically after her people discovered iron sources and started to use iron tools. One of the oldest known iron sources is Luwu in South Sulawesi. Based on historical and archaeological records, Java's 13th to 15th century Majapahit Empire imported iron of exceptional quality, known as Pamor Luwu, for forging kris daggers. Research done in 2016 and 2018 by Indonesia's National Research Center for Archaeology confirms previously reported evidence that the primary source of Pamor Luwu is smelted ore from the Matano Lake environs. Complementing the remnants of iron production at terrestrial sites, we found evidence for it in an underwater site named Pulau Ampat. This research is the first underwater archaeology research on iron production in Asia, and our discovery broadens the knowledge of iron production in Indonesia dating to the 1st millennium AD.

The spread of domesticated crops has commonly occurred alongside broad patterns of long- and short-distance human movements and culture contact across regions. While exchange across Eurasia along the so-called Silk Road has been much discussed, recent work has revealed increasingly more evidence for early north-south contact along the eastern rim of the Tibetan Plateau. Main points of debate concern the timing and direction of the spread of agriculture and domesticated crops. This paper contributes to these discussions by presenting new data from macrobotanical remains and phytoliths from Houzidong in southwest Sichuan, a Neolithic site on the eastern rim of the Tibetan Plateau. The results show that the main crops during the late Neolithic (4200-4000 cal. BP) were foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), with a small amount of rice (Oryza sativa), but that agriculture was overall not a major focus. Rather, the subsistence at Houzidong like at other sites in the region was highly diverse, relying on gathering, hunting, and small-scale cultivation with considerable crop diversity aimed at minimizing the impact of potential crop failure. This paper shows that subsistence practices differed markedly between sites, local populations exploiting the rich natural resources in the respective ecological niches in various ways. We argue that the wide variety of food sources available in southwest China allowed people to mitigate risk but also made them more receptive to new food sources such as plant crops, experimenting with them and adding them to their portfolio. Similar patterns can be seen in the adoption and adaptation of other outside influences with each community picking and choosing what suited them best, thus creating the rich and varied patchwork of highly localized cultural phenomena that came to characterize southwest China.

Abstract The prehistoric pottery recovered from Sialk, Ebrahimabad and Pardis sites, the Central Plateau of Iran was studied using the XRF, XRD and SEM/EDX analyses, as well as typological classification. These studies showed the occurrence of a gradual evolution in pottery making in each site from the Sialk I type fragile buff pottery of Late Neolithic period to the dense, strong and more impermeable Sialk II type red pottery in the final phase of Transitional Chalcolithic period. The relative similarity of compositions, and the presence of high- temperature minerals demonstrated a high degree of specialisation in the selection of raw materials and control of the firing temperature and atmosphere in the potters of the three sites in the final phase of Transitional Chalcolithic period. On the other hand, the pottery forms of different sites and historical periods show a great variety of types with astonishing similarities, very little changes are detected in pottery forms from the earliest Sialk I Neolithic pottery of Sialk site to the latest Transitional Chalcolithic pottery of Pardis site for nearly 600 years. However, despite the similarity of most of the vessel types the potters by producing new vessels differing in size or quantity tried to fulfil the changing needs of their communities, ascertaining the existence of specialisation in the three sites. Based on the evidence concerning similarities in the overall evolution pattern of pottery production technology as well as some of the characteristics of pottery such as form the existence of cultural/technical interactions and exchanges between the prehistoric communities living in this region in the specified time period seems to be extremely likely.