ABSTRACT
Accordingly, this chapter argues that prehistoric South Sulawesi has comprised three 'social landscapes', two within the peninsula and one to its immediate north, each with its own long-term trajectory of human interaction that has shaped certain patterns of social organization through to the ethnographic present. The survey area's Holocene deposits can be divided between late Holocene sediments along the coast, and potentially older alluvium inland, beyond the reach of the mid-Holocene marine transgression. The arguments presented in this chapter would require modification to the degree that future research may reveal a middle Holocene and earlier maritime network that had embroiled South Sulawesi. The tripartite distribution of South Sulawesi's Holocene prehistory corresponds to geographical barriers. The rise of stratified societies after 1000 BP, compared to the ranked societies represented in the Early Metal Phase archaeological record, can be attributed to the intensification of traditions laid down during late prehistory.
