ABSTRACT
In the early centuries of the Christian Era, few seafaring traditions enabled isolated polities located along extensive coasts to form trading networks stretching from India to China, and to develop a distinct urban civilized life in regions not always rich in natural resources. In other cultural fields, Southeast Asian peoples enriched culture in many ways. In textiles, basketry, ceramics, metallurgy, architecture, decorative arts and sculpture, many significant and enduring achievements were made. Some years ago, when discussing the situation in Indonesia, the author argued that archaeology, and especially prehistoric archaeology, was an alien European concept and practice introduced into Indonesia in the days of Dutch colonial hegemony and refurbished in a period of European and American intellectual dominance in the mid-twentieth century. Archaeology is essentially a set of techniques for studying material traces of past human history and behaviour. These traces are mostly inert and fragmentary, but their configurations lie behind many of the manifestations of ethnicity in modern world.
