ABSTRACT
This book itself is a testament to the wealth and variety of bioarchaeological research currently taking place throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific. One deficit in this corpus of work, however, is field anthropology – an approach that has been notably underutilised throughout both geographical areas, and especially so in island Southeast Asia (ISEA). Field anthropology is a methodological approach that informs archaeothanatological discourse. The method allows researchers to infer funerary practices that are otherwise invisible, illuminating to some extent how past communities dealt with death as both physical and metaphysical phenomena (Duday 2009). Only in the past five to ten years has this method begun to gain a foothold outside of its native France. However, the benefits have been demonstrated by an increasing number of researchers in a variety of regions throughout the world (Gerdau-Radonic 2012; Nilsson Stutz 2003a, 2003b; 2006; Nilsson Stutz et al. 2013; Van de Vijver 2012), including mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) (Coupey et al. 2010; Harris 2010; Harris and Tayles 2012; Pautreau and Mornais 2003; Willis 2005; Willis and Tayles 2009; Zeitoun et al. 2012, 2013), and the Pacific (Dudley 2013; Valentin 2011; Valentin et al. 2010, 2011, 2014; Valentin and Sand 2008a, 2008b).
