| Abstract: |
The climate of Southeast Asia is not conducive to the preservation of organic materials such as woven cloth but prehistoric cloth has sometimes survived against the odds, there, as in some other parts of the world. These exceptional remains show that survival is contingent on the presence of very specific environmental conditions. For example, remains of prehistoric cloth were preserved through carbonization at Çatal Höyük (Mellaart 1962)
through desiccation in the dry deserts of Isreal (Bar-Yosef 1985) and Peru (Anton 1987)
through freezing at Pazyryk (Rudenko 1970), and through anaerobic water-logging in Swiss lakes and Danish bogs (Glob 1974) as reported here in Vietnam. A team, co-ordinated by the author, Peter Bellwood (Australian National University), Bui Van Liem (Institute of Archaeology, Hanoi) and Nguyen Van Viet (Centre for Southeast Asian Prehistory, Hanoi), is focusing on waterlogged Dongson Culture sites in the Red River plains of northern Vietnam where extant remains of matting and textiles are preserved in anaerobic conditions.
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