| Abstract: |
Peter Bellwoods key archaeological research interests have focused on the Neolithic transition and the migration of agricultural populations from southern China southwards through Mainland and Island Southeast Asia. An important aspect of this, probably the most significant transformation in human behaviour in prehistory, was the reshaping of subsistence strategies from foraging and vegeculture/arboriculture to crop production and animal management. When Peter initially drew together the evidence for the migration of Austroasiatic speakers across Mainland Southeast Asia and Austronesian-speaking peoples from Taiwan into Island Southeast Asia and on into the Pacific, he proposed that they transported three domestic animals with them the pig, dog and chicken. In the almost complete absence of zooarchaeological evidence, this proposal was based primarily on linguistic reconstructions and evidence for the introduction of domestic varieties to Melanesia and the Pacific Islands. Now, and with considerably more information on the presence and/or absence of domestic/managed animals from archaeological sites in Mainland and Island Southeast Asia than was available three decades ago, I reassess the zooarchaeological evidence for domestic animal introductions with some of the earliest proposed agricultural communities in the region.
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