Abstract: |
This paper is a journal review on Austronesian expansion in Southeast Asia. Most archaeological research in the Neolithic Age sites across Island Southeast Asia are geared toward supporting or disproving the hypotheses on the origins and dispersal of Austronesian-speaking people. The most mainstream is the Out of Taiwan hypothesis, which is a part of the larger farming/language dispersal hypothesis (Bellwood 2005). The geographical scope of this hypothesis explains the geographical focus of this analysis. On the other hand, the most popular alternative to this hypothesis is known as the Nusantao Maritime Trading and Communication Networks hypothesis (Solheim et al. 2007). The discourse on the Austronesian expansion in Southeast Asia during the Neolithic was tracked down in the last 15 years, from 1996 to 2010, in <i>American Journal of Physical Anthropology</i>, <i>American Anthropologist</i>, <i>Current Anthropology</i>, <i>Molecular Biology and Evolution</i>, and <i>Antiquity</i>. The focus is on articles discussing bioarchaeology, genetics, and material culture for examining how the two subfields of anthropology, which are bioanthropology and archaeology,covered this discourse. This analysis discusses the treatment of the topic and trends across the five journals, across time, and across subfields and disciplines.Then, general comparisons across categories and concluding remarks follow.
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