École Française d'Extrême-Orient

Ancient migrations in Southeast Asia The past movements and peopling of Southeast Asia have been poorly represented in ancient DNA studies (see the Perspective by Bellwood). Lipson et al. generated sequences from people inhabiting Southeast Asia from about 1700 to 4100 years ago. Screening of more than a hundred individuals from five sites yielded ancient DNA from 18 individuals. Comparisons with present-day populations suggest two waves of mixing between resident populations. The first mix was between local hunter-gatherers and incoming farmers associated with the Neolithic spreading from South China. A second event resulted in an additional pulse of genetic material from China to Southeast Asia associated with a Bronze Age migration. McColl et al. sequenced 26 ancient genomes from Southeast Asia and Japan spanning from the late Neolithic to the Iron Age. They found that present-day populations are the result of mixing among four ancient populations, including multiple waves of genetic material from more northern East Asian populations. Science , this issue p. 92 , p. 88 ; see also p. 31

Previous archaeological mapping work on the successive medieval capitals of the Khmer Empire located at Angkor, in northwest Cambodia (∼9th to 15th centuries in the Common Era, C.E.), has identified it as the largest settlement complex of the preindustrial world, and yet crucial areas have remained unmapped, in particular the ceremonial centers and their surroundings, where dense forest obscures the traces of the civilization that typically remain in evidence in surface topography. Here we describe the use of airborne laser scanning (lidar) technology to create high-precision digital elevation models of the ground surface beneath the vegetation cover. We identify an entire, previously undocumented, formally planned urban landscape into which the major temples such as Angkor Wat were integrated. Beyond these newly identified urban landscapes, the lidar data reveal anthropogenic changes to the landscape on a vast scale and lend further weight to an emerging consensus that infrastructural complexity, unsustainable modes of subsistence, and climate variation were crucial factors in the decline of the classical Khmer civilization.

Abstract Though not officially considered a ‘policy’ by the Lao government, resettlement of ethnic minorities has become a central feature of the rural development strategy in Laos. Over the past ten years, a majority of highland villages have been resettled downhill, and the local administrations are planning to move the remaining villages in the coming years. This article draws on a national survey about resettlement in Laos, commissioned by UNESCO and financed by UNDP, that was undertaken by the authors. It focuses on the consequences of these huge shifts of population and on the social and cultural dynamics that underlie them. It shows that the planned resettlements, which are intended to promote the ‘settling’ of the highland populations by enforcing the ban on slash‐and‐burn agriculture and opium growing, actually cause increased and diversified rural mobility. This in turn complicates the implementation of the rural development policy and the political management of interethnic relationships. In other words, the ‘settling’ process promoted by the State, because of its broad and often tragic social consequences, can paradoxically generate unplanned or unexpected further migrations, which could be called ‘resettlement‐induced forms of mobility’

OBJECTIVES: To construct new reference charts and equations for fetal biparietal diameter (BPD), head circumference (HC), abdominal circumference (AC) and femur length (FL), using a large sample of fetuses examined at 15-40 weeks in France, and to compare them with previous references. METHODS: The study data were obtained over a continuous 1-year period from a population of pregnant women undergoing ultrasound examination. Excluded were those with a known abnormal karyotype or congenital malformation, multiple pregnancies, and those with no first-trimester dating based on crown-rump length. No fetuses were excluded on the basis of abnormal biometry or birth weight. For each measurement, separate regression models were fitted to estimate both the mean and the SD at each gestational age. RESULTS: Full biometric measurements were obtained for 19 647 fetuses. New charts and reference equations are reported for BPD, HC, AC and FL. Prediction intervals for the new reference charts were similar to those of previous ones, whereas there were some differences in predicted centiles. CONCLUSION: We present new French reference charts and equations for fetal biometry. They can be used easily to compute centiles and Z-scores to control the quality of biometric assessments and to evaluate their performance relative to other references.

A study of the institutions and texts of Indonesian cinema after the army-led counter-revolution of 1965. Sen (communication studies, Murdoch U., Australia) demonstrates that cinema in Indonesia cannot be understood without reference to the political and economic transformations brought about by the

This seminal study of the religious and economic history of Buddhism by the premier French sinologue has for decades been considered an unsurpassed classic. Here, for the first time, it is available to English-language readers in an updated edition. The fifth through tenth centuries were the period of the greatest expansion of the Buddhist Church in China. Monastic estates controlled a sizeable share of the economy, owning a considerable amount of land and agricultural and manufacturing enterprises. Gernet examines the religious and economic aspects of the society dominated by this power, and explores the Church's effect on Chinese thought and culture. A much broader historical overview than many works that discuss the economic intricacies of Buddhism in China, Buddhism in Chinese Society interweaves an understanding of social and political organization, Buddhist religious philosophy and doctrine, legal tenets, customs of the day, and many other significant layers of Chinese culture. Drawing largely upon primary sources - from the work of official Chinese historians to the writings of Buddhist monks - Gernet demonstrates the far-reaching influence of Buddhism on the economic development of China during a time when the religion was growing at an unprecedented rate among all levels of society. Buddhism in Chinese Society looks at state and imperial policy but also delves into the lives of villagers far away from the major centers of religious and economic power. Translated and revised by respected scholar of Chinese religions Franciscus Verellen, who has worked closely with Gernet, this edition includes new references, an extensive, up-to-date bibliography, and a comprehensive index.

Early Khmer societies developed extensive settlement complexes that were largely made of non-durable materials. These fragile urban areas perished many centuries ago, and thus a century and a half of scholarly research has focussed on the more durable components of Khmer culture, in particular the famous temples and the texts and works of art that are normally found within them. In recent years however there has been a considerable effort to broaden the perspective beyond conventional approaches to Khmer history and archaeology. Remarkable advances have been made in the domain of remote sensing and archaeological mapping, including the application of advanced geospatial techniques such as airborne laser scanning within studies of heritage landscapes at Angkor and beyond. This article describes the most recent applications of the technology in Cambodia, including the results of a newly-completed campaign of airborne laser scanning in 2015—the most extensive acquisition ever undertaken by an archaeological project—and underscores the importance of using these methods as part of a problem-oriented research program that speaks to broader issues within history and archaeology.

Human societies have been reshaping the geomorphology of landscapes for thousands of years, producing anthropogenic geomorphic features ranging from earthworks and reservoirs to settlements, roads, canals, ditches and plough furrows that have distinct characteristics compared with landforms produced by natural processes. Physical geographers have long recognized the widespread importance of these features in altering landforms and geomorphic processes, including hydrologic flows and stores, to processes of soil erosion and deposition. In many of the same landscapes, archaeologists have also utilized anthropogenic geomorphic features to detect and analyse human societal activities, including symbolic formations, agricultural systems, settlement patterns and trade networks. This paper provides a general framework aimed at integrating geophysical and archaeological approaches to observing, identifying and interpreting the full range of anthropogenic geomorphic features based on their structure and functioning, both individually and as components of landscape-scale management strategies by different societies, or “sociocultural fingerprints”. We then couple this framework with new algorithms developed to detect anthropogenic geomorphic features using precisely detailed three-dimensional reconstructions of landscape surface structure derived from LiDAR and computer vision photogrammetry. Human societies are now transforming the geomorphology of landscapes at increasing rates and scales across the globe. To understand the causes and consequences of these transformations and contribute to building sustainable futures, the science of physical geography must advance towards empirical and theoretical frameworks that integrate the natural and sociocultural forces that are now the main shapers of Earth’s surface processes.

L'histoire maritime de la mer de Chine meridionale : le developpement des techniques de contruction des bateaux, leurs consequences economiques, depuis le debut de notre ere d'apres les decouvertes archeologiques.

International audience

La symbolique des motifs de bateau va plus loin qu'un simple « culte du bateau » ou « bateau de la mort ». Ces motifs représentent la société dans son ensemble, symboliquement et poétiquement. Ainsi ce motif déjà présent dans la civilisation dongsonienne, est disséminé à travers l'Asie du Sud-est insulaire ; on le trouve dans les tissus à jonque de Sumatra, dans l'ordre social symbolique à Java et dans beaucoup d'autres contextes.

This article will concentrate on one aspect of a major question in Southeast Asian maritime history: an attempt will be made to describe and determine the origins of the type of ship that was the main form of transport for the trade of the maritime kingdoms of the western half of Southeast Asia until the arrival of the Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Surprisingly enough — if the general importance of the commercial network of maritime Southeast Asia is considered — such a study has not yet been attempted. The very few authors dealing with the economic history of the region are usually content to dismiss the problem by saying that the ships are locally called “junks”, and that their tonnage is small. (The reader is thus left with the idea that Chinese ships were being used, since the word “junk” has long been applied almost exclusively to this very specific type of ship.) The general conclusion of this study is that Southeast Asian maritime powers built, owned, and operated ocean-going ships of respectable size as early as the first few centuries of the first millennium A.D. Needless to say, this has a considerable historical significance (which will not be examined here).

This article surveys epigraphy, Malay literary texts, and the archaeological data to better understand the socio-spatial structuration process of western Southeast Asia’s ancient political systems, more specifically, Sriwijaya (7th-13th cent.) and its successor, the Melaka Sultanate (15th-17th cent.). Representations of their polities, as offered by the Malays themselves in a variety of literary genres, all allude to the centre and peripheries of their city-states, as well as to the movements of their fleets, construed as metaphors of the whole social group, which provide a graphic illustration of the centripetal forces that structure them both politically and economically. The central places of these harbour-based city-states are entities loaded with symbolic values, with no marked or spatially extended territorial base. The peripheral space of such political systems, however, forms a social space extending, in concentric circles, much farther than the limits of insular Southeast Asia. These vast peripheries comprise places of exchange and international trade—each of which often commands its own periphery—and also religious places. This model once more confirms the intimate relationship between political power, trade relations, and religion in Southeast Asia.

Pierre-Yves Manguin Les cités-États de l'Asie du Sud-Est côtière De l'ancienneté et de la permanence des formes urbaines Des formes urbaines appartenant à la catégorie des cités-États on été reconnues dans l'Asie du Sud-Est du début des temps modernes. Elles sont habituellement décrites comme l'un des aboutissements du boom économique des XVe-XVIIe siècles, et souvent opposées à des systèmes politiques antérieurs qualifiés de « bâtisseurs de temples », d'États « agraires » ou « impériaux ». Cet essai rassemble des données archéologiques et épigraphiques qui dénoncent cette opposition. Des booms économiques antérieurs, ressentis à l'échelle de l'Asie tout entière, ont de même été accompagnés d'une dynamisation du processus de formation de l'État qui a généré des structures politiques et urbaines similaires. Une relecture approfondie des inscriptions émanant de Sriwijaya au VIIe siècle E.C., associée à celle des résultats obtenus lors de recherches archéologiques à Palembang et dans son arrière-pays (le bassin versant de la Musi à Sumatra-Sud), fournit en effet une image de ce système politique malais qui, de façon frappante, correspond à celle donnée par Melaka et les autres cités-États malaises des XVe-XVIIe siècles. Des données partielles recueillies sur les sites archéologiques qui témoignent de l'existence de systèmes politiques (proto-)urbains de l'Asie du Sud-Est côtière remontant aux périodes protohistoriques, et même à la préhistoire tardive, donnent à penser enfin qu'ils pourraient s'insérer dans le même modèle. Cet article se penche ensuite sur le problème de la constitution de cultures de cités-États dans l'Asie du Sud-Est côtière pré-moderne.

The peopling of Madagascar by Austronesian-speaking communities is one foremost—and indisputable—witness to their long-distance ventures across the Indian Ocean.2 Linguistic, anthropological, and various other types of evidence regarding Austronesian expansion west of Southeast Asia have been thoroughly studied during the past century. In this chapter, I will concentrate only on the maritime orientations of those people of Insular Southeast Asia who are known to have played a role in long-distance ventures in the Indian Ocean in proto-historic and historic times. I will therefore necessarily favour a view of Indian Ocean history that is taken from the shores of the western façade of Insular Southeast Asia.

This article consists of a brief description of the politico‐cultural situation of music in Iran, of the different official organizations that govern music, and of the importance attributed to “regional music”. The article also describes the emergence of a new cultural policy following the election of Khatami, the reformist‐minded president of the Islamic Republic, in May 1997. Although this description does not claim to be exhaustive, since the political situation in the country remains both volatile and fluid, it will give the reader a general idea of the place of music in contemporary Iran.’

For over a century, the landscape of Angkor Wat and its surrounding area have been the focus of archaeological study. These studies have been constrained substantially, however, by a lack of chronological resolution in the features of the landscape and the difficulty of dating elements of the cultural assemblage. Recently obtained LiDAR data have transformed understanding of the Angkor Wat complex, enabling archaeologists to map terrain usually obscured by dense and protected vegetation. The results have informed targeted ground-based research, demonstrated previously unknown relationships between elements of the site, shown that the complex is much more extensive than previously thought and revealed a massive, unique and unknown structure.

Abstract The name Rohingya denotes an ethnoreligious identity of Muslims in North Rakhine State, Myanmar (formerly Burma). The term became part of public discourse in the late 1950s and spread widely following reports on human rights violations against Muslims in North Rakhine State during the 1990s, and again after 2012. Claims for regional Muslim autonomy emerged during World War II and led to the rise of a Rohingya ethnonationalist movement that drew on the local Muslim imaginaire, as well as regional history and archaeology. To explore the historical roots of distinctive identity claims and highlight Buddhist-Muslim tensions, one must reach back to the role of Muslims in the precolonial Buddhist kingdom of Arakan and their demographic growth during the colonial period. Civic exclusion and state harassment under Burma’s authoritarian regimes (1962–2011) put a premature end to political hopes of ethnic recognition, and yet hastened a process of shared identity formation, both in the country and among the diaspora. Since the 1970s, refugees and migrants turned to Bangladesh, the Middle East, and Southeast Asian countries, forming a transnational body of Rohingya communities that reinvented their lives in various political and cultural contexts. A succession of Rohingya nationalist organizations—some of whom were armed—had negligible impact but kept the political struggle alive along the border with Bangladesh. Although Rohingya nationalists failed to gain recognition among ethnic and religious groups in Burma, they have attracted increasing international acknowledgment. For postdictatorial Myanmar (after 2011), the unresolved Rohingya issue became a huge international liability in 2017, when hundreds of thousands fled to Bangladesh following military operations widely interpreted as ethnic cleansing. In December 2017, the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights acknowledged that elements of genocide may be occurring.

This article presents a first sketch of Kri, a Vietic (Austroasiatic) language spoken in upland Laos. This previously undescribed language is of special interest not only in so far as it adds to the typological sample of the world's languages, but also in so far as its complex phonological system adds to our understanding of the historical development of Vietic and Austroasiatic, and more generally to the process of tonogenesis. Kri syllables are defined both in terms of segments and segmental slots, as well as in terms of register ('heavy' versus 'light') and what we call 'terminance' (voiced, voiceless, checked). Register and terminance have this in common with tone that they all involve laryngeal features. The description also contains a sketch of the main morphosyntactic features of the language.

Complex infrastructural networks provide critical services to cities but can be vulnerable to external stresses, including climatic variability. This vulnerability has also challenged past urban settlements, but its role in cases of historic urban demise has not been precisely documented. We transform archeological data from the medieval Cambodian city of Angkor into a numerical model that allows us to quantify topological damage to critical urban infrastructure resulting from climatic variability. Our model reveals unstable behavior in which extensive and cascading damage to infrastructure occurs in response to flooding within Angkor's urban water management system. The likelihood and extent of the cascading failure abruptly grow with the magnitude of flooding relative to normal flows in the system. Our results support the hypothesis that systemic infrastructural vulnerability, coupled with abrupt climatic variation, contributed to the demise of the city. The factors behind Angkor's demise are analogous to challenges faced by modern urban communities struggling with complex critical infrastructure.