| Abstract: |
Introduction: For about twenty years, in generalizations I have made about Southeast Asian prehistory, I have considered South China, roughly from the Tsinling Mountains to the south, as a part of Southeast Asia (Solheim 1973,1975, 1979a, b, 1980, 1984a, b). I consider that most of the people of South China were not ethnically Chinese and that South China became inhabited by Chinese in changing patterns and at a varying tempo after the Chin and Han expansion. The subject of this article1 is a relationship that I see between one of the large Austronesian-speaking ethnic groups of Southeast Asia and an ethnic minority of Southwestern China: the Malay and the T'ai (and the Thai of Thailand). I hypothesize this relationship as a result of my studies of prehistoric earthenware pottery in Southeast Asia and a study of present-day and recent past pottery manufacture of these peoples. I will begin by explaining the relevance of pottery studies to prehistory. Pottery has been the most important artifact recovered by archaeologists in sites where it has been found in any quantity. This is so for two reasons. First, because where found it is by far the most common artifact in a site. Very little of the material culture of the people who lived on a site lasts to be recovered by archaeologists. Virtually all organic materials disintegrate rapidly in the soil of most sites. Except for bronze and gold, most metals oxidize quickly. Pottery is practically indestructible under most conditions found in archaeological sites-not in its original form, but as potsherds. Second, pottery is fully susceptible in manufacture to cultural and individual choice, while stone and metal present inherent limitations because of their physical properties, making cultural and individual expression more limited in these materials. Before pottery is fired, the clay used is fully plastic and so can be worked into any desired form and decorated using a wide variety of techniques to make an infinite number of patterns. There are many different ways in which pottery can be analyzed, the choice of method(s) depending on the purpose of the analysis. Chemical and petrographic analysis of the clay can be used to indicate the source of the clay and through this to work out patterns of internal and external trade. Through detailed analysis of methods of manufacture, of form and decoration, pottery associated with burials in a cemetery can indicate differences in status and suggest other social elements thatwere part of the culture of the people buried there. Comparisons of the methods of manufacture and elements of form and decoration between sites suggest interrelationships. This last method is the one I use to suggest the relationships I hypothesize here. Every report on the excavation of an archaeological site from which pottery was recovered will include information on the pottery. There are more data of this kind on prehistoric pottery in South China, but as they are in Chinese I can make little direct use of them. My acquaintance with the prehistoric pottery of South China is through a summary paper by Ho Chui-Mei (1984), summary information from Chang K wang-Chih (1977), and numerous articles that appeared in the <i>Journal of the Hong Kong Archaeological Society</i> and monographs published by that society. These latter are concerned primarily with the archaeology of Hong Kong and to a lesser degree neighboring areas of China. I am also acquainted with a few studies, in Chinese, of pottery manufacture by present-day ethnic groups in South China, and these have been important for this article. I am much better acquainted with the pottery studies on Southeast Asia, as this has been a specialty of mine for the last thirty years. Unfortunately, I am the only person who has studied the earthenware pottery of Southeast Asia as a whole. Several others, however, have made extensive studies of the high-fired, vitrified pottery of this area.
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