Sponsored by: Archaeological Institute of America
While a global phenomenon, rock art has been a relatively recent subject of study in Southeast Asia with the number of known sites growing from a handful in the 1960s to over a thousand today. Research accelerated in the last 20 years with better recording and analytical techniques as evidenced by the increased number of papers on Southeast Asian rock art in international conferences and journals since the 2000s. The majority of sites are located from Indonesia and Thailand, where sustained episodes of research have been conducted. New dates from Indonesia challenge long-standing ideas about the ‘origin’ of art while other discoveries shed light on the movements and activities of peoples across this diverse landscape. This lecture presents a survey of rock art across Southeast Asia from the deep past to more modern times and shows how rock art can help us better understand the archaeology of Southeast Asia.
Joukowsky lecture