Austronesian culture history: Some linguistic inferences and their relations to the archaeological record

Abstract

Although subject to limitations of its own, historical linguistics can illuminate fragments of the human cultural past that are often irrecoverable from the archaeological record. Where both lines of evidence bear on a common referent they may be mutually corroboratory or contradictory. A number of inferences of all three types are considered, and certain conclusions reached which differ markedly from recent word‐based reconstructions of Austronesian culture history, but lend support to the early ideas of Kern (1889). In particular, it is argued that the original Austronesian speakers (circa 4,000 B.C.CP were sedentary villagers who possessed (in addition to a universally acknowledged sophisticated maritime technology) root and grain crops, the pig, dog and fowl, pottery, apparently some knowledge of iron, probably the loom and possibly an indigenous syllabary. To account for a variety of observations it is simplest to assume that this community was located west of the Wallace Line, and that Austronesian culture history in its eastern efflorescence was to a significant extent a history of (material) culture loss.