Reflections on the Human Condition - Api-fellowships.org

2
SESSION I
of their being particularly related.
(PLATE II)
Before intensive research developed on the earthenware
pottery, it had been generally accepted for Southeast
Asian prehistory that both cord marking and basket
marking were indicative of “neolithic” cultures and that
cord marking was the earliest type of decoration. Ha
Van Tan (1984-1985: 135) changed this conception.
He reported that cord-marked decoration was not the
earliest but that the earliest pottery in Southeast Asia
was made using a paddle wrapped with vine or bark.
This would have been similar to the earliest pottery
reported by McNeish et al. (1997) for South China
(culturally Southeast Asian at this time) and other sites
around 13,000 to 14,000 years ago. Much more excavation
and more reliable dating have shown the both cord
marking and basket marking continued in use until at
least 1000 CE long after the end of the “neolithic”.
VINE-WRAPPED PADDLE DECORATION
I started recognizing vine wrapping and using it in
cataloguing on Gua Sirih pottery on the 31 st of July
2004. Towards the back of the cave had been competed
by this time so no vine wrapping was catalogued for
those squares, though it was probably present. These
squares had 62 catalogued numbers out of a total of
1274 catalogue numbers. It had taken so long to do this
much cataloguing that I decided not to go back and
re-catalogue what had been done.
Bound-paddle, including cord-marked, basket-marked
and vine-wrapped, as well as plain are all the earliest
pottery at Gua Sirih going down to 36” in four squares
and 30” in several squares with Basket-Marked and
Vine-Wrapped common at all levels in most squares.
Cord-marking is much less common than the other
two. Incidentally, the earliest red-slipping is at 24” in
one square, 18” in several and more common in the
higher levels along with other varieties of slipping. The
14 th C dating indicated the earliest pottery was probably
a bit before 3000 BCE while the earliest red-slipping
appeared sometime during the late 3 rd millennium BCE
or later. The dating of the incised decorated pottery is
similar to that of the red slipping, but is rare.
How is this to be interpreted? This is the problem I am
working on now, in this paper and others that will be
following shortly. No doubt my ideas and hypotheses
will be evolving rapidly.
Ref lections on the Human Condition: Change, Conflict and Modernity
The Work of the 2004/2005 API Fellows
DEVELOPMENT OF THE BAU-MALAY
POTTERY CONCEPT
When I first defined the carved-paddle pottery sites and
arranged what little was known about their dates, I felt
it came first into the central Philippines around 800 to
900 CE. (Solheim, 1964a: 197 Fig. 30; text turned over
to the press in 1959) At that time, I (ibid., 147-148)
identified one site in northeastern Palawan—Site C67
of the Guthe Collection—as having both typical Sa
Huynh-Kalanay pottery (incised) and Carved-Paddle
i.e. Bau Malay (ibid., 192-193, Pl. 35 d, e, g, h) pottery
and considered both to be of the same age, probably
earlier than 1000 BCE. I had classified this pottery in
1956. (Solheim: 1964b, 196-197) In 1964, I made a
correction of this Bau-Malay pottery and said this
pottery from C67 should be reclassified. “Examination of
the closely related pottery from Niah Cave in Sarawak
showed that carved and bound paddle decoration is
found associated with the other elements of Kalanaycomplex
pottery. (Solheim et al.: 1961, 168-169) Given this
information, there is no longer any reason to classify
C67 as a Bau complex site; everything points towards its
pottery belonging to the Kalanay Pottery Complex.”
Robert Fox emphatically disagreed with this. (Fox:
1970, 96-102) He argued very clearly in his long footnote
that the Tabon Pottery Complex, which I had included
in the Kalanay Pottery Complex, was a separate and
distinct complex and that while related to the Kalanay
Complex it included in considerable quantity both
carved-paddle and bound-paddle pottery associated
with the incised pottery. “There is no justification at
least for relating the pottery of Guthe’s cave [C67] to
the Kalanay Pottery Complex.” I later came to fully
agree with Fox. (Solheim: 1981, 34 and 81 Footnote
7; 2002, 176) Once I saw that Fox was correct, I gave
this early presence of carved and bound-paddle decoration
with the Sa Huynh-Kalanay Pottery Tradition no further
thought.
I came across another complication of carved-paddle
pottery in its relationship with the bound-paddle pottery
in a brief discussion I made of the Bau-Malay Pottery
Tradition. (Solheim: 2003a, 17-18) I have done nothing
more with this problem. As it is not important in the
presentation here and will eventually be solved in my
present and future research on this subject, I do not go
in to it.
WHERE DOES BOUND-PADDLE FIT
After working with the Gua Sirih pottery for about
two months, I began to realize that there was a major