Mainland Southeast Asia: Towards a new theoretical approach

Higham's paper calls for a consensus on the chronology of the Neolithic through to the Bronze period in mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA), articulating a series of questions relating to human mobility, subsistence and socio-cultural organisation within this timeframe. Having worked in Vietnam for 20 years, and being very familiar with the 'Vietnamese' Neolithic, I must admit to having paid little attention to the so-called LCM (long chronology); this is because the chronology suggested by its (limited number of) proponents is simply inconsistent with what is known of the development of the Neolithic in Vietnam and the later emergence of bronze technology. In terms of the broader chronology of MSEA, my colleagues and I (e.g. Oxenham et al. 2015) have stressed the observation of a virtual eruption of Neolithic sites across the region c. 4000 BP, overlapping with the terminal phase of the southern Chinese Neolithic, which no doubt fuelled (in terms of genes and technology) the major transformations observed among its more southerly neighbours.