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Ancient History: Indonesian Heritage. John Miksic.. Singapore: Archipelago Press, 1996.
Reviewed by MIRIAM T. STARK, University of Hawai'i
In the world of Southeast Asian archaeology, we are only just beginning to learn about the vast ancient history of Indonesia. Ancient History: Indonesian Heritage is stunning and panoramic in scope, as it describes the heritage of a country containing more than 13,600 islands and the world's fourth largest population today. Contributions by international experts in various fields (archaeology, art history, epigraphy, literature) are engaging and clearly written. This volume is part of the twelve-volume Indonesian Heritage series. Other volumes in the series focus on topics as diverse as the human environment, early modern history, plants, wildlife, religion and ritual, and the performing arts. One goal of Ancient History is to provide a scholarly introduction to the world of Indonesian history, archaeology, and art history. One of the volume's primary contributions to archaeology lies in its dual focus on the prehistoric and historic periods.
The volume's nine sections, each containing multiple contributions, cover more than a million years of prehistory and history. The argument that we cannot divorce history from archaeology and vice versa provides a unifying thread throughout Ancient History. Its introductory section weaves together indigenous and Western methods of documentation and reckoning time (scripts, calendrical systems, and archaeological techniques). The volume's next section begins in deepest prehistory, with the Pleistocene hominids of Java, and examines key Holocene transitions that are found elsewhere in island Southeast Asia: the development of foraging adaptations and of early population movement, and the shift toward plant and animal domestication. Several sections then address aspects of emergent political complexity through different areas of Indonesia, with special focus on Java, Bali, and Sumatra. The high caliber of entries in this section reflects their authors, who are expert archaeologists with decades of experience in various...