Biological Markers of Change in Southeast and Island Southeast Asia

Despite widespread acknowledgement that Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) has been an important link between Southeast Asia and the Southern Hemisphere for at least 50,000 years, little is known about interactions both within ISEA and with Mainland Southeast Asia to the north, and Sahul (Australia and New Guinea) to the south. Due to the tropical climate of the Southeast and Island Southeast Asia region, organic materials are rarely preserved and traditional archaeological techniques have not been particularly successful when it comes to understanding how people interacted with and within their environments. In this workshop we will be discussing novel and innovative methodologies and ideas that might be applied to the region, while highlighting recent findings that have already employed some of these techniques such as genomic, isotopic, lipid, microparticle and proteomic analyses.