Anthropology Colloquium is the department’s speaker series that invites a mixture of anthropologists from within and outside of UBC to present their research. This speaker series is scheduled throughout the academic year, typically with a lunch reception in the AnSo Lounge.
Taiwan’s Enigma: Recent Archaeological discoveries in Taiwan and their implications for the prehistory of Southeast Asia
November 27, 2014
Anthropology and Sociology Building (ANSO) 134
11:30 – 1:00 pm
Dr. Cheng-hwa Tsang
Institute of History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Abstract
Until the European spread Indo-European languages far and wide after the middle of 15th century, Austronesian was the most widely distributed language family, spoken across 10,000 kilometers of coastline and sea from Madagascar in Africa to Easter Island in the Pacific. The Austronesian dispersal are among the most challenging mysteries facing historians, linguists, geographers, archaeologists, as well as the public. Despite its small size, the island of Taiwan had a striking range of cultural diversity in prehistory; it is a key region for the enigma of Austronesian origin and dispersal. In this presentation, Professor Tsang will discuss recent archaeological discoveries in Taiwan, which are relevant to the issue of what was the place of Taiwan in the transmission of the people and culture from the Asian continent into the Pacific.
Bio
Dr. Cheng-hwa Tsang is Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute of History and Philology in Academia Sinica, Taiwan. An internationally renowned scholar, Professor Tsang’s research interests focus on the prehistoric archaeology in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, and the management of cultural resources and heritages. Dr. Tsang is an academician in Academia Sinica.
Co-Sponsored by: UBC Department of Anthropology and the Centre for Chinese Research at the Institute of Asian Research
