Austronesian Migration to Central Vietnam: Crossing over the Iron Age Southeast Asian Sea
The Sa Huynh culture, which spread over Central Vietnam during the early Metal Age, is generally associated with an Austronesian-speaking (Chamic) population. Solheim advocated the close similarity between pottery found at the Kalanay Cave in Masbate, Central Philippines, and the Sa Huynh culture in Central Vietnam. However, based on our recent archaeological research, Kalanay-type pottery is actually a feature of the jar burials at the Hoa Diem site that probably postdates Sa Huynh cultural sites. Solheim also found strikingly similar pottery from Samui Island in Southern Thailand that is quite different from Sa Huynh. The absence of a specific type of earring called lingling-o at Hoa Diem and Kalanay also suggests a chronological gap from the Sa Huynh culture. A bio-anthropological analysis of the Hoa Diem skeletons is consistent with a close affinity to insular Southeast Asians, suggesting long-distance cultural interaction and/or the demographic movement of Austronesian speakers across the South China Sea in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.
