Between 4500 and 3500 years ago, partially intrusive Neolithic populations in the riverine basins of mainland Southeast Asia began to form mounded settlements and to develop economies based on rice cultivation, fishing, hunting, and the domestication of animals, especially pigs and dogs. A number of these sites have been excavated in recent years and they are often large mounds that can attain several meters in depth, comprising successive layers of alluvial soil brought in periodically to serve as living floors. The site of An Son is of this type and lies in a small valley immediately north of the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam. Excavated on five occasions since 1978, and most recently in 2009, it was occupied from the late third into the late second millennium b.c . An Son has produced evidence that attests the domestication of pigs and dogs in all layers apart (perhaps) from the most basal one, which was not investigated in 2009, together with the growing of rice of the subspecies Oryza sativa japonica , of Chinese Neolithic origin. The oldest pottery has simple incised and punctate zoned decoration with parallels in central Thailand, especially in the basal phases at Nong Nor and Khok Phanom Di. From its middle and later occupation phases (1800–1200 b.c .), An Son has produced a number of supine extended burials with finely decorated pottery grave goods that carry some unique forms, especially vessels with wavy or serrated rims. The An Son burials represent a Neolithic population that expressed a mixture of both indigenous Hoabinhian and more northerly (probably Neolithic southern Chinese) cranial and dental phenotypes, perhaps representing a likely ancestral population for some of the modern Austroasiatic-speaking populations of mainland Southeast Asia.

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terra australis 42Terra Australis reports the results of archaeological and related research within the south and east of Asia, though mainly Australia, New Guinea and island Melanesia -lands that remained terra australis incognita to generations of prehistorians. Its subject is the settlement of the diverse environments in this isolated quarter of the globe by peoples who have maintained their discrete and traditional ways of life into the recent recorded or remembered past and at times into the observable present. Dewey Number: 666.09597 List of volumes in Terra AustralisCopyright of the text remains with the authors, 2014. This book is copyright in all countries subscribing to the Berne convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher.Cover image courtesy of C. Sarjeant.Back cover map: Hollandia Nova. Thevenot 1663 by courtesy of the National Library of Australia. Reprinted with permission of the National Library of Australia. The excavations at An Sơn were funded by a Discovery Grant from the Australian Research Council. My own research was funded by the Australian Postgraduate Award.The analysis of the ceramic fabrics was conducted with SEM-EDX at the Electron Microscopy Unit at The Australian National University, with guidance from Frank Brink. I would also like to thank Glenn Summerhayes for teaching me the benefits and methods of SEM and the electron microprobe.There are a number of people I would like to recognise for their support over the past few years. Charles Higham has always offered advice and provided useful information over the years, even after departing the University of Otago after my Master's. Nigel Chang initially invited me to Ban Non Wat eight years ago, and allowed me to visit again to review the more recent neolithic discoveries in 2009. Fiorella Rispoli and Roberto Ciarla shared their knowledge of the neolithic in central Vietnam, and Fiorella's wealth of knowledge on ceramics has always been a reference for me. Lâm Thị Mỹ Dung opened up the ceramic collections at the University of Hanoi to me in 2009, which offered some valuable comparative ideas for this monograph. Louise Cort and Joyce White organised a workshop on Southeast Asian ceramics in Washington, DC and Philadelphia in 2010; an event from which I gained much inspiration and I feel privileged to have been a part of it. I would also like to acknowledge those individuals from afar who were interested in my research -it helped to keep the inspiration going, so thanks to Andreas Reinecke, Nishimura Masanari, and those I met at conferences over these past few years.Closer to home, I would like to thank Anna Willis for her knowledge about mortuary ritual at An Sơn. I am also grateful for the new insights into southern Vietnamese archaeology after working alongside Philip Piper at Rạch Núi. Thanks to Judith Cameron who was so supp...

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The 1000-year Neolithic occupation of An Son in southern Vietnam consists of ceramics that belong to a tradition that was potentially ancestral to those in many other regions of mainland Southeast Asia. The forms, dimensions, modes of decoration and fabrics of the An Son ceramics throughout the site's occupation have been studied in detail. The morphological dimensions were analysed with coefficient of variation (CV) calculations and the fabrics were characterized using scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDX), in conjunction with statistical applications such as principal components analysis (PCA), cluster analysis and canonical variate analysis (CVA). The results suggest that a coherent method of manufacture and a mental template was applied in the manufacture of each major rim form that existed throughout the occupation of An Son. These vessel forms had a continuous evolution with evidence for conservatism in the shape and raw materials, while innovation and variation was observed in the decorative variables. The established mental templates indicate that the organization of ceramic production at An Son was linked to tradition and function in the community.

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