The Austronesians: Historical and Comparative Perspectives

by Peter Bellwood (Editor), James J. Fox (Editor), Darrell Tryon (Editor)

The Austronesian-speaking population of the world are estimated to number more than 270 million people, living in a broad swathe around half the globe, from Madagascar to Easter Island and from Taiwan to New Zealand. The seventeen papers in this volume provide a general survey of these diverse populations focusing on their common origins and historical transformations. The papers examine current ideas on the linguistics, prehistory, anthropology and recorded history of the Austronesians. This volume is a publication of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies' Comparative Austronesian Project.

Genres: Prehistory

367 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Robert Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great set of article on Austronesian culture, genetics, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, politics, and religion. I commend the e-book to you, which is well-formatted and a pleasure to read.

Chapter 1 stands alone, and is by the editors. It is "The Austronesians in History: Common Origins and Diverse Transformations" by Peter Bellwood, James J. Fox, and Darrell Tryon, and provides and excellent summary of the viewpoint of the entire book in methodology, and which of the competing migrational and linguistic theories they will pursue.

Section 1 - Origins and Disperals - contains seven chapters. Chapter 2 is "Proto-Austronesian and the Major Austronesian Subgroups" by Tryon. Chapter 3 is "The Prehistory of Oceanic Languages: A Current View" by Andrew Pawley and Malcolm Ross. Chapter 4 is "Borneo as a Crossroads for Comparative Austronesian Linguistics" by K. Alexander Adelaar. Chapter 5 is "Austronesian Prehistory in Southeast Asia: Homeland, Expansion and Transformation" by Peter Bellwood. Chapter 6 is the "The Lapita Culture and Austronesian Prehistory in Oceania" by Matthew Spriggs. Chapter 7 is "The Austronesian Conquest of the Sea - Upwind" by Adrian Horridge. Chapter 8 is "Domesticated and Commensal Mammals of Austronesia and Their Histories" by Colin P. Groves.

Section II - Transformations and Interactions - specializes primarily in genetics, and contains nine chapters. These focus on areas outside of my research.

The writing style is fairly consistent and generally good. I found this book very helpful.

[Ezra · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are a series of academic articles on Austronesians. Most of them are written in a dry, academic style and have varying degrees of readability. It's mostly pretty interesting information but the biggest caveat is that it was published in the 1990s so the scholarship isn't very current. I would like to read something that draws on more recent work and written in a more engaging manner. Since the quality varies among the articles, I would give the whole thing an average rating of 3.5/5