Wallace's Line is a faunal boundary line identified by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace in 1859 which separates the ecozones of Asia and Wallacea, a transitional zone between Asia and Australia. Bridging Wallace's Line reviews and assembles recent research on aspects of the environmental and cultural history and dynamics of Southeast Asia and Australia. It incorporates a new approach to Wallace's Line by focusing on geographical continuities rather than differences. Taking the view that a seam can be approached from either side, Wallace's Line symbolises a conceptual unification of regional variation into matters of global interest. These themes are cemented by the exclusion of that component which emphasizes difference across the Line and other nearby biogeographic demarcations, the fauna. Bridging Wallace's Line contains three Sections. The first provides contextual information for later contributions focused on the Quaternary. It includes essential background reviews on geology and plant biogeography, and also on the climate dynamics of the Maritime Continent, an area of increasing importance in understanding global climate change. The second Section presents new research on Quaternary environmental change in the Southeast Asia-Pacific region. Pollen records offer evidence of transformations in vegetation patterning in relation to climate change, sea level fluctuations, biomass burning and the effects of mountain glaciers. These environmental dynamics provide a framework for the colonisation and adaptation of Homo erectus and H. sapiens across the region, explored in Section three. This volume challenges long-held assumptions of essential difference across the Southeast Asia-Australia divide, bridging Wallace's Line for a fuller exploration of regional dynamics with global implications.

This edited collection argues for the importance of recovering Indigenous participation within global networks of imperial power and wider histories of "transnational" connections. It takes up a crucial challenge for new imperial and transnational histories: to explore the historical role of colonized and subaltern communities in these processes, and their legacies in the present. Bringing together prominent and emerging scholars who have begun to explore Indigenous networks and "transnational" encounters, and to consider the broader significance of "extra-local" connections, exchanges and mobility for Indigenous peoples, this work engages closely with some of the key historical scholarship on transnationalism and the networks of European imperialism. Chapters deploy a range of analytic scales, including global, regional and intra-Indigenous networks, and methods, including histories of ideas and cultural forms and biography, as well as exploring contemporary legacies. In drawing these perspectives together, this book charts an important new direction in research.

"This volume brings together a collection of papers from a diverse field of international scholars exploring the multiple ways that East Timorese communities are making and remaking their connections to land and places of ancestral significance. The work is explicitly comparative and highlights the different ways Timorese language communities negotiate access and transactions in land, disputes and inheritance especially in areas subject to historical displacement and resettlement. Consideration is extended to the role of ritual performance and social alliance for inscribing connection and entitlement. Emerging through analysis is an appreciation of how relations to land, articulated in origin discourses, are implicated in the construction of national culture and differential contributions to the struggle for independence."--Publisher's description.

This book is a proceeding from a number of papers presented in The International Symposium on Austronesian Diaspora on 18th to 23rd July 2016 at Nusa Dua, Bali, which was held by The National Research Centre of Archaeology in cooperation with The Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums. The symposium is the second event with regard to the Austronesian studies since the first symposium held eleven years ago by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences in cooperation with the International Centre for Prehistoric and Austronesia Study (ICPAS) in Solo on 28th June to 1st July 2005 with a theme of “the Dispersal of the Austronesian and the Ethno-geneses of People in the Indonesia Archipelago’’ that was attended by experts from eleven countries. The studies on Austronesia are very interesting to discuss because Austronesia is a language family, which covers about 1200 languages spoken by populations that inhabit more than half the globe, from Madagascar in the west to Easter Island (Pacific Area) in the east and from Taiwan-Micronesia in the north to New Zealand in the south. Austronesia is a language family, which dispersed before the Western colonization in many places in the world. The Austronesian dispersal in very vast islands area is a huge phenomenon in the history of humankind. Groups of Austronesian-speaking people had emerged in ca. 7000- 6000 BP in Taiwan before they migrated in 5000 BP to many places in the world, bringing with them the Neolithic Culture, characterized by sedentary, agricultural societies with animal domestication. The Austronesian-speaking people are distinguished by Southern Mongoloid Race, which had the ability to adapt to various types of natural environment that enabled them to develop through space and time. The varied geographic environment where they lived, as well as intensive interactions with the outside world, had created cultural diversities. The population of the Austronesian speakers is more than 380 million people and the Indonesian Archipelago is where most of them develop. Indonesia also holds a key position in understanding the Austronesians. For this reason, the Austronesian studies are crucial in the attempt to understand the Indonesian societies in relation to their current cultural roots, history, and ethno-genesis. This book discusses six sessions in the symposium. The first session is the prologue; the second is the keynote paper, which is Austronesia: an overview; the third is Diaspora and Inter-regional Connection; the fourth is Regional highlight; the fifth is Harimau Cave: Research Progress; while the sixth session is the epilogue, which is a synthesis of 37 papers. We hope that this book will inspire more researchers to study Austronesia, a field of never ending research in Indonesia.