Bamboo materials are well available in the world. Bamboo has much shorter maturity than trees, thus can be harvested with shorter cycles of plantation. Despite the fact that human society has a long history of using bamboo, there is still a lack of modern and industrialized application of bamboo materials in construction. Promoting the application

Selayar, an island off the coast of Southwest Sulawesi and belonging to the Makassarese-Buginese realm, is dry and rocky, with a fragile subsistence economy. Yet in the late colonial period its economy prospered, as it became an important supplier of copra, or dried coconut, extensively used in the Western oil and fats industry as a raw material for soap and margarine. In the 1920s, the heyday of copra trade, many Selayarese converted their profits from the copra trade into gold teeth and hard cash. Copra thus earned the reputation of 'green gold'. In this book the author analyses the socio-economic history of Selayar between 1600 and 1950 from an Asiacentric perspective. This is linked to wider socio-economic and political developments, including peripheralization, integration into the world market, and colonial incorporation. The themes discussed are of interest to anyone studying the development of maritime societies: commercialization necessitated by a fragile agricultural system, export specialization, trading networks, migration and the unifying role of Islam.

The 36 chapters in this collection have been selected to give an overview ofrecent research into prehistoric and early historic archaeology in SoutheastAsia. In the first chapter Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhornof Thailand comments on the significance of the inscriptions from the important Khmer temple, Prasat Phnom Rung in northeastern Thailand. Following this, Professor Charles Higham gives an original and insightful survey of the prehistoric threads linking south China and the countries of modern Southeast Asia.