Ambra Calo. The distribution of bronze drums in early Southeast Asia: trade routes and cultural spheres.

Ambra Calo. The distribution of bronze drums in early Southeast Asia: trade routes and cultural spheres. AMBRA CALO. The distribution of bronze drums in early SoutheastAsia: trade routes and cultural spheres (British Archaeological ReportsInternational Series 1913). xiv+206 pages, 220 illustrations, 9 tables.2009. Oxford: Archaeopress; 978-1-4073-0396-3 paperback 51.00 [poundssterling]. Based upon Dr Calo's doctoral research at London's Schoolof Oriental and African Studies, this volume provides the firstgeographically extensive study of Southeast Asian bronze drums in over20 years, incorporating recent finds as well as related materialculture, linguistic and ethnographic evidence for regional interactionand exchange spanning up to 25 centuries. It is primarily concerned withthe 'Dong Son' bronze drum tradition of northern Vietnam,named after the eponymous fifth-century BC to first-century AD culturein which they are thought to have been produced. Employing anethnographically-observed Melanesian economic model (p. 84), Calocontests that Dong Son drums were ceremonial objects exchanged to fosterallegiances between social groups to ensure a constant supply ofsubsistence goods, resulting in 400+ reported examples across Burma,Cambodia, southern China, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand andcentral and southern Vietnam. This sphere of circulation, in the orderof 10 million [km.sup.2], is also evidenced by widespread finds of othercosmopolitan artefact classes like high-tin bronze bowls, leadedhigh-tin bronze mirrors, agate, carnelian, glass and nephrite ornaments,and distinctive regional pottery types; all indicating substantialinteraction between South, East, and Southeast Asian social groups fromat least the mid first millennium BC. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In over a century of scholarship, descriptions of Dong Son drumshave been commonly prefaced with the adjectives 'iconic' or'enigmatic' due to their formalised cast embellishment,including solar representations and naturalistic amphibian figurines onthe tympanum, and registers of geometric patterns, stylised humanfigures with feather headdresses, birds, musical instruments and shipson the mantle. Indeed, the drums are held in such high aesthetic andtechnical regard that they have been the subject of nationalistic debatebetween Chinese and Vietnamese scholars. Although many of the drums regrettably lack formal context, Calohas sought to unravel what the drums represent in terms of lateprehistoric/early historic cultural exchanges by evaluating a corpus of74 drums from across Mainland and Island Southeast Asia. This selectionhas then been subdivided on stylistic and technological criteria intofive groups, which Calo uses to address regional research issues. On the question of the Dong Son drum tradition's homeland,Calo argues that the conjunction of a 'Red River Valley' groupof six elaborately decorated drums representing the third/second centuryBC peak of Dong Son bronze casting associated with other artefacts inthe Dong Son style, as well as ceramic evidence for casting activities,indicates that northern Vietnam was the 'clear' centre ofproduction for Dong Son drums. This interpretation is contrasted with agroup of 21 northern mainland drums representing the 'Dian'metallurgical tradition of Chinas Yunnan province, which, on aconservative assessment of radiometric dates, Calo believes to have beeninspired by Vietnamese Dong Son imports. To explain the majordistribution of Dong Son drums through mainland and peninsular SoutheastAsia and into western Indonesia, a predominantly overland second-centuryBC to first/second-century AD transmission route via regional exchangecentres is proposed. However, for the 31 stylistically homogenousexamples of her 'Eastern Indonesia' group Calo suggests thatthe drums may have arrived in a single and direct late third tofifth-century AD maritime transmission from northern Vietnam; a processwholly separate from that offered for the western Indonesian drums. It is in the final chapter that Calo's synthetic 'Islandto Mainland' hypothesis is laid out. Drawing upon recent linguisticand ethnographic evidence, she contests that whilst metallurgicalproficiency was certainly the prerogative of established northernVietnamese groups, the iconographic repertoire of the Dong Son traditionhas strong associations with Austronesian funerary rites in InsularSoutheast Asia. Acknowledging the input of previous scholars, Caloproposes that the Dong Son drum phenomenon is a culturally hybridisedby-product of substantial population movements from Borneo to Vietnam inthe mid/late first millennium BC, though without offering any rationalefor such a migration. I note by way of cautious reception rather than criticism that Calodefines her regional group nomenclature as a 'working tool'and not a classification, since it does not cover all the known drums.With regard to her regional groups, I remain somewhat uncertain aboutthe criteria Dr Calo used to select her 74 drum sample from a 400+population; a strategy that does not entirely correlate with those drumsthat she was able to examine personally (47; pp. 40-44). Although herinterpretations are cogent and in line with current thinking, onewonders if the results might have been influenced by drums excluded fromregional clusters. Whilst the Dong Son drums are described as 'valuable ...associated with both political and religious power' (p. 189), Imust draw attention to the missing aspect of their economicsignificance. Dimensions are systematically provided but references tothe drums' masses are absent, though we know from other studiesthat individuals constitute up to 70kg of metal. Thus, one drumrecovered in a cemetery context will frequently equal the mass of allother copper alloy artefacts combined. What we know of mid/latefirst-millennium BC Southeast Asian copper smelting (from the Khao WongPrachan valley in central Thailand) indicates small units of crucibleproduction in a 'community specialisation' context. If DongSon primary metal production was in any way comparable (none has yetbeen documented), then each drum would represent tens if not hundreds ofdiscrete smelting operations, with attendant mining, ceramic and fuelproduction activities. This level of labour input, in an as yet unknownsocial context of production, might then be considered as conferring thematerial value upon which the drums' political import partly rests. Finally, the book suffers from some repetition and could have donewith a thorough proofing. The monochrome photographs and line drawingsare well suited for displaying the casting details needed to followCalo's stylistic arguments, though quality drops occasionally whenthe author was obliged to use third party sources. The 17 maps providedare useful for comprehending the geographic expanse of the study butwould have benefited from a uniform style. However, these minor detailsdo not detract from Calo's substantial contribution to the field oflittoral cultural interaction and exchange in early Southeast Asia, andshe is to be especially commended for her extensive and no doubtchallenging travels to document drums and ethnographic traditions acrossthe region. T. O. PRYCE Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art,University of Oxford, UK (Email: oliver.pryce@rlaha.ox.ac, uk)