Plant Use in Southeast Asia

This site is a video platform which hosts two types of videos recorded in the frame of research projects in archaeology, ethnoarchaeology and ethnography :

1. Videos of ethnoarchaeological investigation

Records of contemporary practices by Pala’wan indigenous people who live in the Highlands and the foothills of the Makagwaq valley, in Brooke’s Point Municipality, the Philippines.


2. Videos of archaeological experiments

The experimental reproduction of these activities with stone tools made of red jasper, replicas of the archaeological artefacts discovered in Pleistocene and Holocene sites of the region, for instance in Tabon Cave. The objective of these experiments was to build up a reference collection of use-traces on stone tools resulting from processing Southeast Asian wild plants.

Watch the videos

These videos are related to the following articles and PhD thesis: Xhauflair H., Revel N., Vitales T.J., Callado JR, Tandang D., Gaillard C, Forestier H., Dizon E., Pawlik A. (2017). What plants might potentially have been used in the forests of prehistoric Southeast Asia? An insight from the resources used nowadays by local communities in the forested highlands of Palawan Island. Quaternary International 448, 169-189. Xhauflair H., Pawlik A., Forestier H., Saos T., Dizon E., Gaillard C. (2017). Use-related or contamination? Residue and use-wear mapping on stone tools used for experimental processing of plants from Southeast Asia. Quaternary International 427, 80-93. Xhauflair H., Pawlik A., Gaillard C., Forestier H., Vitales T.J., Callado J.R., Tandang D., Amano N., Manipon D., Dizon E. (2016). Characterisation of the use-wear resulting from bamboo working and its importance to address the hypothesis of the existence of a bamboo industry in prehistoric Southeast Asia. Quaternary International 416, 95-125. Xhauflair H. (2014). Plant use in the subsistence strategies of prehistoric hunter-gatherers in Palawan Island assessed from the lithic industry. Building up a reference collection. PhD Thesis, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, France.

These videos are related to the following article: Revel N., Xhauflair H., Colili N. (2017). Childhood in Pala’wan Highlands forest, the känakan (Philippines). AnthropoChildren, Issue 7, 1-27.