Human Adaptation to Coastal Evolution: Late Quaternary evidence from Southeast Asia (SUNDASIA) – A report on the second year of the project.

Abstract

The 3.5 year SUNDASIA projectis a collaborative venture between Vietnamese and UK institutions that is reconstructing a detailed picture of the impact changing sea levels and environmental conditions had on prehistoric socioeconomic systems in the Song Hong River delta area of northern Vietnam. The project is centred in the Tràng An World Heritage Site (WHS) of Ninh Binh province and is co-funded through the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council portion of the British Government’s ‘Global Challenges Research Fund’, and the Xuan Truong Construction Enterprise. At the end of the project’s second year, field data-collection is now largely complete. Data collection locales have been catalogued across the WHS, with highest resolution recovery within a 2 km wide corridor extending (west-east) through the centre of the massif: an area of c. 1500 ha (or 25% of the core zone of WHS). In order to integrate different lines of evidence within a searchable Geographic Information Science (GIS) data base, and to aid future natural and cultural heritage management, site-specific information is referenced within a 4 x 4 km alpha-numeric grid covering the core and buffer zones of the property. While not exhaustive, data obtained will provide an authoritative picture of human responses to changing conditions from c. 37,000 years ago to the present; incorporating archaeological and palaeoecological reconstruction with heritage management and landscape conservation priorities. This report draws on published and grey literature to detail the work being undertaken and is presented in the context of the project’s three central research questions.