In the fall of 1999, the Southeast Asian island of East Timor had a few moments on the global stage. Granted permission to hold a referendum on whether to become independent from Indonesia, its most recent colonial occupier, nearly 80% of the East Timorese voted for autonomy. However, after the vote tally became clear, the Indonesian military and the private local militias it supported went on a violent rampage, killing thousands of East Timorese, causing hundreds of thousands more to flee their homes, and systematically destroying the country's infrastructure. The violence was only stopped with the emergency deployment of international peacekeeping troops under U.N. command. Since then, the surviving East Timorese have been struggling to build what they proudly proclaim to be the first new nation of the 21st century.

Map of contemporary Island Southeast Asia

While East Timor had been largely forgotten by the world for centuries until its recent heroic struggle for independence, it was once a thriving center of international trade and home to one of the most politically complex societies in Southeast Asia.

The entire island of Timor (the western half of which remains a province of Indonesia) lies in the path of trade routes to the Spice Islands in what is now known as Eastern Indonesia. During the 10th - 18th centuries, the island was also one of the world's sole sources of fragrant sandalwood, as well as other products such as gold, copper and damar, a tree resin used in incense. East Timor's resources attracted long distance traders from China, India and the Arab world, but unlike many regions of Southeast Asia, its inhabitants maintained local political control until the late 19th century, when the Portuguese first established an effective administrative center in Dili, the capital city. East Timor also resisted the religious changes brought by foreign traders that swept through other parts of the region. While most Island Southeast Asian trading centers had become predominantly Muslim by the 17th century, East Timor maintained animist traditions which intertwined only recently with the Christianity brought by Portuguese missionaries.

Detail map of contemporary East Timor

Since 1997, I have been investigating the dynamics of local societies in Island Southeast Asia leading up to their encounter with European colonial powers. I am particularly interested in the "prequel" to European colonialism in diverse local contexts (i.e., late pre-colonial political organization and trade networks), using archaeological data to supplement and re-frame historical documentation. East Timor presents an unusual historical case. Why did it have such a different historical trajectory compared with neighboring regions? How did it manage to avoid political subjugation for so long, and why did it resist large-scale religious conversion to Islam? I believe that an answer may lie in the archaeological record, and that this answer may be useful to the newly independent East Timorese as they build a national identity and attempt to understand their own tortured history.

Previous Archaeological Research in East Timor
East Timor has been relatively under-explored by archaeologists, even compared with the paucity of research in the rest of Island Southeast Asia. The earliest work dates to the 1950s, when Portuguese and British archaeologists investigated stone tools and rock art sites, work that continued sporadically until the late 1960s. These researchers were specifically interested in East Timor as a stepping stone used by the first humans to migrate from Asia to Australia some 40,000-60,000 years ago.

This map by Eridia dates to the early 17th century and is one of the earliest surviving depictions of Timor's human landscape.

When Portugal gave up control of East Timor in 1974, Indonesia (with American support) invaded from West Timor, and over the next 5 years fought against East Timorese "guerillas" opposed to Indonesian rule. While the leadership of these anti-Indonesian forces formally surrendered in 1979, resistance continued right up until Indonesia's withdrawal in 1999. No archaeological research was carried out during this period, and it was only able to recommence in 2001.

Since then, an Australian team has been continuing with the investigation of Pleistocene migrations to Australia, and has recently found what is now the oldest known evidence of human occupation of Island Southeast Asia at Lene Hara Cave, dating to over 35,000 years ago. This team also located dozens of other sites, some of which were radiocarbon dated to 400-10,000 years old. Some of these sites, and potentially many more in the large unsurveyed portions of the country, could reveal clues about East Timor's unique political history.

The potential of archaeology to investigate colonial situations
Colonialism has traditionally been the concern of historians working with written documents, but scholars have struggled to transcend the biased records produced in colonial situations. While colonial administrations produced reams of descriptive reports, maps and other documents written by Europeans that were carefully preserved in European archives, the voices of the colonized were typically not recorded at all. Colonial narratives often served state and individual colonial objectives, such as de-emphasizing indigenous innovation and resistance, emphasizing core/periphery relationships and the presumed cultural, economic and biological superiority of the colonizers.

In the past two decades, archaeologists have begun to apply their methods to understanding the social causes and effects of colonialism. In colonized places, like North America or South Africa, archaeology has been used to access information about the lives of "those of little note," providing an alternate view of the colonial process. This information can often be used to re-interpret written texts, providing new insights.

In Island Southeast Asia, the documentary record is particularly complicated and biased. Muslim traders and religious leaders sparked large-scale changes in the religious landscape beginning only a hundred years before Europeans first arrived in the region. While European motives for exploring Island Southeast Asia were primarily economic (to trade in spices), there were also important religious motives: i.e., to carry the Christian crusades to the edge of the Muslim world. This makes the European documents from this era particularly difficult to decipher, with meanings obscured by a heavy layer of anti-Muslim rhetoric. These documents also typically fail to record the dynamic nature of religion in the region. Conversion to Islam was by no means universal, complete or without conflict when Europeans first arrived. Archaeological data can be an effective way to transcend these limited and biased texts.

Islam and Europe in Island Southeast Asia
The first sustained interactions between Europe and Island Southeast Asia began in 1512, after the Portuguese conquest of Malacca opened the trade routes there to Iberian merchants. There has been much historical scholarship on the nature of cultural entanglement between Europeans, Southeast Asians and other groups living in the East Indies in the early modern era. But few historians have utilized the limited archaeological data available for late pre-colonial Southeast Asia which, compared to the riches still to be found in the archives, is very poor indeed. However, there is much to suggest that there is considerable potential for archaeological data to provide new insights into the complex cross-cultural interactions caused by Island Southeast Asia's encounter with Europe. For example, historians had concluded that the inhabitants of the Banda Islands of Eastern Indonesia converted en masse to Islam in the mid-14th century, and that they were united in opposition to Portuguese and Dutch efforts to convert them to Christianity as well as to control trade and land. However, my archaeological research suggested that Muslim foodways were practiced in the islands at least a hundred years before the mid 14th century, and that non-Muslim practice continued well afterwards. Muslims and non-Muslims appear to have coexisted during the late pre-colonial period, and it was this complex and dynamic situation that Europeans encountered in 1512 (see project website here). A similar approach, casting documentary and archaeological lines of evidence against each other, should provide new insights into East Timor's complex colonial history.

Upcoming research
As one of the most unexplored parts of the world from an archaeological perspective, the first steps toward finding Timor's late pre-colonial past involve a search for archaeological sites dating to the 10th-18th centuries that are suitable for excavation. In East Timor, as in most places, this involves working with local residents first to ask for permission to conduct survey work. Typically political and religious leaders will conduct ceremonies to "open" landscapes for investigation, and these ceremonies often involve entire communities. I began this survey work in September 2002 and will return in June 2003 to continue. If sites are discovered with excavation potential, I will be applying for permission to excavate in the upcoming year. Several possible sites have been located in highlands along the border with Indonesian West Timor, areas noted on early maps as political centers. Very few coastal sites have been discovered so far, which is surprising considering the importance of maritime trade. Additional work should help clarify what was happening along the coast in the pre-colonial period.

I have also been working closely with the East Timor Ministry of Culture and the National Museum to ensure that data and collections can be stored in East Timor, and that archaeological sites are protected from destruction. Unfortunately, during the conflict with Indonesia, many sites of cultural heritage were destroyed, in some cases deliberately, by the Indonesian government. The National Museum (which was an Indonesian Provincial Museum before 1999) was looted by retreating Indonesian forces in 1999, and many important objects ended up on the international art markets (for an extended discussion of links between war and looting, click here ). We hope to be able to help the new East Timor government rebuild these collections and ensure their security in the future.

Ultimately, archaeological data will be used to reconstruct late pre-colonial political organization and trade networks of East Timor leading up to its encounter with Europe beginning in the 16th century. Documentary and archaeological data will be used together to provide a glimpse into the social and environmental forces that shaped the colonial experience in East Timor, and are the heritage of the world's newest nation.