Nalanda-Sriwijaya Series. Rev. new ed. Singapore: ISEAS, 2014. xxx, 228 pp., [76] pp. of plates (Charts, maps, figures.) US$69.90, paper. ISBN 978-981-4517-86-7.
Ambra Calo makes a significant contribution to the extensive literature on the bronze drums of the Dongson type by choosing to consider these ritual metallaphones in their entire geographical range. In doing this she avoids nationalistic debates and at the same time provides rich insights into the extensive trading networks and pathways along which Dongson drums moved during the late metal age (300 BCE–500 CE). Calo makes use of a select set of “regional clusters” of bronze drums that she then uses to study the routes and timing of transmission of drums produced in workshops like those of the Red River Valley of northern Vietnam, her first regional cluster. Calo uses her impressive mastery of archaeological detail to trace a series of “distribution domains” that include the Dongson and Dian cultures of northern Vietnam and southern China, the cross-regional routes of mainland Southeast Asia and the islands of western Indonesia. By meticulously examining the archaeological record for regional clusters found in these distribution domains she is able to build an accurate picture both of centres of production and important nodal points in the trading pathways by which bronze drums spread throughout mainland and insular Southeast Asia.
Calo first focuses on her first and third regional clusters, the bronze drums and situlas produced in the Dongson culture of the Red River Valley in northern Vietnam and southern Yunnan, and the closely related artifacts of the Dian culture of Yunnan. In the process she provides convincing solutions to earlier debates on the relationship between these two separate, but closely related, traditions of bronze casting. In her second chapter Calo provides a detailed overview of the larger domain of Dongson-style drums on the Southeast Asian mainland and western Indonesia that brings into clear focus the routes of transmission along exchange networks connecting much of Southeast Asia c. 300 BCE–100 CE.
In other chapters Calo examines the later movement of drums of Dongson provenance into eastern Indonesia (200–600 CE) that her model “envisions […] entering a series of inter-island trade networks controlled by local seafaring traders” (113). She then gives a detailed description of the similarities and differences between Dongson-type drums of mainland origin and the bronze drums cast in the workshops of Bali, demonstrating that the method of using a separate tympanum attached to the hourglass-shaped base of the drum with a flange represents a bronze-casting method of local origin. She goes on to show that important find sites of these drums in Bali are at critical junctures in the riverine system of south-central Bali, which was harnessed by the early dynasties of Bali in the service of the irrigation networks that supported their domains.
There is a great deal of solid scholarship and scientific detail in Calo’s work that will ensure its usefulness for many years to come, and her contribution to our understanding of the timing and routes of transmission of Dongson-type drums is enriched through her methodological choices, which introduce the very useful concepts of regional clusters and distribution domains to a wider readership. In addition, in the final chapter of her book, Calo puts forward a challenging thesis, proposing that motifs that figure strongly in the decoration of Dongson drums have their origin in western Borneo, where they are reflected today among the Dayak peoples of western Borneo. Combining ethnographic and ethno-musicological evidence Calo traces lines of connection between the motifs, myths, ritual implements and musical instruments of Dayak society and those of the Dongson culture. Taking a cue from the linguistic evidence, which suggests a large-scale movement of Austronesian speakers from western Borneo to coastal and central Vietnam sometime in the mid-first millennium BCE, Calo proposes cultural links that were strengthened by the movement of speakers of Malayic languages from Borneo to Vietnam, where they developed as the Cham languages of the Austronesian (AN) family. Calo’s evidence suggests that a long history of contact and exchange between speakers of Cham and their close neighbours from the Austroasiatic populations of the mainland led to the sharing of cultural traits that cross ethno-linguistic boundaries.
While Calo’s final chapter promises much with its assertion of an “island to mainland” pathway for much of the ritual and mythological imagery that is featured prominently in Dongson and Dian drums, the author ends her otherwise impressive volume by introducing a brief discussion of a “Neolithic exchange network involving Taiwanese nephrite” with a brief but inconclusive discussion. One might rather hope for a summation of her views on the “island to mainland” pathway that she introduces so convincingly in the concluding chapter of the work.
The photographs, maps and figures in this volume constitute a very important contribution to the field in and of themselves. The resolution might be improved on some of the photographs, but that is a minor point in comparison with the value of having at our disposal a well-organized and strongly representative record of the production and spread of bronze drums in Southeast Asia. The volume suffers from relatively frequent misspellings or typos that we can hope will be corrected in subsequent printings of this valuable resource.
Thomas Hunter
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
pp. 371-372