The Origins of the Bronze Age in Mainland Southeast Asia Page 1 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 25 February 2022 Print Publication Date: Mar 2022 Subject: Archaeology, Archaeology of Southeast Asia Online Publication Date: Feb 2022 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199355358.013.22 The Origins of the Bronze Age in Mainland Southeast Asia The Oxford Handbook of Early Southeast Asia Edited by Charles F. W. Higham and Nam C. Kim Abstract and Keywords It is argued that the long-wave of the southward dispersal of a copper-base metallurgical package and/or of the actual miners/founders from the copper-rich regions of the mid- Yangtze valley and its sophisticated, metallurgical tradition of the mid-to-late second mil lennium BC, known as the Wucheng/Xin’gan culture, in the long run sparked the onset of the Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) Bronze Age in the late second millennium BC. Ar chaeological evidence from Lingnan and MSEA indicates that emerging elites, unable to sustain the complex production of sophisticated bronze artifacts, might have “acquired” metal items of a lower technological profile, for example, the socketed tools cast in bi valve stone molds (BVMs). The geographic scope of this general, but definitely jeopar dized phenomenon imbued of complex cultural and technological implications, invested low-ranked societies that, interacting since the late Neolithic within similar cultural envi ronments, were experimenting different paths of cultural complexity growth. However, arguably the spread of the bronze technology and media among low-ranked societies only marginally affected the ongoing multilinear and multidimensional processes of sociocul tural evolution. Keywords: Bronze Age, copper metallurgy dispersal, social complexity, South China, Mainland Southeast Asia Introduction SEVERAL scholars argue that the Bronze Age (BA) of Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) originated in the late second millennium BC ensuing the continued cultural interaction with the southernmost regions of modern China (Ciarla 2013; Higham et al. 2011; Pigott and Ciarla 2007; Rispoli et al. 2013). This phenomenon indicates a transfer of the copper- base “metallurgical package” (prospecting, extraction, processing, smelting, casting) within China and into MSEA. It was a highly technological, man-to-man transfer that im plied long apprenticeship practice, unsuccessful if not tutored by experienced masters, the actual miners/founders (Roberts 2011). Roberto Ciarla