The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

THE EDITORS

Series Chairman:

Choi Shing Kwok

Series Editor:

Ooi Kee Beng

Editorial Committee:

Su-Ann Oh

Daljit Singh

Francis E. Hutchinson

Benjamin Loh

INTRODUCTION

As China's presence and role in Southeast Asia expands, many in the region are questioning America's staying power. To explore this question, I spent a month in Washington, DC, interviewing a range of experienced experts to ascertain what the current thinking is, what the debates are, and the likely future trajectory of United States (US) policy in Southeast Asia.

This paper first addresses the present trends in US foreign policy, the mood in US policy circles towards China and the role played by President Trump, whose stances are not always in tandem with that of the relevant bureaucracies and of Congress. It then goes on to examine US policy to Southeast Asia, the region's importance to US interests, the current US “influence deficiency” in Southeast Asia and the prospects of the US augmenting its influence and standing. Certain misperceptions of the US within Southeast Asia are then discussed before some concluding observations are made.

A NEW TURN IN US FOREIGN POLICY

The fundamental interest of the US in Asia has remained unchanged for over a century, since the Open Door Notes on China in 1899 and 1900. It is to keep Asia open to the US for trade and investments and to oppose closed spheres of influence. The US has used different means to ensure this—balance of power before the Pacific War, the war itself, Cold War resistance to communist expansionism, and post-Cold War primacy.

A new phase in US foreign policy seems to have begun, propelled mainly by three factors. First, the hubris and over-reach during the immediate post-Cold War period, correctly seen in hindsight as a “unipolar moment”, led to wasteful and costly wars in the Middle East. Second, domestic policy failures in coping with the negative effects of globalization resulted in significant damage to US manufacturing industries and sections of the white working class. The global financial crisis of 2008–9 only accentuated the economic distress.

A reaction to these two developments was bound to come sooner or later—and it came, if rather surprisingly, in the form of candidate Trump with his “America First” rhetoric. Trump's Jacksonian ideas of self-reliance and isolationism, and the denigrating of external commitments are not new to American foreign policy.

Research History (Mai Lin Tjoa-Bonatz)

In the early decades of the nineteenth century, colonial officials took an interest in the antiquities in the West Sumatran highlands (Anonymous 1855; Raffles 1991), inspiring epigraphic works on Adityavarman's inscriptions by philologists and archaeologists (Kern 1917a; 1917b; Machi Suhadi 1990; Casparis 1992; Djafar 1992, pp. 12–21; Budi Istiawan 2014; Bambang Budi Utomo 2007, pp. 51–82). Apart from Frederic M. Schnitger's reports (1937, pp. 13–15; 1964, pp. 167–72) on Buddhist remains connected to Adityavarman and the megaliths in the valleys of Mahat and Sinamar in the regency of Lima Puluh Kota, scholars have prepared brief inventories of the antiquities found in the region, including Tanah Datar (Krom 1912; Bronson et al. 1973, pp. 13–14). Since 1977 the regional conservation body BPCB (formerly BPPP) in Batusangkar, working under the authority of the Ministry of Culture, has been locating, documenting, and protecting heritage sites that were previously unrecorded and largely unknown. However, the rich data in their constantly updated heritage inventory has not yet been systematically examined to understand spatial patterning in the ancient landscape of Tanah Datar.

The first Indonesian archaeologists to work in the region were interested in the megaliths in Mahat. In 1984 the PUSLIT ARKENAS and the Indonesian Directorate for the Preservation and Protection of National Heritage carried out a series of short-term archaeological projects and restoration work on stone monuments, concentrating on the Lima Puluh Kota regency. This work produced confidential reports (Yuwono Sudibyo 1984; Tim Peneliti Tradisi Megalitik Sumatera Barat 1984; 1985).

For a long time, the best systematic attempt to record and interpret the archaeological monuments, finds, and inscriptions in Tanah Datar and its neighbouring regency to the north, Lima Puluh Kota, was a series of articles by John Miksic (1985a; 1986; 1987; 2004; 2009) based on his fieldwork as well as external sources. He focused on megaliths (locally called batu tagak) and their relation to similar stone monuments on the Malay Peninsula in the states of Negeri Sembilan and Melaka in Malaysia. Miksic (1985a, p. 79) created the description of kris-hilt shaped megaliths, erected stones which are mostly rectangular but are curved at the top so that they resemble the hilt of a kris (see Figures 1.1 and 1.2).

Despite modern disturbances to the topsoil from agricultural ploughing and the shallow depth of the cultural layers, the archaeological investigation provides solid evidence of continuous settlement activity since prehistory in the fertile highland plain of Tanah Datar in West Sumatra. The newly discovered open site at Tanah Lua, which dates to around BCE 1400–900, indicates a phase of early sendentarization. The absence of domestic architecture as well as the finds of pottery and stone tools indicate that the area, which is on high ground near the water source of Papahat, was temporarily settled by a transient community of foragers.

Not far from this water source stand the twin-mounds of Bukit Gombak and Bukit Kincir, where occupation layers from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries have been attested. The residential areas were documented by aerial photography, geomagnetic documentation, and excavations. These areas covered the hilltops and lacked fortifications, but were clearly divided between the residential area uphill and the agricultural land scattered downhill in the plain. This valley was the agricultural core of the region.

On Bukit Gombak and Bukit Kincir, evidence of human activity is demonstrated by occupation debris such as ceramics, glass and metal objects, stone tools, iron slag, charcoal chunks, or anthropogenicallymodified soils such as compacted soils, vitrified concretions, burnt clay, or postholes. These remains are most concentrated on the northern slope and central plateau, based on ceramic recovery per square metre and geomagnetic surveys. The hand-made earthenware using the paddleand-anvil technique was high fired and generally sparsely decorated. It mainly consisted of restricted vessels and less frequent unrestricted vessels that were used for daily consumption. Among the earthenware there is a clear dominance of storing and cooking containers. Metal finds were made of copper alloy or iron and included jewellery, tools, weapons, containers, coins, and a gold weight. In spite of the availability of metal a large variety of stone tools were still used in the settlement, a trait that seems characteristic of this highland region. The stone tools consisted of knapped or naturally crushed grindstones and of flaked lithics that were mainly made of obsidian. These finds reflect both residential and potentially industrial activities. The residential area included small-scale craft production such as metal-working. The small settlement site on the plateau of Bukit Kincir, contemporaneous with Bukit Gombak, was an iron-working site that used various tools made of stone or clay.

Three categories of finds were distinguished during the excavation: samples (soil or charcoal), bulkfinds, and small finds. The bulkfinds include pottery, collections of stones, fired clay, or iron slag; within the bulkfinds, only the pottery sherds received individual inventory numbers. Small finds are artefacts with a distinct value due to their material, dating, or function, and therefore received an individual inventory number. If required, their exact location was mapped to facilitate three-dimensional documentation.

Ceramics

The largest group of finds comprised the ceramic material. The total quantity of ceramics from Bukit Gombak and Bukit Kincir amounted to 18,767 sherds with a weight of 84.5 kg (see Table 1.1). Within this collection, 1,767 sherds were categorized as diagnostic, consisting of 1,244 earthenware and 523 foreign ceramics sherds. The largest number selected for analysis came from Bukit Gombak (1,017 sherds), while 203 sherds came from Bukit Kincir, and 24 from the burial site.

Diagnostic sherds included imported sherds, tools, parts of a rim, spout, base, handle, knob, decorated body sherds, and carnations— inflected fragments that formed part of the neck or ring foot and show a significant change in curvature. All sherds were counted and weighed, and the diagnostic sherds were numbered consecutively. Joints of the same vessel were counted once. There is a bias between the count of the earthenware and imported ware. Whereas all foreign sherds were counted, among the earthenware only decorated body fragments and sherds bigger than 2 cm were regarded as diagnostic and therefore documented. Each diagnostic sherd was measured and catalogued according to standardized references to provide accuracy and consistency: the type of sherd, rim form, fabric, surface finish, decoration, and colour. The quantity of temper, its grain size and type was applied to earthenware alone in order to define the fabric. The description of the pottery colour appeared to be an unreliable feature owing to the irregular colouring from the firing process and postfiring conditions, which also changed the original colour.

The Prehistoric Settlement Site of Tanah Lua (Dominik Bonatz)

During the archaeological survey carried out in 2011, numerous sherds of pottery, a polished stone axe, and other stone objects were found on a slope below Pagaruyung overlooking the Selo River valley, an area that had been terraced shortly before the time of the survey (see Figure 3.1). The coarse construction of the pottery and the discovery of an axe suggested that the site was older than those at Bukit Gombak and Bukit Kincir. It faces Bukit Gombak, which stands beyond the narrow riverbed of the Selo River, and its prominent location helped attract archaeological interest (see Figure 3.2). Only 50 m below the site, a spring called Bapahat flows out of a cliff that rises steeply over the river (see Figure 2.12), and for this reason the area is called Tanah Lua, “Land of the Spring”.

In 2012, excavations began in an 8×12 m area (Trench A) on a natural terrace (see Figure 3.2). To the east, the area was bordered by the rising slope. To the west there was a sharp drop off where the ground had been terraced. Objects collected here in 2011 had been found in a dark layer of earth beneath more recent layers of humus. The layers are clearly visible in the eastern profile section of the terrace wall. The excavations in Trench A were intended to provide information about how far this older cultural layer continued, and whether it contained further finds and traces of settlement activities.

The excavations confirmed the order of the natural deposits seen in the large profile section of the terrace wall. After a dark, black humus layer 15–20 cm thick was a compact, reddish-brown, clay-like layer of earth. After 1 m the clay layer changed to yellowish-brown, sandy, and very compact dirt. There was little to find in the humus layer, while the layer of earth beneath it yielded only a few sherds of very rough ceramic and a small number of obsidian flakes found in the southern area of the trench. No anthropogenic traces were observed. These meagre results led us to shift our investigation to the southern part of the natural terrace, where there had been no modern disturbances (see Figure 3.2).

This volume concerns the historical archaeology of Sumatra, whose past has been neglected by researchers in comparison with other islands of the Indonesian archipelago such as Java, Bali, and Sulawesi. In particular, historians have assumed that highland Sumatra played a marginal role in the formation of the riverine trading kingdoms such as Melayu and Srivijaya in the seventh to the fourteenth centuries, places that were well-known to foreign traders and are better documented. However, little is known about the origins of the settlement processes that created the unique ethnic and cultural diversity of Indonesia's highland regions, or the demographic, political, and cultural developments that followed. This book analyses the rise of the settlement system in the heartland of the Minangkabau region in the highlands of West Sumatra. Historians have studied European sources and indigenous writings (Dobbin 1975; 1983; Drakard 1990; 1999; 2008–9), but the pre-colonial settlement history is poorly understood. An examination of the settlement and material culture from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries reveals growing social complexity in the region.

At the centre of this research lies a mountain called Bukit Gombak. Excavations suggest its identification with the royal centre of Adityavarman, the last Buddhist king of Sumatra, in Tanah Datar, a fertile plain in the highlands of West Sumatra. Buddhist artefacts and stone inscriptions document his reign (c. 1347–75), which also produced more epigraphic material than any other ancient Indonesian polity. Drawing upon recent archaeological investigations, this volume explores the regional settlement pattern arising from Adityavarman's highland interregnum, and provides the first attempt to place the archaeological remains and the landscape of Tanah Datar in a culturalhistoric synthesis.

The book explores the role of upland zones in the development of complex settlement systems in Southeast Asia, based on archaeological evidence and a close examination of the material culture of prestate and early state systems in the highlands of Sumatra during the fourteenth century. This process occurred later than in the lowlands but was contemporaneous with developments in other highland regions in Southeast Asia. The research is important for understanding a core cultural region of West Sumatra, today the homeland of the Minangkabau, but it also facilitates evaluation of the settlement pattern, technology, cultural affiliation, and external links of Sumatra's highland in the development of precolonial Indonesia.