Overview:
The aims of this research project are to reconstruct settlement patterns and trade networks in late pre-colonial and early colonial period (14th-17th century) Banda society. With this information, it becomes possible to understand how the Bandanese interacted with Portuguese and Dutch colonists. We utilized archaeological survey and excavation to locate and map ancient settlements (both abandoned and continuously occupied), and to document foreign trade goods buried within those sites.

Our primary objectives were to gather comparative data on the locations of settlements over the landscape, and to compare the archaeological assemblages from a selected sample of sites, building on last year's work. In particular, we looked to see when sites were occupied and abandoned, and within each site, we looked for markers of religious and or ethnic identity, and evidence of local or long distance trade.

During the 1997 field season, research teams conducted extensive surface surveys as we attempted to link surface remains to buried sites. These were mapped and subsurface testing was conducted in a selected sample of concentration areas. Four major sites were discovered through this process, although rapid soil accumulation from the nearby active Gunung Api volcano meant that some many pre-colonial sites probably show no surface signs.

In 1998, research teams excavated extensively in two important pre-colonial settlement sites on Banda Neira island. One of these appears to have been an important religious center that was occupied by the 10th century, and the other was probably a Javanese trading enclave first occupied in the 16th century. Research teams also conducted surveys on Banda Besar and Pulau Ay islands, and discovered and test excavated 8 additional sites. The results of these excavations, which are now being analyzed, continue to support the hypothesis that there was a shift in population from scattered non-Islamic settlements to centralized Islamic villages just before the arrival of the first Europeans in the Bandas. However, non-Islamic settlements continued to exist into the 16th century, perhaps hindering the coalescing of political power in the hands of a centralized Islamic sultanate, as happened in other island groups in the region. This political structure, while advantageous for trade, was a liability when faced with a powerful Dutch colonial force in the early 17th century.

Results:
The most important results from this year's fieldwork come from the extensive excavations at sites BN1 and BN4 on Banda Neira Island (see map). BN1, a large abandoned habitation site near Lautaka village, was first surveyed and excavated by Earthwatch teams in 1997. These teams excavated units near the inland boundary of the site, and discovered deposits 175 cm deep, with 15th century material in the lowest levels. However, test pits excavated closer to the beach at the end of the 1997 season revealed intriguing deposits of highly decorated earthenware pottery, associated with human and animal bone and ash, extending deeper than the inland pits revealed. This year, we took a closer look at this part of the site, excavating two 1 x 1 units on the berm above the beach. Not only did we have prettier views from our work area, we discovered extensive deposits of decorated earthenware pottery, along with unusual imported Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai ceramics, human and animal bone (dominated by pig bones), coins, and a possible defensive wall running parallel to the beach. Our first carbon sample submitted for testing, from the lower levels of Unit 4, produced a date of 900 years ago, indicating that the Bandanese were connected to extensive trading networks at an early date. While my conclusions are still tentative, I think this site may have been an important early trade and ceremonial center, perhaps the most important in the Banda Islands, which declined in importance by the 16th century (with minimal Islamic influence). Only at this place do we find such highly decorated earthenware, and it has the earliest trade ceramics discovered so far in Banda.

Our next order of business for this year's field season was to excavate in a region in "downtown" Banda Neira, in order to investigate the history of this settlement which is now the largest town in the Bandas, and to provide contrast with the site described above. Last year, teams excavated near the shoreline in town, and discovered that the shoreline had migrated rapidly seaward in the past few hundred years. This year, armed with that data, and some 17th and 18th century Dutch maps of the town, we located a promising site inside the walled courtyard of the old VOC governors residence, now abandoned. After getting permission to dig (which took longer than usual for this site, as no one was quite sure who had jurisdiction over the building), we excavated 3 test pits (to find the old shoreline, which cut through the site) followed by two 2 x 2 meter units. These proved to be well-stratified units, with the lowest levels dating to the 15th-16th centuries. Traces of cultural deposits extended below the water table, indicating local geological subsidence, and we were unable to excavate underwater to test the depths of the cultural layers. In fact, on the last day of work on this site, the incoming tide flooded the units from underground through the porous soil, despite the fact that we were over 100 meters from the sea! This site appears to have had sparse occupation prior to the 16th century, followed by more intense use. Earthenware ceramics were more finely made than typical assemblages from other Banda sites, and there was lots of trade ceramics, spikes and nails, and possible slag from iron ore processing. My tentative interpretation is that foreign traders, people who had access to imported rather than locally made earthenware pottery and were engaged in ship building or repair on the site, initially occupied this site. This may have been the Javanese trading community referred to by 16th century Portuguese accounts. The lack of pig bones in precolonial levels indicates that these people strictly adhered to Islamic mores.

These two sites represent the two basic types of communities present in Banda during the turbulent 15th-17th century period. Later fieldwork was aimed at further investigating these community types and how they interacted and changed over time. On Pulau Ay, we test excavated 7 new sites this year looking for similar patterns. Pulau Ay has proven to be different in many ways from Banda Neira, both geologically and culturally. In general, foreign trade goods are less prevalent overall, earthenware ceramics are less varied and decorated, suggesting that people on Ay had less access to traders and their wares and influences. Precolonial levels of sites located in the currently occupied village of Ay (sites PA 2 and 3) show Islamic influence, with few pig remains, while sites on other parts of the island (site PA1), now unoccupied, show that people consumed pig right up until the sites were abandoned. These "hinterland" sites have little or no imported glazed ceramics, which suggests they were totally isolated from long distance trade with mainland Southeast Asia, and also have some obsidian flakes, which were an important prehistoric trade good in the islands to the west into Melanesia. I am still waiting for carbon date results from sites on Ay, and these dates will help us reconstruct the puzzle of settlement on that island.

On Banda Besar Island, Earthwatch crews excavated two units in the highlands in the center of the island, both of which had sparse cultural deposits of shallow depth. After volunteers departed, I continued to search for sites on the western end of the island, conducting extensive surface surveys and excavating 8 test units with local crews. With the exception of test units in the lower part of Lonthoir village, pre-colonial cultural deposits were again sparse or non-existent. We excavated two pits in lower Lonthoir which had stratigraphies similar to BN4, the downtown Banda Neira site, but with less finely-made earthenware, and less diversity and richness of foreign trade goods. This suggests the site was a trade center, but was occupied by indigenous elite rather than foreigners. These indigenous elite people were one step removed from access to foreign trade goods, and probably used locally made earthenware. The work on Banda Besar remains inconclusive however, as there probably was a considerable population living on other parts of the island, despite the fact that we did not find rich sites. Banda Besar remains a difficult and enigmatic place to work, and its large size and extensive forest cover make sites less visible.

Discussion:
The 1998 field season proved to be highly productive; not only did we complete extensive survey and excavation described above, we also completed the sorting and preliminary analysis of the 1997 field collection as well as the 1998 material--numbering over 40,000 artifacts. While much work remains, primarily in the compilation and write up of final analyses, the project has already made great advances in our knowledge of pre-colonial life in Banda.
I returned from Banda to the US in August, and immediately embarked on a trip to Europe to search for archival documents, maps and images made by the earliest European visitors. This material is essential to compare our understanding of pre-colonial life in Banda with the way life there was seen by early modern era Europeans. I have just returned from that trip, with a wealth of material from the archives and libraries of England, Holland and Portugal, the three nations that sent missions to Banda in the 16th and 17th centuries. Next, I will begin the analysis of written and geographic data, and continue to send out carbon and soil samples for analysis. This process will take six to twelve months, and will hopefully culminate in a completed dissertation and a Ph.D. degree.
As for archaeology in Banda, our project has helped raise international awareness of this unique place. UNESCO is planning to list Banda as a World Heritage Site in the year 2000, for both its natural environment and its cultural heritage, the first such "dual site" in Indonesia. With this listing, the Indonesian government is planning to complete a survey of archaeological resources, as a first stage in protecting those resources from future damage.

Publications:
In July, I traveled to Melaka, Malaysia for the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association conference, which is held once every four years. I presented preliminary results of our fieldwork, and this paper will be published in the conference Proceedings in early 1999. Additionally, I hope to adapt my dissertation for publication as a book by the end of 1999.

Acknowledgments:
This project would not have been possible without the help of our able staff: Charlotte Spang, Andy Lawless, David Oldfield, John Muir, Tori Oliver, Kathy Batt, Scott Muir and Kelly Ronin. The research was sponsored by Brown University in the US, and Fakultas Pertanian, Universitas Pattimura and Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia (Indonesian Institute of Sciences) in Indonesia. In addition to a grant from Earthwatch, this field season's research was supported by a Fulbright Fellowship, and I thank AMINEF, the Fulbright administrator in Jakarta for their help. Brown University and the National Science Foundation have funded other phases of the research, with additional support from Garuda Indonesia Airlines, the Indonesian Consulate in San Francisco, the San Francisco Maritime Museum and Commonwealth Engineering in Providence. Also providing institutional support and permission were the Indonesian National Research Center for Archaeology (PPAN) in Jakarta and Ambon, the Directorate of Protection and Development of Historical and Archaeological Heritage, the office of the Kecamatan Maluku Tengah, Banda Neira, and the Kepala Desas and people of the various villages in which we worked in the Banda Islands.

I would also like to acknowledge the many people who have helped me realize the possibilities of this project, including my professors and colleagues at the Department of Anthropology, Brown University, Conradus Ufie and Prof. Dr. Ir. Nanere at Universitas Pattimura, and the able staff at Earthwatch, especially Andrew Roy and Karin Lapping. Standing ovation for our Earthwatch volunteers: 1997: Bob Schilling, Steve Morris, David Eberts, Dewey Helmick, Annie Lee Jones, Matthew Grey, Melisa Richardson, David Oldfield, Jasmine Bonning, Mitzi Pratt, Carol Carpenter, Phil Frey, Kumi Kawano, Yuka Ebina, Linda Crosskey, John Crosskey, Lorraine Sawyer, Brenda Bushell and Doris Blanchard; 1998: Tim Westmore, Rick Carson, Brian Revis, James Mitchell, Urs Pluss, Michael Flumian, Margaret Gettings, Vera Kark, Bob Thomas and Terry Greenberg. In Banda, special thanks are due to Ayup Warinda, Sofian Marjud, Soleman Leunufna, the Mohamad and Marjud families, who helped in Banda far beyond the call of duty. Numerous scholars in other institutions helped with background research and logistics, including Nick Burningham, Matt Spriggs, Peter Bellwood, Jeremy Green, David Bulbeck, Philip Winn and Peter Veth in Australia; Roy Ellen and Rachel Wrangham in England; Ken Stark in Canada; Bion Griffin, Paul Taylor, Riwanto Tirtosudarmo, and Ajar Budikuncoro in the US; John Miksic and Kyle Latinis in Singapore; and Hardini Supomo, Hasan Ambary, J.D. Putinella, J. Pattiselanno and Albert Nikiluluw in Indonesia. Special thanks to S. Saptono of Garuda Indonesia Airlines and Kambiz Karbasi of Commonwealth Engineering. Nelly Polhaupessy, Jatna Supriatna and Becky Mowbray all provided invaluable help in Indonesia. Thanks also to Syukani Thalib and his students at Banda's SMU 1 high school for their hard work in preparing the museum exhibit, and Des Alwi and Yayasan Warisan dan Budaya Banda Naira for providing the space for the exhibit and arranging the opening ceremonies. The CEO Club also provided funding for the museum project. Many thanks to Tamalia Alisjahbana, who helped with the museum exhibit, and who also let us live in her beautiful house in Banda which made our stay even more enjoyable. Thanks to Jaap and An Keppel for their hospitality and help in the Netherlands. Finally, I thank my wife Charlotte (again), my parents Phil and Ann Lape and the rest of my family for their unwavering support of my various crazy schemes.