Throughout Asia's history, sculptural arts have encompassed a variety of processes, including carving, modeling, casting, and assembling. Scientific investigations presented in this volume include studies of Southeast Asian jade, Chinese bronzes, Mongolian deer stones, Japanese polychrome sculpture, and others. Scientific study of sculpture helps us learn more about why, where, and how these works were made as well as address concerns about the state of their preservation and conservation.

Investigations into a variety of materials and techniques used in creating pictorial art from various parts of Asia are presented in this volume: painted reliefs in a Cambodian temple; wall paintings in India; panel paintings in the Philippines; the figures of gods and guardians in a Japanese temple; paintings on silk and several papers covering aspects of the materials, pigments, painting and printing techniques used in works of art on paper. This preponderance of investigations relating to paper seems appropriate given the invention and extensive use of paper in Asia, and East Asia in particular. This volume is the second in an ongoing series of Forbes Symposium proceedings. The first title, Scientific Research in the Field of Asian Art, edited by Paul Jett with Janet D. Douglas, Blythe McCarthy, and John Winter, was published in 2003 (by Archetype Publications in association with the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution). The next Symposium volume concerns the scientific study of Asian scilpture.

Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art --

Chinese Buddhist wooden sculptures of Water-moon Guanyin, a Bodhisattva sitting in a leisurely reclining pose on a rocky throne, are housed in Western collections and are thus removed from their original context(s). Not only are most of them of unknown origin, but also lack a precise date. Tracing their sources is difficult because of the scant information provided by art dealers in previous periods. Thus, only preliminary investigations into their stylistic development and technical features have been made so far. Moreover, until recently none of the Chinese temples that provided their original context, i.e. their precise position within those temple compounds and their respective place in the Buddhist pantheon, have been examined at all.In her study, Petra H. Rösch investigates these very aspects, including questions about the religious position and function of the sculptures of this special Bodhisattva. She also looks at the technical construction, the collecting of Chinese Buddhist sculptures in general and those made of wood in particular.She uses a combination of stylistic, iconographical, buddhological, as well as technical methodologies in her investigation of the Water-moon Guanyin images and sheds light on the Buddhist temples in Shanxi Province, the works of art they once housed, and the religious practices of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries connected with them.

The development of complex cultural behaviour in our own species is perhaps the most significant research issue in modern archaeology. Until recently, it was believed that our capacity for language and art only developed after some of our ancestors reached Europe around 40,000 years ago. Archaeological discoveries in Africa now show that modern humans were practicing symbolic behaviours prior to their dispersal from that continent, and more recent discoveries in Indonesia and Australia are once again challenging ideas about human cultural development. Despite these significant discoveries and exciting potentials, there is a curious absence of published information about Asia-Pacific region, and consequently, global narratives of our most celebrated cognitive accomplishment — art — has consistently underrepresented the contribution of Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. This volume provides the first outline of what this region has to offer to the world of art in archaeology. Readers undertaking tertiary archaeology courses interested in the art of the Asia-Pacific region or human behavioural evolution, along with anyone who is fascinated by the development of our modern ability to decorate ourselves and our world, should find this book a good addition to their library.

A fresh and exciting exploration of Southeast Asian history from the 5th to 9th century, seen through the lens of the region's sculpture

This text explores the field of Asian art and its historiography, tensions, and possible future directions. It features essays by 14 leading authors specializing in Chinese, East Asian, Indian and Japanese art history, and considers what is meant by 'Asian art' and how it should be understood in relation to geopolitics.

‘This volume brings together a diversity of international scholars, unified in the theme of expanding scientific knowledge about humanity’s past in the Asia-Pacific region. The contents in total encompass a deep time range, concerning the origins and dispersals of anatomically modern humans, the lifestyles of Pleistocene and early Holocene Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, the emergence of Neolithic farming communities, and the development of Iron Age societies. These core enduring issues continue to be explored throughout the vast region covered here, accordingly with a richness of results as shown by the authors. Befitting of the grand scope of this volume, the individual contributions articulate perspectives from multiple study areas and lines of evidence. Many of the chapters showcase new primary field data from archaeological sites in Southeast Asia. Equally important, other chapters provide updated regional summaries of research in archaeology, linguistics, and human biology from East Asia through to the Western Pacific.’ Mike T. Carson Associate Professor of Archaeology Micronesian Area Research Center University of Guam