A Tale of Two Archipelagoes: Environment and Human Subsistence Economies in Indonesia and the Philippines during the last 25,000 years

The drastic environmental and climatic changes following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) greatly impacted human population structures and movements. In Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, landscape and environmental changes following the LGM are thought to have driven demographic changes and cultural innovations. Perhaps one of the most dramatic landscape changes during the period was the inundation of the Sunda Shelf which resulted in the modern configuration of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA). There are still comparatively few clear indications of the extent that the disappearance of such massive landmass, approximately 75% larger than what exists today, had on human communities. This project aims to contribute to the knowledge of how humans present in ISEA during this period adapted to environmental and climatic fluctuations by studying faunal remains recovered from several cave sites from the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagoes.