LAUSR

Hong Kong (including Lamma and Lantau Islands) provides archaeologists with an interesting microcosm of cultural evolution on China’s southern coast from the Neolithic to the twentieth century. For most of its past, it was inhabited by non-Han Chinese people related to the inhabitants of modern Thailand and Vietnam, often termed ‘Yue’ in Chinese sources. The archaeology of Hong Kong illustrates long-term adaptation to a coastal environment by a mobile population with access to networks of maritime and overland exchange since the Neolithic period. Hong Kong also provides a useful example of the Sinicisation process of southern China that began in the Han Dynasty.