ECAI - Austronesia Team Website

Across the Pacific and Indian oceans, the Austronesian speaking people have voyaged for centuries making a network of communication within a linguistic family that became the most extensive in the world prior to European arrival. The cultures were launched from the Western Pacific and the early Austronesian speakers reached islands of further distance apart traveling in lashed and pegged canoes across vast expanses of ocean.

The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI) over the past few years has developed as a group interested in the academic research and international collaboration. The Austronesian projects were proposed by the founder and chairman of ECAI, Lewis Lancaster, at a meeting entitled Austronesian Studies in Taiwan--Retrospective and Prospect (UC Berkeley sponsored with the Shung Ye Museum in 1997). Since then collaborative teams have taken up the idea by researching the possibilities of cultural mapping using a geographic information system (GIS) to integrate the heritage of a place.

This project is a model for future language mapping because it combines the generation of a digital version of older printed language maps with the collection of data on contemporary languages areas, and then the use of dynamic (time-enabled) map display techniques capable of showing visually the changes in language boundaries. The work will also give us an opportunity to advance our work on the design and use of gazetteers of language areas. A conventional gazetteer of Austronesian place-names would be supplemented (or complemented) by a directory of languages and dialects with the formal geographical specifications of where they are (or were) spoken at different times. These data would be coupled with map displays such that any combination of data from the gazetteer could be displayed at will. There are plans for a peer-reviewed digital publication in collaboration with the California Digital Library administered by the Office of the President of the University of California.

· Presently, individuals, academic research institutions, such as libraries and universities, and private foundations including NGOs are supporting ECAI Austronesia.

· ECAI invites interested people and institutions to utilize the opportunity by joining this electronic database. Projects are being interconnected, GIS based, showing layers of electronic maps utilized to record and plot time sequences of heritage information.

· This scholarly and educational process of annotated mapping with the assistance Indo-Pacific linguistics, archaeology, ethnology, sociology, geography, and history is proceeding in phases to serve as an academic bulletin board for scholarly exchange.