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 Austronesia projects were proposed by the founder and chairman of ECAI, Lewis Lancaster, at a meeting entitled Austronesian Studies in Taiwan Retrospective and Prospect (UCB sponsored with the Shung Ye Museum in 1997). Since then the idea has been taken up by researching the possibilities of cultural mapping to be produced by collaborative teams interested in a geographic information system (GIS) based atlas to connect heritage of a place with electronic retrieval media.

Every year about two conferences take place to discuss the state and process of ECAI. For participation, list your persons, goals, and resources, including the following: 1.Your name, 2. Project title and abstract, 3. Contact address, prefer email.

David Blundell
pacific@uclink4.berkeley.edu

ECAI
ecai@socrates.berkeley.edu

New
The Austronesian Team working with Larry Crissman at Griffth University Australia has released the "ECAI Digital Language Atlas of the Pacific Area". It is now available through the ECAI Clearinghouse. The Dataset is registered as ECAI Clearinghouse Record Number 20237. See the dynamic Pacific Language TimeMap Mapspace which demonstrates the dataset.

A Formosan and Yami Language demonstration mapspace is now available. See: Formosan Language Demo showing the possibilities for navigating from language map to related web sources.

Cebuano Project
The Austronesian team is participating in a collaboration with the ECAI central team, the IMLS project, and the School of Information Management and Systems at UC Berkeley to develop a resource on the Cebuano language of the Philippines. Check out the project website or see the Cebuano dynamic map

Background
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 most extensive in the world prior to European arrival. The cultures were launched from the Western Pacific, probably in the neighborhood of the South China Sea yet undetermined, the early Austronesian speakers reached islands of further distance apart traveling in canoes lashed and pegged together to Micronesia, the Lesser Sunda, Polynesia, and across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar.

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

1.0 Austronesian Linguistic Mapping

This collaboration began with the Taiwan Austronesian Linguistic Team presented at the Pacific Neighborhood Consortium meetings at the University of California, Berkeley, in January, 2000.
1.1 Taiwan Linguistic Mapping(PDF file)

The mapping of Austronesian languages in Taiwan is an on-going process. The areas of current interest include archaeology, languages, and ethnology. This project will serve as a model for other collaborative groups in Oceania. Borneo will be coming up next. Southeast Asia as an archipelago will follow along with Micronesia, Polynesia bordering on Melanesia into the Pacific reaches, and across the Indian Ocean. 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.

Bunun Ceremonial

Amis Dance

Projects and Mapping

The ECAI Austronesia is an ongoing mapping process based on language and culture generally with specific collaborative team expectations. Projects are dependent on the goals of the researchers fitting into the parameters of ECAI objectives. The progress of the ECAI Austronesia Team has been significantly assisted by two grants by the University of California Berkeley Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines Endowment Fund to David Blundell and Michael Buckland. This Fund was formed through an agreement made between the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines, in Taibei, and the University of California at Berkeley. The funding came through the generosity of the N.W. Lin Foundation for Culture and Education. The grants were "Austronesian Electronic Atlas Initiative Linguistic Mapping" for $16,000 in 2000, and "Mapping Formosan Austronesian Languages" for $11,000 in 2001.

1.0 Austronesian Linguistic Mapping

1.1 Taiwan Austronesian Cultures Atlas

1.2 Austronesian Language Distribution Mapping - Relief

1.3 Southeast Asia Linguistic Mapping

1.4 Taiwan Austronesian Languages

1.5 Polynesia Linguistic Mapping

1.6 Austronesian Indian Ocean Linguistic Mapping