In this article, I surveyed the historical and stylistic development of ancient southeast Asian earrings, which remained in plenty but have never been researched in Korea before. Southeast Asian peoples have worn many kinds of earrings by piercing their earlobes from the Neolithic period to the present. Some of those earrings were too big and thick to wear, but those were worn in the holes of each owner’s earlobe, which were penetrated during the childhood and enlarged from time to time until the owner became an adult. This piercing tradition might be transmitted to Southeast Asia from Indian subcontinent, and later influenced the southern part of ancient Korean peninsula.
In the ancient southeast asia, many people wore peculiar thick earrings called “Ling ling-o”. Most ancient Ling ling-o earrings were made in the local workshops. But in most case, the material itself was light green nephrite from the Fengtian mine in southern Taiwan. Such earrings were discovered in many archaeological sites of Southeast Asia, such as Vietnam and Philippines. Such geographical distribution of this Taiwanese nephrite Ling ling-o earring reveals the cultural and economical exchanges between the southeast Asia and Taiwan through the sea route.
During the early historical period, the nephrite Ling ling-o earrings were changed into a “C” shaped metal earrings. A stone mold for making “C” shaped earrings was excavated from an archaeological site of Funan in Southern Vietnam. In addition, some gilt bronze and gold “C” shaped earrings were discovered at several archaeological sites of Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. The usage of such metal earrings had continued for a long time, even until the modern era.
The most famous traditional metal earring type in Modern Southeast Asia is “Mamuli”, an eccentric gold earring of Sumba Island in Indonesia. The main shape of Mamuli gold earring comes from the traditional “C” shaped thick earrings but modern Mamuli earrings have many symmetrical descriptive decorations with main shape. These Mamuli earrings are worn during the ancestral ceremonies in Sumba Island to honor their ancestors.
From ancient Ling ling-o to modern Mamuli, ancient southeast asian earrings share the main thick “C” shaped and enlarged piercing tradition. Such typical earring tradition of ancient Southeast Asia shows the cross cultural relationships not only between far distant regions but also between far distant times. Those earrings are very important as material and visual evidences to understand the jewelry customs and cultural exchanges of the ancient Southeast Asian culture and the other worlds.