Wilhelm Solheim

Wilhelm G. Solheim II (1924—2014) was an American anthropologist recognized as the most senior practitioner of archaeology in Southeast Asia, and as a pioneer in the study of Philippine and Southeast Asian prehistoric archaeology. He is perhaps best known, however, for hypothesizing the existence of the Nusantao Maritime Trading and Communication Network (NMTCN), one of two dominant hypotheses regarding the peopling of the Asia-Pacific region during the Neolithic age.

Wilhelm ‘Bill’ Gerhard Solheim II was born on the 19th of November 1924 in Champaign, Illinois. He entered the University of Wyoming in 1941, with Mathematics as his major and Physics as his minor. In 1943 he joined the US Air Force to train as a meteorologist. He spent his Air Force years stationed in Casablanca, central coastal Africa, and Germany. In 1947, Bill returned to the US to finish his BA degree in Mathematics in 1947. Three months after he finished his undergraduate degree, he pursued a Master of Arts degree in Anthropology at University of California-Berkeley.

Bill once said that his interest in Southeast Asia began in his youth, after having watched the young Indian actor Sabu in the British adventure film “The Elephant Boy” (1937). Entranced by the jungles, the elephants, the cobras, and cave treasures, he viewed that Indian part of Monsoon Asia as indistinguishable from the jungles around Angkor: “Immediately when I saw that I told myself that is where I want to do my archaeology” (p.c., 5/29/2003). Sabu’s South Asian lands lay west of the region where Bill would spend his career, but was linked in climate and, in some respects, culture, to mainland Southeast Asia.

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