The bark-cloth beater or tapa beater is stone tool shaped like a flattened mallet with vertical grooves cut into its surface. Prehistoric peoples used this tool to beat and pound tree bark (e.g. of the paper mulberry tree) to make tapa, a non-woven bark-cloth.

Qubing is a designated County Archeological Site located about two kilometers north of the Wanfeng Bunun settlement in Ren’ai Township, Nantou County. Between 1981 and 2004, the Qubing site was surveyed and excavated many times, unearthing a rich collection of finds. The site dates to roughly between 3,600 and 1,070 years ago. The scale of settlement, burial system, and the background social structure and patterns of group life these reflect, all provide researchers with important information regarding the prehistory of Taiwan’s high mountain areas.

The Qiwulan (淇武蘭) site is located next to the Dezikou River (得子口溪) in Jiaoxi Township, Yilan County. It was discovered in 2001, while dredging the river. A major archeological salvage excavation followed, during which extremely rich archeological finds were unearthed. The importance of this site in the village is illustrated in documentary records from the seventeenth century onwards. Moreover, a census survey revealed the village to be the largest settlement in northern Taiwan at the time. As such, the archeological data gleaned from the excavation will prove very useful in understanding the indigenous people of ancient times.

Archeology can be divided into prehistoric archeology and historic archeology. The former is the archeological study of the period for which there is no written historical record—all evidence comes from relics unearthed by archeologists. The latter is the archeological study of the period for which there is written history. In this case, archeologists must try compare their finds against historical documents. By the same reasoning, protohistoric archeological research must rely on both archeological relics and indigenous ethnographic records.

Scholars generally regard 1896 as the year that archeology in Taiwan was born. That year Japanese scholar Awano Dennojo (粟野傳之丞) discovered a stone axe at a site on Zhishanyan (芝山巖), a hill in Shilin, Taipei City. This discovery marked the symbolic beginning of archeology in Taiwan, and because of it Zhishanyan was designated as a Taipei Municipal Archeological Site.

Stone wheels are hollow-centered stone discs, tens of centimeters in diameter, hence the name. It has been theorized that they were used as a form of currency, but their archeological context shows that they were probably foundation stones used to erect pillars in house construction.

Stone pillars are tall, upright pillars of stone, standing several meters tall. The surface or top of a stone pillar has been worked.

A stone coffin is a large rock with a deep trough cut into it, or a whole rock that has been worked into the shape of a trough. Due to the fact that most of these troughs are similar in length and width to the human body, it was once conjectured that they were used as coffins for burying the dead. However, there is all kinds of evidence to show that they could have had other uses.

Most of Taiwan’s standing stones are pillar-shaped blocks of stone standing a meter or less tall from the ground. They are divided into various types that include shouldered standing stones and anthropomorphic standing stones.

As they draw moisture from the soil, some plants take up and accumulate silicic acid from the soil in their cells. After these plants die and become buried in the earth, the organic component decomposes, leaving its silica bodies still preserved in the layers of the soil. The silica bodies that remain vary in shape according to the plant species and part of the plant in which they formed. Researchers collect a soil sample from a site and, after filtering out the dirt to obtain the silica bodies, examine them under a powerful microscope. The shapes and quantities of silica bodies they find in the sample enable them to ascertain the varieties and quantities of plants that grew in that location in ancient times.

Eating and drinking were activities intrinsic to communal life in prehistoric communities, and so the best qualities of a community can be said to be reflected in the pottery it uses. This is also why archeologists often choose to analyze pottery in their research.

Under Taiwan’s Cultural Heritage Preservation Act, an important archeological site can be designated a National, Municipal, or City/County Archeological Site, enabling it to receive more appropriate management and protection. According to the act, the criteria for evaluating an archeological site include its niche and significance in the context of cultural development; its significance in the history of research; the distinctiveness and richness of its accumulated cultural connotations; the quantity and rarity of similar sites; the completeness of its preservation; its suitability for use in exhibitions and education programs; and other ways in which it is valuable as an archeological site.

During the period of Japanese rule, the renowned archeologist Tadao Kano (鹿野忠雄) distinguished seven different origins of Taiwan’s prehistoric culture. These included Central, Northern and Southern China, mainland Southeast Asia, and the Philippines. This can be seen as the standard version of multiple migrations.

Excavation in archeology is a specialist term meaning to dig an archeological site using rigorous academic methods. It is only archeological data obtained using such methods that can be used to conduct reliable scientific research to recover, analyze, and explain the past. In most countries, there are laws to regulate archeological excavations. They cannot be carried out arbitrarily; researchers must apply to government authorities for permission before conducting an excavation.

There is by no means a one-to-one correspondence between archeological cultures and language communities. Culture usually refers to a way of life, whereas a language group is a linguistic system. For example, two groups of people could follow the same way of life, yet use different linguistic systems; or two groups of people using the same linguistic system could be following different ways of life. A single site can contain the remains of many different cultures. For example, remains of the Dapenkeng Culture were found in the oldest layer of the Dapenkeng site. The layers above contained the Yuanshan Culture, followed by the Botanical Garden Culture, while the topmost layer belonged to the Shisanhang Culture. A culture can also appear at many different sites. Yuanshan Culture sites, for example, have been unearthed at locations all over in the Taipei basin. This means that the Dapenkeng Culture and the Dapenkeng site differ in archeological significance.