The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Macrae. Gyles Iannone. Saw Tun Lin. Nyein Chan Soe.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bagan was an authoritative capital as well as a cosmological and ritual epicenter of Theravada Buddhism for the Classical Burmese Empire during the eleventh to fourteenth centuries CE. Integral in the Buddhist belief system is the notion of merit; achieved through good deeds or donations to the Buddhist Church. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiyas Bhattacharyya. Alison Carter. Miriam Stark. Sophorn Kim.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The exploration of residential spaces through the study of household archaeology helps create a better understanding of society from multiple perspectives. Previous work on Angkorian households has focused on sites that were within the capital. There has been a record of archaeological occupation within Battambang...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiyas Bhattacharyya. Alison Carter. Miriam Stark. Peter Grave. Lisa Kealhofer.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Incorporation into and connectivity within the Angkorian state (ninth–fifteenth centuries CE) has been studied through the construction of large temples and road/water networks across sites in mainland Southeast Asia (e.g., Hendrickson 2008, 2010; Pottier et al. 2012). However, few scholars have examined how areas...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Piphal Heng.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Highland Southeast Asia was historically the domain of ethnic swiddeners, in contrast with the wet rice farmers of lowland states. Recent scholarship has re-envisioned these upland groups as active agents who resisted lowland state domination, rather than viewing them as isolated tribal groups. Highlands located east of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Kelley. Guangmau Xie. Qiang Lin. Miriam Belmaker.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the main questions in human evolution concerns the dispersal of modern humans into Eurasia. Given the current tropical environment of South China, we may wonder whether early modern humans entering this region could penetrate the rainforest to forage for food, and indeed whether the environment in this area was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gyles Iannone.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An overview of the extensive use of settlement archaeology in Maya studies provides an entry point for a critical consideration of the comparatively limited role that this method has played in the study of the preindustrial states of Southeast Asia, especially when it comes to investigating the habitation sites of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Carter. Sarah Klassen.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Angkor is the world’s largest premodern settlement complex, but to date no comprehensive demographic study has been completed, and key aspects of its population and demographic history remain unknown. Here, we combine multiple lines of evidence, including comprehensive lidar maps, archaeological excavation data, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roland Fletcher. Sarah Klassen.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The internal spatial organization of Greater Angkor changed profoundly between the seventh and the fifteenth centuries CE—yet in some ways also remained substantially self-similar. Separate settlements merged into one urban aggregation, and massive water storage and transport structures were added, along with a few very...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ekaterina Menkina. Scott Macrae. Vo Thi Phuong Thuy. Le Ngoc Han.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The drone-imagery sub project uses drone based aerial photography and photogrammetry to document the water gates, walls, enclosures, canals, and shrines of Hoa Lu, supplementary to the IRAW@HoaLu settlement and survey research. Amidst the urban-landscape development, the cultural and natural features are subject to time....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francis Allard.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Well before the establishment—during the last two centuries BCE—of a “Maritime Silk Route” linking China to maritime lands to its south, archaeological evidence indicates the existence of wide-ranging links between coastal regions of the South China Sea. By the fifth century BCE, different types of goods moved along...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Klassen.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent research at Angkor has aggregated over 20 years of archaeological map data, which is providing important new perspectives on the agricultural production system of the polycentric low-density urban complex. Much scholarly attention has been directed towards the functional vs. ritual nature of the huge reservoirs...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Raiza Rivera.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Water is an element which characterizes and links Southeast Asia, however, due to the difficulties of understanding its religious significance within the archaeological record, few studies have examined its symbolic meaning. As part of this ethnoarchaeology study, interviews and observations conducted in ten traditional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tiyas Bhattacharyya.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This talk will discuss the preliminary results from a study focusing on the analysis of select faunal remains from the Early Historic/Pre-Angkorian site of Angkor Borei, Cambodia. Angkor Borei is one of Southeast Asia’s earliest urban centers, located in the Mekong Delta region of southern Cambodia. It was also a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francis Allard.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From the fifth century BCE to the early centuries CE, glass beads played an important role as trade goods along the Maritime Silk Route, with large numbers found at coastal and inland sites in South, Southeast, and East Asia. Archaeology and compositional analysis have identified distinct glass recipes and likely...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Piyawit Moonkham. Andrew Duff. Nattasit Srinurak.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of social heterarchy was first incorporated as an alternative approach to examining the sociopolitical organization of early settlements in the Southeast Asia region, particularly pre-state societies. However, applications of heterarchy are somewhat limited to archaeological research on social development,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Klassen. Scott Ortman. Jose Lobo.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The dominant view in economic anthropology has been that agricultural intensification involves decreasing returns. This view is difficult to reconcile with the emergence of urban systems, which requires improved labor and land productivity to support non-food producers in urban centers. The issue is especially salient...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colin LeJeune.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Coastal Nakhon Si Thammarat Province, Thailand, situated along Peninsular Thailand’s eastern facing South China Sea shore, was one of the many vibrant zones of interregional exchange and complexity growth in premodern maritime Southeast Asia. The region’s culture-history, settlement pattern, material culture, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gyles Iannone.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Comparative Urban Traditions project aims to rigorously explore pre-industrial cities and urban communities in all their complexity and diversity. Focusing on a set of archaeological case studies that are representative of a range of different time periods and geopolitical contexts, the approach is sensitive to both...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mitch Hendrickson. Stéphanie Leroy. Enrique Vega. Kaseka Phon.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Phnom Dek, or "Iron Mountain," in central Cambodia is the center of the largest iron production region in mainland Southeast Asia. Spanning over 1,400 years of metallurgical activity, the most intensive evidence of smelting across this vast region corresponds with the expansionary phases of the Angkorian Khmer Empire...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rory Dennison.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Before the expansion of European interests into East Asia, a maritime network was established between imperial powers and Southeast Asian polities that connected artisans, merchants, chiefs, farmers, foragers, and others. This Early Historic period was a time of important developments that set the stage for later...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francis Allard. Wengcheong Lam. Nam Kim.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of the metallurgical analysis of 43 fragments of bronze artifacts recovered from Bronze Age sites in northern Vietnam. It represents the largest systematic study undertaken so far of early north Vietnamese bronzes using a range of archeo-metallurgical techniques. The artifacts, which are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joyce White. Bounheuang Bouasisengpaseuth. Helen Lewis. Michael Griffiths. Kathleen Johnson.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Middle Mekong Archaeological Project (MMAP) is a collaborative venture developed between Joyce White and Bounheuang Bouasisenpaseuth and other researchers working to develop an archaeological research program with the Lao Department of Heritage, with a primary focus on the prehistory of the Luang Prabang area. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kendall Hills.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological research in Cambodia was traditionally relatively narrow in scope. Our knowledge of the Khmer Empire (9th to 15th century CE ) has been primarily informed via two lines of evidence: epigraphic sources, especially in the form of temple inscriptions, and art historical analysis of monumental architecture....

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Brotherson.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Socio-ecological systems are a useful framework for understanding cultural processes in the past. Angkor, the capital of the Khmer Empire, dominated much of the Southeast Asian mainland from the ninth to fourteenth centuries. Greater Angkor’s development and expansion was based on an elaborate water management network,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Buckley.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Woven textiles have played an important role in Southeast Asia both as practical items and markers of status, a role that continues to this day. Many important traditions and techniques, ranging from simple to complex, have survived to the present day, or the recent past. In this paper I will review the archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mitch Hendrickson.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Crafting with fire is a central feature in the expansion of premodern states. In mainland Southeast Asia, the Angkorian Khmer (ninth to fourteenth centuries CE) possessed a unique mastery of three types of pyrotechnological production: stoneware ceramics, copper-base alloys, and iron. While the products of each craft...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Utting. Agustin Capriati. Annette Oertle. Dylan Gaffney.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation will introduce the Raja Ampat Project, a multidisciplinary effort to explore evidence for 1) the initial settlement of eastern Wallacea, and 2) how humans adapted to and transformed island environments over time. The Project has four main strands: 1) excavations of new material, 2) material culture...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kendall Hills. Aldo W. Foe.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Multi-sited regional analyses have generally been viewed as incompatible with studies of monumental architecture. A focus on style and iconography, combined with difficulties in collecting spatially dispersed and large amounts of architectural data, have traditionally resulted in political geography and architecture...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gyles Iannone.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The IRAW@Bagan project is aimed at generating an integrated socioecological history for residential patterning, agricultural practices, and water management at the Classical Burmese (Bama) capital of Bagan, Myanmar (eleventh to fourteenth centuries CE) across a range of significant ecological, climatic, economic,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Macrae. Vo Thi Phuong Thuy. Ekaterina Menkina. Le Ngoc Han.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Established in 968 CE the city of Hoa Lu was the first unified capital of the Dai Co Viet. This ancient capital is found in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Trang An Scenic Landscape Complex, Vietnam. It was constructed of two enclosures bounded by a series of embankment walls adjoining steep cliff faces created by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Macrae. Kong Cheong. Gyles Iannone. Pyiet Phyo Kyaw.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2017, at the invitation of UNESCO-Myanmar, IRAW@Bagan initiated a settlement archaeology project at the “Classical” Burmese (Bama) capital of Bagan, Myanmar (eleventh to fourteenth centuries CE). This research is focused on the peri-urban (mixed urban-rural) settlement zone immediately surrounding the walled and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellie Tamura.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bagan was Myanmar’s political, economic, and cultural centre during the country’s Classical period (c. 800-1400 CE). Encompassing an area of 80 kilometers square, this landscape was home to approximately 4,000 brick monuments. These monuments were the result of the Buddhist pursuit of merit-making, the idea that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Harris.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The religious transition of the Khmer Empire (ca. 802–1431 CE) from Saivaite and/or Mahayana Buddhism to the religion known today as “Theravada Buddhism” is thought today to be one of the defining social phenomena of the late Angkorian period (ca. fourteenth to fifteenth centuries) in medieval Cambodia. However, despite...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gyles Iannone. Pyiet Phyo Kyaw. Scott Macrae.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The IRAW@Bagan project is striving to generate an integrated socio-ecological history for residential patterning, agricultural practices, and water management at the Classical Burmese (Bama) capital of Bagan, Myanmar (11th to 14th centuries CE) across a range of significant ecological, climatic, economic,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Piphal Heng. Miriam Stark. Alison Carter. Rachna Chhay.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Angkor was premodern Southeast Asia’s largest city from the ninth to fifteenth century. Centered in northwest Cambodia near the Tonle Sap Lake, this agro-urban agglomeration comprises extensive settlements linked through a series of road and water management systems. Research on Angkorian urbanism has focused on either...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Macrae. Gyles Iannone. Pyiet Phyo Kyaw.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located along the Ayeyarwady river, in the dry-zone of Upper Myanmar, is an area once described as "the land of the terribly hot", a land where the Classical Burmese capital of Bagan (11th to 14th centuries CE) is found. Home to over 4,000 monuments, a large and diverse population lived within the mixed urban-rural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mitch Hendrickson. Quan Hua. Stépanie Leroy. Shuhui Cai. Emmanuelle Delque-Kolic.

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Phnom Dek metallurgical landscape represents the single largest iron smelting region in mainland Southeast Asia. Located 100 km east of Angkor in central Cambodia, our surveys have identified over 20 production sites and a total of 150 individual slag mounds active between the sixth and twentieth centuries. Iron...