Khao Sam Kaeo

Two thousand years ago, the Wu Emperor of China sent south a naval expedition to seek opportunities to increase trade. The leaders encountered a Southeast Asian kingdom, with an established government, laws, cities and flourishing trade with India and Rome. The expedition report survives in the Chinese dynastic archives, and poses a fascinating challenge to archaeologists : what was the nature of this maritime Silk Road, when did it begin, what manner of people ran it, and how did it affect their lives ? Answers to these key questions are now emerging from five years of excavations and a decade of intense analyses that centre on the Kra Isthmus, the narrow neck of land that provides the easiest passage between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Here, the trade route is dominated by the urban centre of Khao Sam Kaeo, a sprawling settlement atop four hills, next to the Tha Tapao River. For the first time in Southeast Asia, a multi disciplinary project involving geoarchaeology, botany and metallurgy, combined with geographical information systems, has been deployed to unravel the timing of the emergence of the maritime Silk Road and its social impact. We have found that its origins are far earlier than suspected, stretching back into the 4th century BC. Over the centuries, Khao Sam Kaeo became a cosmopolitan hub that drew merchants and artisans from India and other Asian horizons. Gold and silver, carnelian and glass jewellery came from new workshops. In the fields beyond the city walls, new crops of Indian origin were grown alongside the traditional rice fields. Chinese ceramics, Vietnamese bronzes, even Roman tradewares made their way to the markets of Southeast Asia. The vital importance of Khao Sam Kaeo in documenting and illuminating the early maritime trade is seen in the later rise of states like Pasai, Banten, Melaka and Ayutthaya. Here again, on a magnified scale, there were highly specialised manufacturing industries controlled by powerful kings. Revealing the deep seated cultural changes that took place at Khao Sam Kaeo thus illuminates for the first time a critical stage in the history of Southeast Asia.

This book takes stock of the results of some two decades of intensive archaeological research carried out on both sides of the Bay of Bengal, in combination with renewed approaches to textual sources and to art history. To improve our understanding of the trans-cultural process commonly referred to as Indianisation, it brings together specialists of both India and Southeast Asia, in a fertile inter-disciplinary confrontation. Most of the essays reappraise the millennium-long historiographic no-man's land during which exchanges between the two shores of the Bay of Bengal led, among other processes, to the Indianisation of those parts of the region that straddled the main routes of exchange. Some essays follow up these processes into better known "classical" times or even into modern times, showing that the localisation process of Indian themes has long remained at work, allowing local societies to produce their own social space and express their own ethos.

The 36 chapters in this collection have been selected to give an overview ofrecent research into prehistoric and early historic archaeology in SoutheastAsia. In the first chapter Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhornof Thailand comments on the significance of the inscriptions from the important Khmer temple, Prasat Phnom Rung in northeastern Thailand. Following this, Professor Charles Higham gives an original and insightful survey of the prehistoric threads linking south China and the countries of modern Southeast Asia.

This book lies at the crossroads of areal typology, language contact and genetic affiliation. Concerned with mainland Southeast Asia in particular, the various grammatical sketches lay emphasis on characteristics shared by unrelated languages.

The first scientific volume to compile the modern analytical techniques for glass analysis, Modern Methods for Analysing Archaeological and Historical Glass presents an up-to-date description of the physico-chemical methods suitable for determining the composition of glass and for speciation of specific components. This unique resource presents members of Association Internationale pour l'Histoire du Verre, as well as university scholars, with a number of case studies where the effective use of one or more of these methods for elucidating a particular culturo-historical or historo-technical aspect of glass manufacturing technology is documented.

This book provides a comprehensive research on Ancient Indian glass. The contributors include experienced archaeologists of South Asian glass and archaeological chemists with expertise in the chemical analysis of glass, besides, established ethnohistorians and ethnoarchaeologists. It is comprised of five sections, and each section discusses different aspects of glass study: the origin of glass and its evolution, its scientific study and its care, ancient glass in literature and glass ethnography, glass in South Asia and the diffusion of glass in different parts of the world. The topic covered by the different chapters ranges from the development of faience, to the techniques developed for the manufacture of glass beads, glass bangles or glass mirrors at different times in south Asia, a major glass producing region and the regional distribution of key artefacts both within India and outside the region, in Africa, Europe or Southeast Asia. Some chapters also include extended examples of the archaeometry of ancient glasses. It makes an important contribution to archaeological, anthropological and analytical aspects of glass in South Asia. As such, it represents an invaluable resource for students through academic and industry researchers working in archaeological sciences, ancient knowledge system, pyrotechnology, historical archaeology, social archaeology and student of anthropology and history with an interest in glass and the archaeology of South Asia.

"Southeast Asia is one of the most significant regions in the world for tracing human prehistory over a period of 2 million years. Migrations from the African homeland saw settlement by Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis. Anatomically Modern Humans reached Southeast Asia at least 60,000 years ago to establish a hunter-gatherer tradition, adapting as climatic change saw sea levels fluctuate by over 100 metres. From about 2000 BC, settlement was affected by successive innovations that took place to the north and west. The first rice and millet farmers came by riverine and coastal routes to integrate with indigenous hunters. A millennium later, knowledge of bronze casting penetrated along similar pathways. Copper mines were identified, and metals were exchanged over hundreds of kilometres as elites commanded access to this new material. This Bronze Age ended with the rise of a maritime exchange network that circulated new ideas, religions and artefacts with adjacent areas of present-day India and China. Port cities were founded as knowledge of iron forging rapidly spread, as did exotic ornaments fashioned from glass, carnelian, gold and silver. In the Mekong Delta, these developments led to an early transition into the state known as Funan. However, the transition to early states in inland regions arose as a sharp decline in monsoon rains stimulated an agricultural revolution involving permanent ploughed rice fields. These twin developments illuminate how the great early kingdoms of Angkor, Champa and Central Thailand came to be, a vital stage in understanding the roots of modern states"--

The Origins of the Civilization of Angkor reflects the results of a research programme conducted by Charles Higham over the last twenty years, highlighting much entirely new, and occasionally surprising, information and providing a distinct perspective on cultural change over two millennia. The book covers the background of environmental change, the adoption of rice farming, archaeogenetics, the adoption of copper-based metallurgy, the iron age and the origins of state formation.