The Bronze Age Of Southeast Asia

This book addresses the controversy over the origins of the Bronze Age of Southeast Asia. Charles Higham provides a systematic and regional presentation of the current evidence. He suggests that the adoption of metallurgy in the region followed a period of growing exchange with China. Higham then traces the development of Bronze Age cultures, identifying regionality and innovation, and suggesting how and why distinct cultures developed. This book is the first comprehensive study of the period, placed within a broader comparative framework.

This comprehensive and absorbing book traces the cultural history of Southeast Asia from prehistoric (especially Neolithic, Bronze-Iron age) times through to the major Hindu and Buddhist civilizations, to around AD 1300. Southeast Asia has recently attracted archaeological attention as the locus for the first recorded sea crossings; as the region of origin for the Austronesian population dispersal across the Pacific from Neolithic times; as an arena for the development of archaeologically-rich Neolithic, and metal using communities, especially in Thailand and Vietnam, and as the backdrop for several unique and strikingly monumental Indic civilizations, such as the Khmer civilization centred around Angkor. Southeast Asia is invaluable to anyone interested in the full history of the region.

Southeast Asia ranks among the most significant regions in the world for tracing the prehistory of human endeavor over a period in excess of two million years. It lies in the direct path of successive migrations from the African homeland that saw settlement by hominin populations such as Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis. The first Anatomically Modern Humans, following a coastal route, reached the region at least 60,000 years ago to establish a hunter gatherer tradition that survives to this day in remote forests. From about 2000 BC, human settlement of Southeast Asia was deeply affected by successive innovations that took place to the north and west, such as rice and millet farming. A millennium later, knowledge of bronze casting penetrated along the same pathways. Copper mines were identified and exploited, and metals were exchanged over hundreds of kilometers. In the Mekong Delta and elsewhere, these developments led to early states of the region, which benefitted from an agricultural revolution involving permanent ploughed rice fields. These developments illuminate how the great early kingdoms of Angkor, Champa, and Funan came to be, a vital stage in understanding the roots of the present nation states of Southeast Asia. Assembling the most current research across a variety of disciplines--from anthropology and archaeology to history, art history, and linguistics--The Oxford Handbook of Early Southeast Asia will present an invaluable resource to experienced researchers and those approaching the topic for the first time.

Recent interdisciplinary studies, combining scientific techniques such as ancient DNA analysis with humanistic re-evaluations of the transcultural value of bronze, have presented archaeologists with a fresh view of the Bronze Age in Europe. The new research emphasises long-distance connectivities and political decentralisation. 'Bronzisation' is discussed as a type of proto-globalisation. In this Element, Mark Hudson examines whether these approaches can also be applied to East Asia. Focusing primarily on Island East Asia, he analyses trade, maritime interactions and warrior culture in a comparative Eurasian framework. He argues that the international division of labour associated with Bronze Age trade provided an important stimulus to the rise of decentralised complexity in regions peripheral to alluvial states. Building on James Scott's work, the concept of the 'barbarian niche' is proposed as a way to model the longue durée of premodern Eurasian history. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Using the archaeological record, O'Reilly traces the rise of the state in Southeast Asia in a general synthesis.

Table of contents: List of figures. List of maps. List of plates. Notes on contributors. Part I: The later prehistory of South East Asia. Part II: South East Asia in the first millennium A.D.

Southeast Asia ranks among the most significant regions in the world for tracing the prehistory of human endeavor over a period in excess of two million years. It lies in the direct path of successive migrations from the African homeland that saw settlement by hominin populations such as Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis. The first Anatomically Modern Humans, following a coastal route, reached the region at least 60,000 years ago to establish a hunter gatherer tradition that survives to this day in remote forests. From about 2000 BC, human settlement of Southeast Asia was deeply affected by successive innovations that took place to the north and west, such as rice and millet farming. A millennium later, knowledge of bronze casting penetrated along the same pathways. Copper mines were identified and exploited, and metals were exchanged over hundreds of kilometers. In the Mekong Delta and elsewhere, these developments led to early states of the region, which benefitted from an agricultural revolution involving permanent ploughed rice fields. These developments illuminate how the great early kingdoms of Angkor, Champa, and Funan came to be, a vital stage in understanding the roots of the present nation states of Southeast Asia. Assembling the most current research across a variety of disciplines--from anthropology and archaeology to history, art history, and linguistics--The Oxford Handbook of Early Southeast Asia will present an invaluable resource to experienced researchers and those approaching the topic for the first time.

The archaeology of the early cultures of mainland Southeast Asia has been transformed in the ten years since Charles Higham published the first major summary of the period from 10000 BC to the fall of the Kingdom of Angkor. He has now written an entirely new book, which takes into account a host of new discoveries. The dynamic coastal hunter-gatherers at Khok Phanom Di provide a startling image quite at variance with our earlier understanding of this period. The origins of rice cultivation in the Yangzi Valley, linked with the distribution of the languages, provides a whole new view of the spread of farming communities. At last, the origins and dating of the Bronze Age are resolved, and the social life from mines to settlements, and on to the rituals of death, can be followed. New excavations at large Iron Age sites in Cambodia and Thailand now allow us to appreciate the vigour and dynamism of societies on the brink of the transition to the state. A fresh appraisal of the available inscriptions has opened new vistas on the origins and development of the great kingdom of Angkor. Professor Higham has integrated all these new findings into a fascinating account of Southeast Asia's past, bringing a freshness and vigour to the period which can only provide for a fuller understanding of how this vital region has developed over the millennia into its present form.