This article has been published in a revised form in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 47 (3). pp. 333-340.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022463416000229
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Introduction: Transitions from late prehistory to early historic periods in Mainland
Southeast Asia, c. early to mid-first millennium CE
Stephen A. Murphy and Miriam T. Stark
Studies of early Southeast Asia focus largely on its ‘classical states’, when rulers and
their entourages from Sukhothai and Ayutthaya (Thailand), Angkor (Cambodia), Bagan
(Myanmar), Champa and Dai Viet (Vietnam) clashed, conquered, and intermarried one another
over an approximately six-century-long quest for legitimacy and political control. Scholarship on
Southeast Asia has long held that such transformations were largely a response to outside
intervention and external events, or at least that these occurred in interaction with a broader
world system in which Southeast Asians played key roles.1 As research gathered pace on the
prehistory of the region over the past five decades or so, it has become increasingly clear that
indigenous Southeast Asian cultures grew in sophistication and complexity over the Iron Age in
particular. This has led archaeologists to propose much greater agency in regards to the selective
Stephen A. Murray is Curator (Southeast Asia), Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore. Miriam
T. Stark is Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai’i at Manoa.
Correspondence in connection with this article should be addressed to:
stepheninasia@hotmail.com; miriams@hawaii.edu.
1
See reviews in Craig Reynolds, ‘A new look at old Southeast Asia’, Journal of Asian Studies
54, 2 (1995): 419–46; Victor Lieberman, Strange parallels: Southeast Asia in global context,
c.800–1830, vol. 1: Integration on the mainland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
1
adaptation of incoming Indic beliefs and practices than was previously assumed under early
scholarship of the nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth century.2
More than thirty years ago, Karl Hutterer emphasised the role of archaeology as key to
understanding early Southeast Asia.3 Archaeological and art historical research in the last two
decades now suggests a more complex and nuanced Mainland Southeast Asian landscape during
the early to mid-first millennium CE.4 Scholars have used material culture to track internal
development and interaction at regional and transregional scales.5 We now maintain that early to
2
See for example, George Coedès, The Indianized states of Southeast Asia, ed. Walter F. Vella,
trans. Susan B. Cowing (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1968).
3
Karl Hutterer, ‘Early Southeast Asia: Old wine in new skins? A review article’, Journal of
Asian Studies 41, 3 (1982): 559–70.
4
Miriam Stark, ‘Early Mainland Southeast Asian landscapes in the first millennium A.D.’,
Annual Review of Anthropology 35 (2006): 407–32.
5
For example, Bérénice Bellina and Ian Glover, ‘The archaeology of early contact with India
and the Mediterranean world, from the fourth century BC to the fourth century AD’, in Southeast
Asia: From prehistory to history, ed. Ian Glover and Peter Bellwood (London: RoutledgeCurzon,
2004), pp. 68–88; Sunil Gupta, ‘The Bay of Bengal interaction sphere (1000 BC–AD 500)’,
Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 25, 3 (2005): 21–30; Hsiao-chun Hung, Kim
Dung Nguyen, Peter Bellwood and Mike T. Carson, ‘Coastal connectivity: Long-term trading
networks across the South China Sea’, Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 8, 3 (2013):
384–404; Himanshu Prabha Ray, ‘Multi-religious linkages across the Bay of Bengal during the
first millennium CE’, in Before Siam: Essays in art and archaeology, ed. Nicholas Revire and
Stephen A. Murphy (Bangkok: River Books; Siam Society, 2014), pp. 134–51.
2
mid-first millennium Southeast Asians engaged in a series of political and social entanglements
with foreigners, and with each other. We also contend that these entanglements produced
discrete, state-like polities with more similarities in aesthetics and ideology than most scholars
realise.
Examining the intricate mix of statecraft, bureaucracy, and belief that forged Mainland
Southeast Asia’s earliest states requires interdisciplinary approaches from archaeology, art
history, religious studies, and history, among others. Bringing these perspectives to bear on early
to mid-first millennium CE Mainland Southeast Asia is the goal of this special issue of the
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (JSEAS). Archaeologists and art historians use newlyavailable data to reappraise the emergence of some of the region’s first named polities: Dvāravatī,
Funan, Zhenla, Pyu and Mon. Authors pay particular attention to dynamics involved in the
transition from late prehistory to early/proto-historic periods. The pace of archaeological
research on this period has accelerated recently, but the exact nature and timing of the transitions
from prehistoric to early/proto-historic polities in various regions of Southeast Asia remains
unclear. In which regions does the close examination of archaeological data suggest continuity
from antecedent cultures into these first millennium CE polities? Can scholars interpret
disjunctures in the material record and settlement as cultural discontinuities? How can
archaeological and art historical evidence inform us in regard to transregional interaction
between these polities? By merging archaeological, art historical and epigraphic information on
the first millennium CE together, the articles in this issue offer insights on the transition to
history and subsequent early state formation, the inter-polity dynamics that guided these shifts,
and the ways in which disciplinary approaches constrain or shape interpretations.
3
These issues challenge contributors to transcend conventional time–space systematic
boundaries and to bridge disciplinary divides between art history and archaeology. We hope that
our efforts to dissolve these largely artificial temporal, spatial and disciplinary boundaries
produce new insights on the transregional dynamics that led to organisational shifts during the
first millennium CE. For instance, the authors were asked to think beyond conventional spatial
boundaries like ‘Pyu’, ‘Dvāravatī’, ‘Pre-Angkor’, and ‘Cham’. Michael Vickery’s analysis of
Pre-Angkor Cambodia effectively argues that Chams and Khmers interacted with each other; 6
more recent art historical research indicates numerous connections between Pyu, Dvāravatī, PreAngkor, and Cham.7 Epigraphic and art historical evidence indicates that first millennium CE
populations interacted with, and influenced, each other; we asked our authors to identify material
culture evidence of this transregional interaction.
The second challenge is to rethink connections between ‘prehistoric’ traditions and their
immediately succeeding ‘historic’ traditions. In the past, a perceived break from prehistoric to
historic cultures encouraged some scholars to overemphasise external influences during this
period of transformation and to ignore evidence for inter-polity interaction.8 The difficulties
6
Michael Vickery, Society, economics, and politics in Pre-Angkor Cambodia: The 7th–8th
centuries (Tokyo: Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies for Unesco; Toyo Bunko, 1998).
7
John Guy, ed., Lost kingdoms: Hindu–Buddhist sculpture of early Southeast Asia (New York:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014).
8
Coedès, The Indianized states; Ramesh Chandra Majumdar, Ancient Indian colonisation in
South-East Asia, Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad Honorarium Lectures, 1953–1954 (Baroda: M.S.
University of Baroda Press, 1955).
4
inherent in understanding this transition, which lie at the crux of this volume, were aptly summed
up over thirty years ago by Hutterer who states that
we are moving back into the twilight zone of history where the documentary sources
give out at the crucial moment, that is, just before we reach the point when the
formation of early states might have taken place. This is the way it has to be since, if we
had ample written evidence, we would clearly not be dealing with nascent state societies
but with well-developed and established ones.9
Archaeological work since the 1980s has progressed significantly and we are now in a better
position, if not to answer these questions, then at least to explore them in a more detailed and
thorough way. In Vietnam, for instance, a growing body of archaeological evidence suggests that
Cham grew directly out of Sa Huynh in the early centuries CE; in Cambodia, Pre-Angkorian
settlements emerged directly out of the ‘Funan’ polity that Chinese visitors described.10
In Thailand there is now ample evidence that ‘Dvāravatī’ grew directly out of ‘Iron Age’
societies before the seventh century CE. Chureekamol Onsuwan Eyre’s study of hierarchical and
heterarchical social systems in the eastern Chao Phraya River Valley, for instance, provided a
much more close reading of the process of localisation and development of complex societies.11
Her research did not indicate the existence of site hierarchy from 200 BCE to 300 CE. However,
9
Hutterer, ‘Early Southeast Asia’: 562.
10
William Southworth, ‘The coastal states of Champa’ (pp. 211–13), and Miriam Stark, ‘Pre-
Angkorian and Angkorian Cambodia’ (pp. 89–119), in Glover and Bellwood, Southeast Asia
from prehistory to history.
11
Chureekamol Onsuwan Eyre, ‘Social variation and dynamics in metal age and protohistoric
central Thailand: A regional perspective’, Asian Perspectives 49, 1 (2011): 43–84.
5
by c. the fifth century CE there is a clear shift towards a hierarchical settlement pattern around
the site of Chansen, which she sees as indicative of a two-level hierarchy and clearly indicating
the formative stages of state-level society.
Following on from her work, a recently published article by Rispoli and her colleagues
establishes a chronology for central Thailand.12 They emphasise that the appearance of early
states such as Dvāravatī had deep roots that grew out of the prehistoric period. They propose an
eight-hundred-year process of gradual social complexity emerging in central Thailand spanning
the fifth century BCE to the second century CE. They argue that it accelerated over time as
exposure and interaction with India intensified and the process of localisation consequently
increased. In doing so they have provided one framework within which we may study the origins
of these early states.
The characteristics and chronology of the Iron Age of Mainland Southeast Asia are key
factors in understanding how these early states emerge. This period starts around the fifth
century BCE13 and by the mid-to-late Iron Age, trade and contact with India had intensified.
Sites such as Khao Sam Kaeo on the Isthmus of Kra in Thailand for instance, most likely had
artisans from India located there working glass into beads.14 Were sites such as these the first
12
Fiorella Rispoli, Roberto Ciarla and Vincent C. Pigott, ‘Establishing the prehistoric cultural
sequence for the Lopburi region, central Thailand’, Journal of World Prehistory 26, 2 (2013):
101–71; Eyre (‘Social variation and dynamics’) identifies this localism at a regional level in
central Thailand as well.
13
See Higham, this vol.; and Rispoli et al., ‘Establishing the prehistoric’.
14
Bérénice Bellina, ‘Beads, social change and interaction between India and Southeast Asia’,
Antiquity 77, 296 (2003): 285–97; Ian Glover and Bérénice Bellina, ‘Ban Don Ta Phet and Khao
6
examples of India–Southeast Asia interactions? Do they represent locations of cultural
intersection and exchange that established traditions of interaction that then spread further inland
over the course of the Late Iron Age? Charles Higham’s article in this volume, for instance,
argues for an agricultural revolution involving ploughing and permanent, probably irrigated, rice
fields in the Mun River Valley of northeast Thailand by the fifth century CE. These
developments, he argues, underwrote a rapid rise of social elites.
What then were the incentives for these newly formed social elites in terms of adopting
and adapting incoming Indian religions? Royal patronage has often played a key role in the
development and spread of Buddhism. Janice Stargardt’s article in this volume traces the
adoption of Buddhism on both elite and popular levels in early first millennium CE Myanmar.
Incoming Buddhist monks and Brahmans possessed some powerful new tools, such as languages
(Sanskrit and Pali) and a new vocabulary of art and monumental architecture. As Sheldon
Pollock has demonstrated, by the fifth century Sanskrit had moved beyond being a purely sacred
language and had begun to be used in the political and royal arena, primarily to eulogise
leaders.15 The sangha could legitimise the royalty whose patronage they received. Thus the
process becomes mutually beneficial. Nicolas Revire’s article, for instance, looks at the ideology
of merit and how it was utilised by elites in Dvāravatī and Zhenla.
Sam Kaeo: The earliest Indian contacts re-assessed’, in Early interactions between South and
Southeast Asia: Reflections on cross-cultural exchange, ed. Pierre-Yves Manguin, A. Mani and
Geoff Wade (Singapore: ISEAS; New Delhi: Manohar, 2011), pp. 17–46.
15
Sheldon I. Pollock, The language of the gods in the world of men: Sanskrit, culture and power
in premodern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), pp. 123–5.
7
Along with these earthly concerns, leaders who adopted Buddhism or Brahmanism could
also now claim higher moral and ethical status, self-styling themselves as bodhisattvas or
dhammarajas (a king who rules in accordance with the teachings of the Buddha). The ability of
the sangha to declare that a king was a chakravartin (an idealised universal Buddhist monarch)
or dhammaraja would be a powerful tool in the hands of an astute Buddhist monk. In terms of
Buddhism, it appears that over time, reciprocal arrangements developed between royalty, the lay
community, and the sangha which further strengthened the bond between them. Monumental
architecture allowed elites to simultaneously demonstrate both their munificence and their power
while the new artistic modes provided a complex set of iconography which they could also
utilise.
This overlaying of new incoming gods onto pre-existing local cults can be illustrated by
the process that occurred at Wat Phu, in Champasak province, southern Laos. As a result of
contact with incoming Brahmanic belief systems, a mountain overlooking the sanctuary began to
be worshipped as a natural liṅga and subsequently became known as a Liṅgaparvata. Śiva, in his
earliest manifestations in Southeast Asia, often appeared as a liṅga. It seems that prior to the
arrival of Śaivism, an indigenous religion was present at Wat Phu focused on worship of the
mountain’s spirit named Podouli.16 The close association between Śiva as a god of the mountain
and the liṅga, a symbol of the god’s fertilising energy, made it readily adaptable to local cults.
This also had political associations too. A number of examples erected by the ruler Citrasena in
the Dangrek (Dang Raek) Range of northeast Thailand for instance show that liṅga were
16
Kamaleswar Battacharya, ‘The religions of ancient Cambodia’, in Sculpture of Angkor and
ancient Cambodia: Millennium of glory, ed. Helen I. Jessup and Thierry Zéphir (Washington,
D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1997), pp. 36–9.
8
associated with the conquest of territory.17 Using Śaivism to unify local deities, rulers could
therefore exert religious and political control over newly acquired territories.
The articles in this volume move geographically across the region from west to east,
beginning in Myanmar and ending in Cambodia. Janice Stargardt’s article, ‘From the Iron Age to
early cities at Sri Ksetra and Beikthano, Myanmar’, provides new archaeological evidence for
transitions from prehistory in the late first millennium BCE to proto-urban and fully urban
development at Sri Ksetra and Beikthano in the first millennium CE. Early developments in the
technologies of water control, iron production, brick architecture, and ceramics meant this
society was well-placed to incorporate and adapt incoming Indic religious (Buddhism and
Brahmanism) and political ideas. Stargardt draws a clear picture of the transitional period within
Sri Ksetra and Beikthano, dispelling early Indianisation theories and reappraising the nature and
timing of contact between the Pyu and various regions within India.
Moving eastward into central Thailand, Stephen Murphy’s article, ‘The case for protoDvāravatī: A review of the art historic and archaeological evidence’, problematises the overly
rigid divisions and periodisation of Thai archaeology, particularly in regard to the late prehistoric
and early historic period. Building on Andrew Barram and Ian Glover’s argument that the
Dvāravatī period has earlier antecedents than the traditional date of the sixth century,18 he
17
Paul Lavy, ‘As in heaven, so on earth: The politics of Viṣṇu, Śiva and Harihara images in
preangkorian Khmer civilisation’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34, 1 (2003): 26–7; see
also Revire, this vol.
18
Andrew Barram and Ian Glover, ‘Re–thinking Dvaravati’, in From Homo erectus to the living
traditions: Choice of papers from the 11th International Conference of the European Association
9
illustrates how the fourth to fifth centuries in particular provide sufficient evidence to indicate a
proto-Dvāravatī period. It is within this timespan that the nascent traits and characteristics of
what will become Dvāravatī culture are developing. In doing so, his work brings the timing of
the transition from late prehistory to early history more in line with developments taking place
throughout Southeast Asia.
Nicolas Revire’s article, ‘Dvāravatī and Zhenla in the seventh–eighth centuries:
A transregional ritual complex’, challenges the overly strict division of Buddhism and
Brahmanism during first-millennium Thailand and Cambodia. Specifically, he calls into question
the understanding that Dvāravatī is synonymous with Buddhism and Zhenla with Brahmanism.
He shows that Brahmanism was present at key Dvāravatī sites such as U Thong and Nakhon
Pathom. The presence of a liṅga at the former, for instance, may indicate that the ruler was to
some extent identifying himself with the god Śiva, while also actively patronising Buddhism.
Likewise, Buddhism was present to a certain extent in Zhenla. By reappraising the material
culture and inscriptions of these two regions his article emphasises a more hybrid nature of the
religions through the lens of the ideology of merit.
The next two articles move us into northeast Thailand, the region that has seen the most
extensive archaeological research into Southeast Asian prehistory since Wilhelm Solheim
launched his Mekong Valley Salvage Project in 1963–64.19 Charles Higham’s article, ‘State
formation in the Mun Valley’, tackles the transition from the Late Iron Age to the early historic
of Southeast Asian Archaeologists, ed. Jean-Pierre Pautreau et al. (Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 2008),
pp. 175–82.
19
Chester F. Gorman and Wilhelm G. Solheim II, ‘Archaeological salvage program:
Northeastern Thailand — first season’, Journal of the Siam Society 54, 2 (1966): 111–81.
10
period by focusing on the Mun Valley. Based on many years of archaeological research in the
region, he endeavours to illustrate that by the Late Iron Age, communities had became more
hierarchical in societal organisation. This resulted from the introduction of technologies such as
iron, which in turn has a major impact on agriculture and warfare. The exploitation and control
of salt resources may also have been a factor in this increased stratification of society. He posits
that these local leaders may have in turn become the poñ so often referred to in Pre-Angkorian
inscriptions. His article strives to reconcile archaeological, art historical and epigraphic evidence
for this key transitional period in the northeast of Thailand.
Caitlin Evans, Nigel Chang, and Naho Shimizu’s article, ‘Sites, survey, and ceramics:
Settlement patterns of the first to ninth centuries CE within the Upper Mun River Valley,
northeast Thailand’, provides somewhat of a counterpoint to Higham’s article. By again focusing
on the Mun River Valley, their research suggests that the region did not sustain large-scale,
unified polities like those developing in central Thailand (Dvāravatī) and Cambodia (Zhenla). It
serves as a reminder that regional variation exists throughout Mainland Southeast Asia and
cautions us not to over-generalise our understandings of the Iron Age. For instance, they
illustrate that while settlements grew and consolidated in the Late Iron Age, little evidence exists
for settlement pattern reorganisation to support the kind of multi-tiered sociopolitical
organisation using Indic models of statecraft. They further argue that lay communities continued
to maintain their long-term settlement and structure, with a local village or kinship focus, well
into the historic period. The overall picture presented by their research is of a region that, while
transitioning into historic timeframes, retains many of its traditional practices and ways of life.
The region’s population embraced Buddhism and Brahmanism by about the sixth to seventh
11
centuries, but did not unify under a particular polity until the ninth to tenth centuries (when the
Angkorian state incorporated this region as part of its northwestward expansion).
In contrast to the abundance of prehistoric archaeological research in northeast Thailand
over the past five decades, much less attention has been given to this period in neighbouring
Cambodia. Several factors explain this imbalance, from geopolitical history to research priorities:
most Cambodia-focused archaeologists have prioritised the historic Angkorian period. Dougald
O’Reilly and Louise Shewan’s article, ‘Phum Lovea: A moated precursor to the Pura of
Cambodia?’, is therefore a welcome addition to scholarship on early Cambodia. Their
excavations at Phum Lovea, an Iron Age site located in the Greater Angkor area, illustrates many
of the elements characteristic of the transition from late prehistory to early history, including
increasing sociopolitical complexity, intensified inter- and trans-regional mercantile activity,
differential access to resources, social conflict, technological transfer, and developments in site
morphology. While the authors’ acknowledge that this site may be on the fringes of later
developments in state-level Angkor, Phum Lovea does provide one of the only examples to date
of an excavated Iron Age site in this area.
Moving northwards, Piphal Heng’s article, ‘Transition to the Pre-Angkorian period: A
regional perspective from Thala Borivat’, looks at similar developments in the region of Thala
Borivat, a Pre-Angkorian settlement on the banks of the Mekong just south of the Laotian border
in Cambodia. Like Higham, Heng too correlates archaeological and epigraphic evidence in
regard to the Pre-Angkorian elites, particularly the poñ and mratan. His research also indicates
that small scale proto-historic settlements began to become incorporated into large ones during
the fourth to seventh centuries, the latter then becoming major Pre-Angkorian centres.
12
Ian Glover, one of the few archaeologists who have engaged with this period and these
issues throughout his career, concludes the volume with some reflections on the issues and
difficulties of linking the prehistoric and early historic periods. Establishing robust chronological
sequences is one of our greatest obstacles, and he reviews the state of archaeological research
throughout Mainland Southeast Asia. Integrating archaeological, art historical and epigraphic
evidence into coherent scenarios presents additional challenges, which several articles in this
volume address in a variety of ways. Glover highlights the third to sixth centuries CE in
particular as a period of ‘convergence’ where local Southeast Asian societies integrated
influences from South Asia, which over time resulted in them forming their own discrete
identities. Moving forward, Glover calls for more systematic excavations of early historic sites
and greater attention to developing fuller and more accurate absolute chronologies of the first
millennium CE.
Several common strands wend their way through the articles in this special issue of
JSEAS, which address the transitional period from diverse geographic and disciplinary
perspectives. Early first millennium CE proto-historic societies, all of which had the hallmarks of
stratified societies, emerged from the ‘Iron Age’ predecessors of the last centuries BCE and early
centuries CE. As Glover points out in his concluding remarks, these Mainland Southeast Asian
communities actively engaged in trade networks that linked polities within and beyond Southeast
Asia, into the Bay of Bengal and South China Sea respectively, by the third through sixth
centuries CE. Stargardt outlines key developments at Sri Ksetra during the phase; Murphy argues
for a proto-Dvāravatī period in the fourth to fifth centuries; Higham documents social
stratification in the Mun River Valley at this time; and both Higham and Heng argue that the poñ
of later Pre-Angkorian inscriptions descended from Late Iron Age elites. These processes reflect
13
a complex mix of indigenous and exogenous inspiration whose uniquely Southeast Asian
expressions lack direct prototypes in source areas beyond the region.
This special issue’s authors fill critical disciplinary and temporal gaps in our knowledge
of Mainland Southeast Asia’s earliest historical period to move discussions of Early Southeast
Asia forward. Recently acquired archaeological, epigraphic, and art historical research all enrich
our understandings of changes associated with early state formation in the region. Our work is
not yet done; several of our authors, in fact, offer preliminary findings from their ongoing, longterm research projects. Yet this collective work illustrates that organisational changes associated
with ‘Early South East Asia’20 grew out of robust local patterns of emergent stratification and
developed from intra- and inter-regional interaction networks.
It is hoped that the essays in this volume will be of value not only to archaeologists and
art historians but also to the wider field of historical research. During the timespan discussed
herein, many of the cultures were in the process of transitioning from pre-literate to literate
societies and represent the forerunners of the great historic societies of the region. A greater
understanding of the processes that led to these changes should in turn allow for a clearer picture
of how the characteristics of states such as Angkor, Bagan, Champa, Dai Viet, Sukhothai and
Ayutthaya emerged.
20
Following Ralph B. Smith and William Watson, eds., Early South East Asia: Essays in
archaeology, history and historical geography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).
14