Developing Complex Societies in Southeast Asia: Using Archaeological and Historical Evidence

Southeast Asia is today among the most exciting areas for research in historical archaeology. It was the scene of developments ranging from the first world system connecting East Asia to the Mediterranean via the Indian Ocean to the spectacular rise of indigenous states and empires. Interdisciplinary teams with both Southeast Asian and expatriate scholars are bringing the most current archaeological perspectives and methods to bear on these developments. These papers, first presented at a special workshop at the 1997 meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Nashville, but since much discussed and usefully revised, utilize evidence relevant to the rise of hierarchical polities in various parts of Southeast Asia. In some ways, these classes of evidence are incommensurate, and it requires great acumen and sensitivity to use them together in a way that they do not merely test—confirm or disconfirm—each other, but produce constructs of the past richer than can be achieved with either body of evidence alone. One class of evidence, studied carefully since late in the nineteenth century in Southeast Asia, are the documents which record written messages in linguistic form, and often closely associate artistic representations.