The Boundaries of a Trans-national Survey of Asian Architectural and Urban History

In constructing a survey of the architectural and urban history of traditional Asia, how would one define the edges of the region under study? This paper will argue that such a study can reasonably exclude Western Asia (also referred to as the Middle East, or the Ancient Orient), modern Siberia, much of the Indonesian Archipelago, the Philippines, Australia, and most of the Pacific Islands for various reasons, including geographic isolation, climate, and more reasonable inclusion in another architectural historical cluster. This is in part due to the definition of the core of such a study, and to the nature of the various edges.