 Welcome to our workshop today, which as you all know, no doubt is titled Archaeology at a Crossroads, New Approaches to Understanding Early Southeast Asian Polities. I also want to open with thanking our funders of course and our hosts, so the Alpha Wood Foundation-funded Southeast Asian Art Academic Program at SOAS and the SOAS Center for Southeast Asian Studies. You will see our branding on either side here. I also want to take this opportunity to thank one of our most ardent supporters, who is Professor Ian Glover, who many of you know and who many of you know also passed away quite recently. This is the first SOAS Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology research event, or event through the Center for Southeast Asian Studies that will be held after Ian's passing, and this is the first in my memory that Ian Glover has not attended actually. So I think he will be present in all of our minds, particularly as we talk about this, the question of archaeology is a privileged site of knowledge of early Southeast Asian polities. So I just wanted to allow us all to recall that and to remember him. Now before introducing our speakers and our respondents, I also want to set today's event in a broader shall we say institutional but also disciplinary context. 2017-18 is the present academic year, marks the fourth year of the Southeast Asian Art Academic Program at SOAS, and it's the fourth year of a bespoke Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology research event series run by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and funded by SAP as it is called in its acronym. And so it is the fourth in a series which is explicitly devoted to the remit of SAP, which I will give to you to give you a sense of the context. The remit is Southeast Asian, Buddhist, and Hindu art and architecture from ancient to pre-modern times, including study of the built environment, sculpture, painting, illustrated text, textiles, and other tangible or visual representations along with the written word related to these and archaeological museum and cultural heritage studies. So over the past few years we've developed a two-pronged approach to this Center for Southeast Asian Studies research event program, which is funded through the SAP program itself. First of all, in the teaching terms, the very busy teaching terms of terms one and two, we host individual research talks by scholars external to this institution, external to SOAS. This series of talks is integrated into the regular weekly series of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, where we indeed invite people every Wednesday to speak. So I hope that all of you are regular attendees of that program. Then in term three, where we are now, we host the more substantial research workshops in which we bring together multiple scholars, trying to put people into conversation on selective themes which we see to be a particular import in the field of Southeast Asian art and archaeology today. So first, we aim quite simply to promote research in this field with a particular orientation to supporting Southeast Asian scholars in developing and disseminating research. And secondly, we aim to examine in a more synthetic fashion, a more critically synthetic fashion, we aim to examine the state of the field of Southeast Asian art and archaeology. And in this, we have developed a particular orientation to supporting reflection on methodologies in the field, past and present. And future, shall I say. The collaborative workshop format is designed especially to enable us to advance in some fashion towards this latter goal. More broadly, I would say that with this two-pronged research, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies program seeks to align the SAP research remit, which I just gave to you, with its more practical dimensions of enabling development of work on the region by regional scholars, without nonetheless essentializing the latter. That is, we aim to recognize, detect, explore specificity of perspectives of Southeast Asian scholars while all the while recognizing the international nature of what we call Southeast Asian scholars today, as well as the necessity and the complex nature of international exchange at the heart of the SAP remit. So that's a mouthful, but that's where we're headed. Another way of thinking about this or to sort of take a step a bit further back, is that we also to align, we also aim to align the SAP specific work with the SOAS institutional remit of decolonizing scholarship in and on what we still seem to call here at least our regions at large. So one last note on the means by which we seek to reach these indeed lofty goals. So the SAP Research and Publications group is currently launching two publishing initiatives. In the first instance, a postgraduate research journal, which is called Brattu. It's co-edited by a group of SOAS PhD students. I will name them and thank them publicly here. I also would like just to take the opportunity to tell all of you that we're just launching it now. We have a web page, we have information on the journal and the first call for papers and we have that information available here. So please feel free to come up and take this. We are also launching a book series with National University of Singapore Press. The book series is entitled Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology, Hindu Buddhist Traditions. These are not venues for self-publishing, may I say. I'm not looking to channel everything that we're doing here into our own publication series. We hope that these will work together, but these are forum. We consider each of these initiatives as a specific forum for supporting the development of research and particularly, as one would think, the dissemination of research in this field. So now let me turn to our speakers. I have to turn into different directions today. First of all, to thank both of you for your enthusiasm and accepting to contribute your time and your knowledge today. We very much appreciate it. Before I say a little bit about you, I'll say a little bit about the event itself. The workshop today starts with the premise that the expansion of archaeological work in mainland Southeast Asia over recent decades has nurtured increasingly refined understandings of the emergence of political, cultural entities in their interactions across the broader Southeast East and South Asian region. An increasing amount of intellectual attention is being paid to interpretive frameworks, and this is likewise contributed to critiques of the colonialist and the nationalist dimensions of much of the extant work on early Southeast Asian polities. And it's making way for explorations, for new kinds of explorations of networks of shared practices and objectives, and as well as exploration of competing claims to territorial, political, and cultural hegemonies then and now again. So our two speakers today are both making an incisive contribution to the development of this area of work in Southeast Asian art and archaeology. So Dr. Sam Nunsuk, who will be our first speaker, he currently holds the post of senior specialist at Spafa Insimio in Bangkok. So the Southeast Asian ministers of education, organization, regional center for archaeology and fine arts, Bangkok, all of you probably know Spafa. He is an archaeologist and an art historian specializing in Peninsula Thailand and Maritime Southeast Asia. His talk will examine the long history of Peninsula Thailand, exploring new perspectives on the early socio-cultural network of the principalities around the Gulf of Siam. Now I'm here to promote not just my own institution, but also Sam's work. So we have a book which is closely related to the work that he will be presenting today, and which Sam Nunsuk has edited. And we actually do have a few copies for sale. For those of you who are interested, please do speak with our speaker during the break. Okay. Dr. Nang Kim is our second speaker. He is currently associate professor at the Department of Archaeology, the University of Wisconsin at Madison in the U.S. He is an anthropological archaeologist interested in socio-political complexity, early forms of cities and the relationship between modern politics, cultural heritage, and the archaeological record. He is also interested in the evolution and cultural context of organized violence and warfare. I won't be promoting any specific book, but there are a number that I think many of you are already familiar with, but a recent publication also on that particular topic. Much of his recent research has been geographically focused on East and Southeast Asia, and he currently conducts archaeological field work in Vietnam at the Koloa settlement of the Red River Delta. And I believe we will be hearing about that research today. I'm also very happy to be able to welcome and to thank also our panel of respondents today. Our respondents include Pipat Kachay-Jun, Ben Rayford, and Dr. Pamela Kori. So Pipat Kachay-Jun is a lecturer in the history faculty of Tamasat University, Bangkok. He completed his MA in Archaeology at SOAS with Alphawood Support a few years ago and immediately received a Thai government scholarship in order to pursue a PhD also here at SOAS. He's currently in his first PhD year and he's working on a project entitled Deconstructing the Historical Meta-Narrative of Thai Art and Archaeology, The Emergence of Artistic Styles in the Priyayutia Period or Utong Art. This is a project which is also fundamentally concerned with the interpretation of archaeological and art historical data at the heart of histories of early Southeast Asian polity and narratives of national origins. Ben Rayford also completed an MA in History of Art and Archaeology at SOAS before embarking on the PhD. He is currently in his final year and due to submit very shortly a substantial dissertation entitled Seeing the Foreigner in Art from Early Southeast Asia circa 100 BCE to circa 800 of the common era. Based on the exhaustive, I think, compilation and meticulous formal and technical analysis materials which have long been deemed by art historians and archaeologists to represent foreigners in early Southeast Asian art, Ben's dissertation is otherwise concerned with perceptions and projections of origins, borders, distances, and localities as possibly revealed in the art itself but also as revealed in the art historiographical record on these materials developed from the colonial period to the present day. Dr. Pamela Corey is a lecturer in Southeast Asian art at SOAS. Combining the best of area studies and art historical training, Dr. Corey is a specialist of modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art with a deep historical knowledge of the Southeast Asian region at large, a sustained specialist focus on Vietnam and Cambodia, and an incisive theoretical outlook on the key questions that we will be discussing today, namely the roles of art in Southeast Asian experiences of origins, the place of art and archaeology in the construction of Southeast Asian polity, and the methods by which we art historians and archaeologists of Southeast Asia have shaped and continue to shape understandings of the Southeast Asian region. Lastly, I want to apologize, I want to convey apologies to all of you from Suyen Nguyen who due to personal reasons was unable to complete field work in Vietnam as originally planned in order to make it back to London to participate in our workshop today so she will not be joining us on our panel. So let me tell you about the format of today. I understand that a number of the students and even non-students have other obligations need to get out to go to class, come back in, that sort of thing. Do not worry you can come and go, not exactly as you please, but that is possible. But let me tell you about our breaks so that you might be able to time your own time accordingly. So our first speaker will speak for approximately 45 minutes. We'll have a short five-minute stretch your legs break, then we will move to our second speaker, who will also speak for about 45 minutes, then we will have a 15-minute break. So that brings us to just around four o'clock, okay? We'll have a 15-minute break. We'll then reset up the room as we can in order to have our panel discussion. Each of our respondents will be giving something like a 10-minute response to the papers, then our speakers will respond to them, and then we open up the floor for questions. Afterwards, we have a reception in the room next door. So please do make it a marathon day and stay all the way through if you possibly can. We'd be very happy to also have the informal, the opportunity to speak together informally, and we are very lucky to have all of these people together in one room, so I hope that you will all be able to take the opportunity to speak with people on a one-on-one basis as well. So I think that's it from me. Please join me in welcoming our speakers and our respondents today, and we will move to Dr. Munsil. Thank you. So first of all, I would like to thank Professor Ashley Thompson for inviting me here, and I would like to thank Pam, my own friend, Ben, my own friend, Professor Naam, and Dhaki Pat as well. It has been a long time since I see him at Silapakon University. We have only one archaeology school in Thailand, and both of us went there in different years, one year apart. So today I would like to introduce you to a region that I worked on for a long time. It was one there as well. The first, I mean, I would like to talk about the objectives of today's talk. I will be quick because we have 45 minutes. The first objective is to explore the socio-political, I mean socio-cultural and artistic development, and the social roles of artworks in Peninsula Thailand. I will use archaeological record as well because I have my background in archaeology, anthropology, and artistry. So it will be interdisciplinary approach in nature of this talk. And the second one is to link this area and its art to the Gulf of Siam and maritime Southeast Asia. I will propose that for the, I mean, the third one. I will propose that the Gulf of Siam was an important neighborhood of water and half of trade and artistic development at the end. So first, when we talk about Southeast Asia, when we talk about Peninsula Thailand, we have to talk about geography first because geography is a twin sister of the art. I mean, this area captured almost all of the artistic traditions in maritime Asia because of its geography. It's an escapable fact of geography that the maritime trade will have to pass through this area more or less. I mean, this is the area I work on and then this is the this more or less the South China Sea that all the traffic from west to east and east to west have to pass through more or less. We have known off the Silk Road before but I mean scholars in the past focus, I mean the public as well, focus on the overland route not the the spice route down below. But what I'm saying is that these two routes connected to the world in the ancient time and they both equally important and my work is focusing on the southern road sometime we call it maritime Silk Road sometime we call it spice road and these kinds of interaction of course has to depends on the monsoon winds. Monsoon winds is a seasonal winds. We have to take that into account as well in terms of geography because you know before the engines before the world with the the the machine the the chips all of the chips in the world were using the wind power. So these kinds of interaction these kinds of connection were dictated by the wind the monsoon winds that that come and goes in a certain ways and these monsoon winds link the region all together. We call it monsoon Asia. Pomus called it monsoon Asia. He was the first to talk about this and in this monsoon Asia people share not just the wind patterns the the the geography I mean the the climate but also the kinds of topography, the kinds of environment, the natural the tropical kinds of areas, the patterns of agriculture I mean it dictates the patterns of life the circle of life and also influence the kinds of religions as well. Pomus called it monsoon Asia and monsoon religion. Monsoon religion would be I mean would be emphasized on the on the on the power of the soil the earth god he called it. So in this area I mean tied together by the wind pattern tied together by the geography the landmass the the sea routes and and the navigational patterns and also the belief system as well. The people come and go and then they have the same kinds of chair belief system based on the earth god based on the fertility based on the power of the soil coming up and and express itself in the in terms of big trees, boulders, rocks and so on and so forth. We have examples of that all around Southeast Asia and also monsoon Asia. From India now to southern China including Southeast Asia as well. So that kind of chair belief system was the basis of Hinduism Buddhism I mean now Buddhism reject that you know we are not part of animism but it's actually have the the basis in animism too. So all these made Southeast Asian people received I believe these kinds of you know foreign like foreign religions like Buddhism and Hinduism quite quite readily because it's the same I mean they have the same basis. They don't look at these kinds of foreign religions as something foreign it's something that they have chair the the the same foundations with already and we don't look at it as something that we received. It's not something that the Indian people came into this area and give it to us like the kinds of Indianization concept anymore. We look at it as a localization process that the Southeast Asian people select these kinds of religions and belief system and arts to the area to serve our needs to serve the people the indigenous needs to answer some of the questions that we have to to fulfill some of the requirements that we face at that time. Looking more closely to this area you see clearly hopefully this is Peninsula Thailand. Peninsula Thailand can be separated from the Malay from the lower part of the Malay Peninsula or Peninsula Malaysia by the geography as well. Peninsula Thailand or we call the estimates of Southeast Asia sometimes we call it the Eastman track sometimes because it's a it's a path that people can cross from one coast to the next quite easily I mean more easily than than the lower part of the peninsula because the lower part you can see is forest is heavily forested and mountainous. It's quite difficult to cross. The last possible route would be from the Bujang Wali in Kedah Malaysia to Yorang in Patani in Thailand. So this is part of Thailand nowadays and that's part of Malaysia nowadays separated by this mountain range called Sankara Kiwi. However I mean the main point that I want to talk to you is that this area has mountains as backbone and then with mountain as backbone you of course have small water short rivers on both sides that people can use to use these short rivers to cross from one side to the next using this one and then cross just a bit of the mountain range the top the the the reach of the mountain range to the next and then take another river down to another coast. So this geography allows this area to become part of the crossroads in the world civilizations in the world navigational expeditions in the ancient times probably before the stress of Malacca even used at the time. So we have the most ancient site on both sides of the peninsula and these sites were the most ancient probably I mean the earliest trading what do you call it trading stations or some of them would call it like port cities even it's huge site like Kaosamke or Pokotong I will talk about that a bit as well later on but they're on both sides and the earliest one that we have as an example in Southeast Asia another one would be Orkele and and the race in this we have other sites as well but not as big as the ones that we have in Peninsula Thailand. So this is a chronology in Peninsula Thailand I will not talk a lot about this but I will focus on the Irish the earliest period and the late history period from around 500 BCE the first item that we would like to talk about is the bronze drums Professor Namke would probably talk about that as well later on but I will touch on a bit the bronze drums that we have here I mean my professor Professor Stanley Jeyokono at Cornell believe that is it reflects some kinds of a common vision because when you look at the distribution of these bronze drums that's an example from Kaosamke and Chumpon it's a small one but we have the big one too some of them as big as one meter in diameter so it's monumental in size and look at the concentration of these bronze drums we can see that in the Gulf of Siam we have this concentration it's like it's it was spread all over the place around the Gulf of Siam as well not on the Andaman course not not that we have it in other sites too but we have seen the concentration of these in this particular area too so we may have seen a kind of a neighborhood that you know tied together you know they were probably caught up together in a shared vision looking and listening to the bronze drums as well and when we talk about bronze drums in the past people would focus on you know looking at this as a kind of press teach goods some kinds of things to express the power of the chief some kinds of things to show the status of the leader but people I mean scholars have not talked a lot about the meanings of it I mean the cosmic religion is it something that we share in commons in the past something related to the skies with the iconography of it and we can touch on that a bit here so when you look at the bronze drums this is a kind of you know interpretation it's not the it's not the fact but I mean we if if if we cannot imagine I mean the world is not like it's not so a kind of a thoughtful place to live it but I would like to exercise these kinds of you know a kind of imagination of it when you look at this you can see that the bronze drums were separate into three parts one two three for example this can be represented as a the three party the the the the tried the three divisions of the cosmology of the indigenous cosmology that I will talk about it too and when you look at the timpani of it you see the stars or the sun in the middle expanding all around with the rings of happenings with the things going on and then at the end you have the frogs so on and so forth so this looks like a kind of cosmology a cosmic legion that you know you believe you look at the stars and the sun and this is just one of the iconography that reflect the indigenous perception that we have other examples all around I mean in the modern world as well in ethnic arts and in indigenous communities with the house and all that looking in the house for example from Sulawesi you can see the three parts of the houses the of the constructions the first part would be dedicated to the ancestral gods the ancestors the dead one that we have the the gods the deities from above you know the sky the birds and all that the second part is the place where you live for the human the living ones and the low one is for the the upper world deities as well so these three parts of the chronologies can be I mean it's the part of the cosmology can be represented or can be seen as well in the bronze ground too so my point is that when we try to link everything together we can see that the artworks has functions it's not just for you to look at at the museum but with when you have to understand the artwork you have to look at it in the society you have to put it back into the context and you you of course exercise your imagination based on the evidence that you have link other things together you know using interdisciplinary approach and when you look at the anthropologist co-evidence you can see that the drums was meant to be beaten to be heard to send the sound to transcend this sound to the upper world to the upper realm it's not just something that you look at as well it's too listening and maybe it's something to release the stress and the discomfort that you have in the ion age period and what happened in the ion age period early urbanization quite stressful world in Southeast Asia and anywhere in the world when you have early urbanization you have strangers next to you right when you have you have noises in your neighborhood you have noises next to your house and your strangers you know in your communities before that you probably you know based on the one on one or the face to face relationship with your neighbors or with your friends in the community with your relatives everyone know each other but in the early urbanization the world changed a lot and maybe when we have this appearance of the bronze drums it may be related to that to to transcend the world to to release the discomfort something my professor would stand a corner would call it like is this something like the concert hall that we have today that you go to the concert hall and then it's transcend you to to another world so that's the power of the sound associated with the artwork and also associated with the societies you know Jews in the rituals not just something to to express or to show the status of the the leaders only by the way that's an example from Junan which is more elaborate they have a kind of the flag tympanum type as well but they can be more elaborate than the ones that we have in Southeast Asia and in Southeast Asia in peninsula Thailand we know now that the bronze drums were made not in one place not just in southern China or northern Vietnam but in in Thailand as well in part of eastern area which is the north eastern Thailand we don't have the evidence of the the bronze drum making in the south yet but in terms of a chronicle free I mean they they are different from the ones that we have from Vietnam or from other places so maybe they were made in in other places too like in peninsula Thailand as well and the casting of the drums itself would be a kind of high theater in the past it's not it's nothing normal it's the things that would amaze people a lot would be like a kind of the things that you can think on and think with it's very elaborate it's a power of the artwork that was embedded in not just the forms of the the iconography of it but the process of making it that give it power so I use an example in Thailand when we have the casting of the Buddha images it's a high theater you can see that lots of people are gathering around in that event and the actual bird of the drums would be the moment of high theater when you break the mold out and you see it you polish it that kind of things so artworks have of course functions and they have the power of it and that power would come from the process as well and the power of the artworks of course is not just something passive it has an agency like the ones that we have in Thailand you can see that the artworks in the bronze tattoos that we have we have eye-opening ceremony for the Buddha image that we made and that make it you know give agency to the artworks you go to the temple not just to see the Buddha statues or to see the god the Krishna for example in Hinduism but you want to go there to be seen by the gods as well that's the power of the god to give the blessing to you so it has an agency in the sense and i refer this to Alfred Gales would talk about the the agency of artwork is an object as an agency you know it has efficacy with the appearance you know by the physical quality of it by the complex appearance did the case is sophisticated technology involved in the making of it and by the representations as well like it represents gods it represents the king or it represents the deities it represents the Buddha or not or ancestors in that sense and talking about standard corner one of the work about mythology is so important and and he studied chanti suku in eastern Java dated to around 11th century so this uh this relief show that the smith would have magical power they were seen they were seen not just a craftsman who worked something for you for for like for you your utilitarian use but it's a power process it's a power making it in this picture you can see pima holding the creed the creed is a ceremonial dagger in japanese and balinese and malay cultures holding it's with bare hands with kinesia kinesia who can the god in hinduism who can transcend both worlds you know the cause of the the underworld as well so being the master of the process and being the master of the transformation of materials the transformation of matters from the crude all to beautiful creeps like this the smiths were also seen as a master of spiritual salvation who can transcend the soul of the dead to the upper realm because he can transform this matter the all the metals so he can transform the soul of the the dead as well so it's kind of analogy and he has a beautiful magical power in that sense too so enough with the with the artworks now i will talk more about archaeology and artworks all together with my more of my work in southern thailand with that in mind so this is peninsular thailand looking from google earth i will talk about this site buko thong for some girl which is probably the earliest site excavated by scholars from the finance department of thailand and also by the french institution by brenice berlina at khao sam keo too so buko thong the first site in terms of geography this site buko thong is very complex i mean not just one production site but there there are many sites around the ancient probably and the ancient harbor protected by the island here people selected this site because it's already protected you know by the islands and very suitable to to to conduct their operations in terms of you know the port harbor the the living of the craft people the living of the of of the the immigrants probably from india as well so in this area were well selected and we don't see any modification of the area quite a lot in now probably the future we can see it more but the the sites were destroyed heavily by the looting because of the bees like these they are beautiful and they were pricey and when something is expensive the the looters will loot it and then sell it to the black market and so the site would more or less like destroyed but my point is that it's very complex and it has little size around the ancient bay and in the size we don't see only the finished products the finished beads but we see also the the debris is the production debris the process of it something that's unfinished raw materials glass so these sites were factory more or less and it's huge i mean it's not just a some craft people making things but we have seen this quite a lot so it's more like a factory size production center in the past but they were using indian technology franis berlina the french scholar proved that is is the indian technology that has been uh using to make these kinds of beads the question is why do they have to come here my answer i mean part of the answer is that perhaps they came here to make these goods and not to sell it back to india they sell it here in south east asia because in south china see the principalities the communists around here were the huge market for them that's why the agency is here that draw them here they just not come here just to produce and get the raw materials they didn't send it back no because the requirements for them to venture apart you know across the bay of bengal is because of the importance of this area the importance of the gulf of syam the communities around the gulf of syam and the communities around south china see okay so because again it's not the site and the products are the same look very beautiful beautifully made with all kinds of beads glass beads stone beads um can be dated to around the fourth fifth of i mean 400 500 400 bce so it's it's one of the earliest site in in production size of beads and ornaments in south east asia and these beads were probably traded to guangzhou even south china see we have seen these in the hand tombs in guangzhou the same type in the same beads and probably made in kosong gale or somewhere in the south china see and then traded up to guangzhou um so some of them were believed to represent the early symbols in buddhism and hinduism but probably buddhism we have seen some example from parahut with the yakshi wearing these kinds of beads and it's tri retina which is the symbols of the three jewels the three gems in in buddhism and some of them were made uh using the indo roman art so probably made in india uh but you know it's it's based on the roman prototypes we have seen this in ko luk pa and we have seen this in in tachana as well in in southern thailand i'll show you the site later so um the world world were connected in in in around the first centuries bce i mean the late centuries bce to the early century c e the items from the roman world the items from the the the merteranian the red sea can make their way to service asia and to orgel to i mean to vietnam as well uh when the fire department the government of thailand survey the site uh the survey the caves in southeastern thailand in peninsular thailand uh they have seen these beads around i mean in the caves and all that so it means that but but only the finished products in the caves it means that the communities around in that area were like traded and give it i mean um were the the con consumers the customers of these production sites why why do they need these beautiful things they just not conceived probably as beautiful things but something to show their status too i mean in the world without these beads before that the the distinction between people the appearances were were not so quite clear but with these i mean this is a the etiological concept of our prestige goods we we have a lot of literature about that but with these goods uh the society can uh can see more clearly about the status of the people and then the leaders i mean the upper class the elites can distinguish themselves more and more through the appearance through the objects through the artworks you know from the race of the communities so that's that's part of the the the complex society progression the roman items we have seen it in okia like this one too is a kind of your artworks that come and go so this again uh kind of link it to the the gulf uh neighborhood from southern thailand to the mekong delta to southern vietnam to okia i will show you the map later on in a bit but first before we show you the map we can see that the vicino images as well this is the earliest vicino images the earliest stone sculptures in southeast asia perhaps i mean vicino images from southeast asia this is the earliest start of it four of them were found in peninsular thailand that one is the earliest one that's the progression three of them from the country tomorrow another province and that one is uh is is from surat hane but they are all from the east coast of peninsular thailand and only one from okia and this one were quite derived from the kinds of prototypes from from the the the ones that we have in southern thailand in the country not and surat hane it shows again that the trade patterns or the neighborhoods were dictated by the wind patterns the communities in the eastern coast of peninsular thailand here can take the the south west monsoon wind up directly to the mekong delta and then they can trade it up to the head of the gulf of rousin through thailand and then dial back again so it's a triangular patterns of trade and this was confirmed by the ethnographic data from the male male sailor marina that traded south with fish you know dry fish and then go on and so forth not long ago so this was already like the the trade patterns that have the evidence in ethnographic data and also the evidence that i show you before show that the connection between the eastern coast of the of peninsular thailand and orca around here were quite clear and we look at the history of it we we know about funan which is one of the earliest state or like important kingdoms in in southeast asia in the mekong delta here around that area uncle burai orca were part of that funan things and funan was mentioned like in the fifth to sixth century it was mentioned that i mean from the third century it was mentioned that the king of funan kothinya came from the male peninsular probably from india and then via male peninsular up to here to the mekong delta and in the sixth century probably the chinese text mentioned that tune soon say guys we need that is probably from there uh were part of the funan we don't know is it like a part of the funan as vessel or part of the funan as a partner but but it's part of the funan probably is a kind of netwood as well so these things willing to get in the gulf since the funan period and my excavation and my my archaeological expedition with the the thermo luminescence dating confirm that the evidence of the tries from from southern thailand some part of uh of the size in nakwansi tamarad can be dated to around the fifth century as well so contemporaneous with the ones that that we have from funan you're my person right funan uh yes this is a closer map uh funan we have orca see hit this map so orca is here and that's uncorporated right here i work in uncorporated for one summer so i know that's the the site is so extensive is huge it's probably the capital city of funan and orca was another major port of funan as well but they were linked by carnell system cut through very straight you can distinguish the carnells from the rivers immediately by the the alignment of it it's not straight the river have to go like that so you have to make it waste through in the delta but the the carnells can cut through like that so it's a it's a communication channel that we don't have it in penicillin thailand because we don't dig carnells in penicillin thailand we we don't see that kind of um i mean construction because of the geography are different the delta is so vast and they have to uh you know it's not very convenient to walk because it's so wet so digging a carnell would be one of the best solution to connect the centers to centers like from angobu right here they can dig a carnell to orca and then from orca to the kathab sire they don't go to the west they don't look to like central vietnam or or place to open sea on the west on the east sorry but they look to the west they dig the they dug the carnell down to the kathab sire so everything is channeled through this neighborhood to to this area access to the Gulf uh back to penicillin thailand you can see the map here that's the area that i excavated i mean part of that for you uh i excavated 59 sites i mean 59 trenches around here that's the the the dots of the size that i mapped it uh we can see that the cause of the landscape of this area were the ancient beach riches ancient beach riches will form 6000 years ago they were formed when we have the the maximum transportation of seawater coming up and then accumulate the the sand and when it it you know went down you can still see the the beach which and people settle on that beach which since the iron age period because it was suitable for communities uh it's not flooded in the rainy season easily so people in the prehistoric period would settle on that beach rich that's two of them and people not just long ago 50 years ago would use the beach rich as the highway a kind of highway to walk from the north to the south before the road was constructed because it's very difficult to walk somewhere else you have to cross the river you have to cross the rice fields you have to cross the forest wetlands and all that is no it's not easy but if you use the the beach rich you can walk easily from north to south so these beach rich tight communities together in this area and the rivers of course tight communities from the mountains to the sea from different ecosystems as well and the mountains were so important for the the emergence of the kingdom called Tambolinga which is the kingdom mentioned already in the second third century CE and they have lots of evidence from the fifth century to the 13th century so it's quite a very big kingdom in that time with lots of evidence and my dissertation was focused on that so the mountains was very important because it's the source of the wealth like the source of the forest products the all the kinds of aromatic woods and all the goods that the chinese people and the forest people came for to this area came to this area for the chinese came to this area not for rice not to buy cattle but they want these aromatic woods and the mountains with the source of that it's like the bank in your backyard and this provide a very good opportunity for this area to have a kind of develop a kind of complex kingdoms to serve that kind of environment the making of Tambolinga was based on the international trade as well in the fifth sixth century so this is the heartland i grouped them together you know the beach rich and it's probably covering around one thousand two hundred and seventy five square kilometers and all that is a heartland that is a pocket here and i look at one group in particular in this area cluster two because when you look at the map you see what was going on there uh in the late prehistoric period in the iron age period in about the fifth century around five hundred BCE people or communities were usually on the beach which but around the fifth century CE people started to move to the flood plain to the lowland probably for agriculture for wheat rice cultivation but have no proof of that so i look at this site in particular and try to map out the the area suitable for wheat rice cultivation and all the size all the the tries that we have the evidence of that periods of time were very close to that kinds of wheat rice cultivation and when i look at the soil type they all look very suitable for the wheat rice cultivation so maybe wheat rice cultivation was part of the the the basis for the emergence and for the development of the early kingdoms the early kingdoms have to eat too you know you have to look at the agriculture basis and if you walk there these are the things that you will see these kinds of architectural parts made of stone the tries were made in two halves of course one is the bricks and stones like this and the upper part were gone because they were made of perishable materials like the pores the the wooden poles and the tash roof and they were gone so if you walk in the side you see these kinds of things and in a cobra you see these kinds of things too i mean it's kind of the same architectural tradition so these are the things that you you see the most we call it the pillar base so you have the stone pillar base and then you have the wooden pillars on top of it it will protect the wooden pillars from insects from from the wetness from the the moisture that would destroy the pillar too and it will give the the sturdiness to the architecture to the shrine and some architectural parts of course will found in the people's backyards found in the people's house like they use it to decorate their backyards with the the seed and the tables and very comfy this and you'll be part of someone's backyard too in the temple you can see that the pillars were used to decorate the temples and the planters in the temples you know made of yoni from the past this is yoni yoni to the base for the chivalinga but the temple uses as planter it's it's yeah it's good because they don't destroy it some temples destroy it and that's sad but some temple would keep it and then put it in a part of decorations of their gardens which is which is okay and we can see clearly as art historian that the artworks change meanings all the time you know not just it that it can stay as yoni forever it's changed and this is the the the other part of the you know the life of the artwork the social life of the artworks and kaoka which is one very important site in that area in the Kansi Tomeran that I show you this is the map that I work with the science the scientists to make it's north to south the alignment is from north to south and it's probably around one kilometer long on the bridge of this small hill you can see a series of shrines and this is the biggest one that we have so of course we don't have the the roof anymore because it were made of tash roof with the wooden post so it's gone we have the bricks look like that it's very primitive looking with stone architectures inside and this the this is the yoni the class of special yoni that we have only two of them have high base like that very very special and a map we work with the scientists to to map out the whole thing and we can look at this in a 3d form in the lab later on is for the future generation as well in the northern part of it in the northern most part of the the site of the hill we have seen the area with no brick at all only stones and on top of that platforming of stone we see a huge border carved in a form of linga so this make it a kind of linga parvata or the mountain linga we have seen example from what pool in salt allows we have seen the example in orgel perhaps we have seen the example in central vietnam as well so this probably another one of that but this is probably the only one with the carving because those those three that i i mentioned were not carved i mean were natural natural borders sticking out from the the mountains but why is it important linga parvata it was considered to be the most sacred thing one of the most sacred things that that Hinduism can have because the the god Shiva shows to present himself in the landscape it's not man-made it's a it's naturally made made by the god he showed himself to you and this surrounding that is a young forest probably i mean in the past this was permanently seen from the sea or from the the mountain as well back to this i forgot to mention that these try face waste which is way unusual it can face east too but face east to the sea but it face waste to the mountain it but i i believe that it face waste because of the importance of the because of the importance of the mountain as part of the kinds of natural linga you know back and then as part of the the source of wealth that that the kingdoms would have from the aromatic woods so i'm coming to the last one five minutes okay good these are the cities in the currency tomorrow and we have two cities together one is not constantly in the north and probably in city in the south you probably can guess why the cities look like that because it was formed it was settled it was created on the beach ridge and the beach ridge is like that it's long so the cities cannot expand in the east west it cannot have perfect square kinds of shape it has to be long it has to follow the the contour of the land and this is a great stupa here we believe that the great stupa you know for a long time were constructed were first constructed in the 13th century using the we talk about the great stupa more but my excavation i I excavated in in that cities uh this is the well we excavated two by two trench two by two pit and we are so lucky to have the well right in middle of our our pit one of that and yeah that's that's the the complete one and the things that came out of that is kinds of you know the 13th century celadon like that and and from another side we have the persian brasilis where from the 9th century to it's very international i mean in terms of trade and the cities this is a province city this is all the size that I excavated with the dots here and we can see that the the areas around here have the northern tsunami dated from the 11th century but the area in the north in in the city itself have late southern tsunami so it's it's like people move from south north when the city was founded probably around the 13th century and some of the the potteries were very very interesting like this one is local candy ceramic we call it fireplace wear and fireplace wear will wear widespread i mean they were found in the philippines even they were found in in Indonesia in kutashina in sumatra and we believe that there are two sources of the of the pottery making one is from southern thailand another one is from java but uh my i mean southern thailand in in koc more in inserting canister guard excavated that site but my uh excavation proved that the consulate is another site of production too and it was not replaced by the chinese ceramics because it keeps the water cool in the hot environment so the chinese ceramic cannot keep the water cool in the in the in the climate so that's why these things survive i mean this form of candy survive too because it's it's used in the rituals of course in the buddhist and hindu rituals and also in the mundane um in uh mundane context as well my excavation proved that in the mundane context like the whales itself have these kinds of uh uh ceramics as well so it's not just used in the ritual context but it was like using in the in the in the daily life context too the christupa we believe in the past that it was made you know used most ways was uh created based on the the langan saku of art but the now the excavation proved that it was dated the base itself i mean the bricks from the from the base from the foundation of the stupa can be dated to around the ninth century so it's what before that and if you look at it you can see that the main stupa was surrounded by a kind of a series of smaller stupas and that's a series of smaller stupa form a kind of mandala and that reminded us of the japanese mandala which is very very unique to the to the japanese art as well like robudo you see the main stupa surrounded by uh smaller stupa in the forms of mandala in the forms of the the sacred circles sometimes square like brahmanan even though it's hindu context already but in java people still have the main shrine surrounded by a series of late i mean three layers of of smaller shrines so panuap has uh compared this uh shape of the stupa and it can be compared to the one that we have in robudo in java and then it can be compared as well to uh to the pala art and that linked us to the legal inscription which uh say that the the area in the corn or the area east of the of peninsular thailand uh were part of the part of the network called cvchaya and it's part of the influence i mean the the influence sphere of the chaelendra from java and then later on they moved to to sumatra too so it was related to cvchaya more or less in terms of architecture and that's the first thing that we have now so in terms of art artifacts we can see that is uh mahayana buddhism was part of the cultural history of of peninsular thailand and of the quansil but in the way i mean it's it's not uh um it's not just the place that we see now as part of the terawata terawata buddhism world but in the past it was part of the mahayana buddhism network as well so conclusion so peninsular thailand was a maritime crossroad of course and uh nowadays thai the thai government have a very large project called eec to bring this gulf of syam to be the hub again of southeast asia and probably of asia so the hub became very important once again and and these kinds of story can be i mean can can help uh the kinds of policy making process too if we put it correctly um so my last slide is about you know we artistry and all the things that we talk today will be related to the future too it has a the modern relevance thank you well thank you very much um it's it's really privileged to be i want to thank the center and ashley and pamela and our respondents my fellow speaker um i'm very happy to be able to to share with you some of the research that we've been conducting uh at the site of go law located in northern vietnam and actually i'm very glad you mentioned ian as well um he was very instrumental in helping me to get started with my research in vietnam and his loss is felt by many many of us um but what i'd like to talk about would be some of the ongoing field investigations at this site and how some of our interpretations intersect with contemporary societies with some of our different agendas in terms of building history particularly for vietnam and building notions of identity as well and cultural heritage um as sam mentioned looking at maps is very important when we start thinking about some of these questions and so one of the things that we've noticed at least in our studies of early civilizations for much of asia is that many of the cases that people often talk about when it comes to early centers of urbanism or early state level societies usually come from parts of south asia or east asia um what i'm hoping is that with much of the ongoing archaeological or historical work that's being done in southeast asia we can begin to fill in some of these gaps now one of the things that we've also noticed is that when people do talk about mainland southeast asia and these sorts of examples many of the case studies that come to us date to the common era phenomenon like on core for example coming to us as examples and one question that i would ask is how many people in this room have heard of the site of go law prior to today site of uncle what uh not uncle what uncle what yeah in vietnam okay that's good there are a few hands here um not too many people outside of vietnam know that much about the site and know that much about its history and that's what i'd like to talk a little bit about today to sort of foreground this discussion one of the things that we might point to would be this sort of intersection between contemporary ideas about nations and metanarratives that people create with links to the distant past sometimes these links are real sometimes they might be um embellished but there are these these sorts of moments especially for post-war or post-colonial context in parts of asia actually this is true for any country we can think of examples uh where the past is connected to present-day uh politics one example that we can point to would be from the korean peninsula this is the tomb of an individual known mythologically to the korean people an individual known as tangun and tangun was the supposed founder of the korean civilization the first dynasty dating to about 5 000 years ago and back in the 1990s north korean researchers claimed to have found the tomb of tangun found his remains and dated the remains to lo and behold exactly 5 000 years ago the ascribed date to when he purportedly exists they built this very nice monument this is right outside of the modern day city of kyeongyang capital of north korea now some people look at this with a skeptical eye and wonder how accurate some of these claims might be but regardless of what we might believe this is a very clear illustration of how the past can be appropriated for politics we can think of other examples i'm sure uh the great site of greats and bob way for instance the enclosure yielded soapstone carvings of birds that are now prominently displayed on the national flag and currency for zimbabwe encore what for example feature very prominently on various uh flags of regimes throughout the 20th century but there is this clear link and this same can be said about what happens in vietnam so we can see on this particular image this is an image of the kong kings the very first legendary dynasty of early vietnamese history and civilization that is today displayed on the walls of the independence palace in ho chi min city um this dynasty purportedly goes back some 5000 years and it rivals some of the dynastic uh metanarratives that we see for the northern neighbors in china or synodic civilization to the north for many vietnamese researchers whether historians or historians or archaeologists this is a very important time period and there has been a concerted effort to find the kinds of material correlates that might be related to some of these stories now if you'll indulge me for just a second i'd like to share with you some personal information and how i come to start working on these kinds of topics so as you may have guessed i'm a mixed ancestry my father is korean hence the kim which is like smith in pariah and my mother is vietnamese and i was actually born in saigon back in 1974 we left uh actually on april 29th 1975 the day before saigon fell by helicopter as refugees from the rooftop not this rooftop but something similar to the u.s. state building in downtown saigon and we left as refugees before ending up in the united states i tell this story for a couple of reasons one it is really a privilege for me to be able to go back to vietnam now to do work there on early history when we left and that that is me with my mother yeah i know i used to be cute uh but my father took these photographs he was a photojournalist working in vietnam so he had a camera bag with him and documented this journey from vietnam through the pacific before we ended up in florida and rick and japan so he is a privilege to be able to work there but the other reason i bring this up is because so here's my mother's family this is from the 1950s this is a naming province up in the north there's my mother i think she's about six or seven years old there um which is the same age as my oldest daughter now so it's kind of funny to think about how life comes around in the circle but she tells me that as she was growing up her her older siblings all learned about some of the things we're going to be talking about today some of the legendary accounts but for them it wasn't told as mythology it was not told in terms of legend it was accepted history these were in textbooks it was part of curricula in school so everything that we're going to be talking about was taught as history so this brings to mind for me how archaeology and the material record can be a part of this construction process this project of creating history and i've got vietnam in quotes here because of course two thousand years ago there was no vietnam right there was nothing like it at least not in any kind of iteration that we know of today further illustrate this connection between politics and the past we know that Ho Chi Minh talks about this Declaration of Independence from 1945 and he talks about how this was a very important day for all of the descendants of these legendary kings the Hong Kong dynasty from way back when as well as the lot of people dating from about 2,000 to 2,500 years ago that everyone living in the present day part of vietnam in this area are descendants this kind of clear lineage back he had a very heavy interest in history and that also lent itself into archaeology so for many many years he would visit various sites as these meta narratives about struggle for independence against foreign sources or domination foreign cultures and civilizations especially synodic civilization came to the forefront the Institute of archaeology was established in 1969 and it was immediately appropriate it was very closely tied to history the mission was to find the material correlates for the textual accounts everything that we know from the legendary accounts from the various texts that were recorded about these dynasties and about some of the key figures in kingdoms that are mentioned in them were part of the original research missions and here's the very first inaugural issue i've got the Vietnamese and the French i know it's difficult to see but all the articles are concerned with those kinds of legendary accounts we know that the way vietnam looks today was not the case a thousand years ago two thousand years ago right this is a national set of boundaries that exists today chris goch's book talks very specifically about this in the chapter that he called the many different vietnamese that we're looking at millennia of change cultural change and development very very many different ethnic groups languages and cultures different kinds of kingdoms and states that would have existed so this is a diverse history for this area of the world and a couple of things that he says i think are important to keep in mind the traditional view is the cynicization model right and this is the case for much of southeast asia whether it's coming from the west or from the north that we're not talking about passive recipients right he says it's important to emphasize the internal trajectories the internal actors and their their various strategies for taking in other kinds of cultures and interacting with other kinds of cultures and one of the reasons this is important for vietnam is because of this ascribed date of 111 bcd where the Han purportedly come in and annexed this part of the red river valley and i'll talk about that in just a minute so to geographic the orients ourselves for many people in vietnam it's the north that is the crucible for vietnamese civilization everything that we see for the central part of the south that's added on in more recent centuries but it's really this area here the red river valley and delta area that's known as bakbo this is the gulf here uh bakbo or tomkin and to us what's important to to to look at as part of the story is the archaeological culture known as dome sun which i'm i'm sure many of us are familiar with but also one of the sites that's located in that region that's the tango lost site that's known to us through a combination of archaeology as well as some of these textual accounts that i mentioned but these would be very important parts of this project of reconstructing history so we have increasingly today various data sets that allow us to ask questions beyond just the creation of meta narratives but to start asking about why why do we see urbanism at this point in time in this location what kinds of factors and conditions contributed to this kind of social complexity so because i'm sure many of you are already familiar with don't sit i'll just briefly highlight some of the attributes this is a bronze age into the iron age archaeological culture that's heavily concentrated in the northern part of vietnam over a hundred different sites have been found mostly burial sites there are some workshops and some settlements that have also been located but the dong sun culture is renowned for a few attributes we'd start to see clear signs of status differentiation at around this time this is reflected in many of the burials there are different kinds of grave goods that show that the wealth there is wealth disparity between individuals within various communities this is a wet rice producing society or set of communities and the renown as as i mentioned for bronzes like the specimen here these very large ceremonial bronze drums known as heger one and other kinds many specimens have been found all throughout this area and what's interesting about these specimens and many of the other kinds of bronzes is some of the iconography the motifs that are displayed giving us some inklings about daily life and some of the rituals this particular specimen was found at the site of koloa back in the early 1980s it's about 72 kilograms in weight people estimate that anywhere from a thousand to seven thousand kilograms of crude material raw material were used in the manufacturing process just that one specimen it gives you some idea of the kind of wealth that and the specialized knowledge that would be associated with this kind of production we also have motifs that are commonly displayed these individuals with feathered head dresses this appears to be a folk with warriors there's another drum located here there's an archer with bow and arrow on top it gives us some ideas and if we think about the some of the iconography going back to what we're talking about earlier in terms of national thought this is very important because the domesund culture is the last sort of indigenous culture if you will before the Han come into this area so this is significant when you're thinking about a pre-synetic past because the Han would come in at around 111 BCE and the Chinese essentially would stay for about a thousand years in this part of the world so for many people afterwards there's a harkening back to this pre-han or pre-synetic past not unlike what we see with other cases around the world if we look at the tympanum for instance and we see some of these motifs that they were similar to the ones that psalm showed earlier you have the star shape here you have the cranes on the outer band here if you go i don't know how many of you have been to vietnam or to the city of teng hua for instance but i was just there last year and saw this on the street i didn't know it existed but you can see the crane motif in the monumental kind of construction the drum sitting right in the middle this is prominently displayed right in this middle of the city as you enter the city in the teng hua province these kinds of motifs are prominently displayed not just in architecture they're on postcards they're on i was sitting in the office and i noticed the team with the similar kinds of motifs right on them okay so it's a it's a very important part of vietnamese identity so let's talk about the ko loa site this is to geographically orient ourselves the site is located right outside of the present-day city about 17 kilometers to the northeast just across the red river and here is the satellite image showing us the red river coming through we have modern-day hanh loa this is the teng loa citadel the capital of vietnam from about the 11th century onwards after the independence from sanitary civilization this is a game i like to play with my students can you spot the archaeological site some of you may be looking northward and there it is sitting right there i like this image because it gives us a sense of how important this particular piece of geography is for vietnam for the idea of vietnam we have this particular site that is supposedly a capital and we'll talk about that we have tengong site and then we have the modern-day capital hanh loa all associated with this area with that river sure you recognize this image we are sitting right here right now okay and and roughly the same scale the same altitude this is the ko loa site you can see where it's located this is the dongyang district the ko loa commune parts of the site are heavily occupied today so it kind of limits the access that we have to explore and investigate but there is a lot of farmland as well and what you might notice there are some of the enclosures and we'll talk about that too but the site is massive it's about six square kilometers 600 hectares in the area 450 which is enclosed by the outermost wall this is roughly about 1100 football fields and when i say football i mean american football field sizes but it makes it one of the largest actually the largest for the dong sung culture all contemporaneous sites in northern vietnam this is the largest by far and it also makes it one of the largest that we know of for southeast asia for that pre late prehistoric time period i'll talk a little bit about some of the pier sites and other kinds of moat sites a little bit later but for for that purpose it is one of the largest examples of this kind of settlement here we can see and i want to point out some of the enclosures this is the innermost wall it's about 1.65 kilometers in its perimeter it's punctuated by a series of bastions roughly rectilinear in shape the middle wall uh it's irregular in shape and this is about 6.5 kilometers around and then the outermost wall eight kilometers around now these walls still stand today they're earthen ramparts and they still stand in various states of disrepair up to 10 meters in height in certain places 25 to 30 meters wide at the base and people estimate that anywhere from a million to two million cubic meters of earthen materials were used in the construction process of these ramparts they're associated with outermotes and ditches and according to legend they may have had watch towers and other kinds of features associated with them there has been a lot of debate about when this site actually comes into existence and how what kinds of factors may have been involved and who may have been responsible these debates have relied traditionally upon some sources of textual information which we'll talk about and increasingly we're using archaeology to enter into that conversation but the big question for a lot of people is by home who's responsible for this site the answer is not king arthur uh but i have this up and this is one of my favorite depictions i actually know of king arthur that's for i'm sure you know multiply them in whole but the reason i bring this up is because a lot of the Arthurian tales to me are sort of analogous to what we see with the stories about what the gold lost site so as we have camelot for king arthur legend says that we have a king we have the gold lost site instead of the lady of the lake handing Excalibur to king arthur in the vietnamese traditions there is no relationship by the way i'm not claiming but for the vietnamese there was a turtle that came out of the the water that gave the king man by the name of an zengguam uh advice about how to build his defenses to build this city to his seat of power and also offered one of its claws to him to be used as a trigger mechanism for his crossbow this was a magical crossbow that allowed him to banquish entire armies with single shots so we have this one source of traditional information that come to us that comes to us from various vietnamese traditions all traditions that were passed on through throughout the generations recorded many centuries later uh in accounts from the medieval period for instance in 15th century but they describe what happens at that point in time according to these legends this individual by the name of an zengguam also known as tukvad comes to power in third century bcb by overthrowing the last of the home kings that initially image that i showed you was the home king dynasty the overthrows the last of them he has advice from the magic turtle he has this powerful technology in the crossbow and he found scola as his capital and seat of power and as i mentioned earlier this is accepted as history in vietnam now one of the things that we might point out would be some of the issues that might be associated with these textual traditions uh liam kelly in hawai has pointed out some of the potential issues one of which might be that we are mixing historical details with the supernatural with appeals to magic um these textual accounts were not formally recorded until well after the fact well after the point in time in which they report to describe so whereas these events supposedly happened in the third century bcb these textual accounts are recorded um well after many many centuries after and maybe just maybe because of the time period in which they were recorded there might be some element of projection right wishful or aspirational thinking how we would like our past to look and perhaps there is some element of that kind of bias that's projected into that past the other source of information that people have traditionally used would be synodic texts so we know that the haan come into this area 111 bce various synodic chroniclers during the haan period and later periods would write and record information about the kinds of people that they encountered there's very little direct reference to the Goloa site itself but they do talk about the southern most barbarians within the ground and how these folks were in need of civilizing effectively it was the haan that would have to bring in sophisticated forms of governance metalworking and farming for instance and this area is really just a repository for useful resources exotic resources that would be brought back up to the north of course we have to take these accounts of the grain of salt as well and and be critical about the kind of bias that may be associated with them it's not uncommon for these kinds of colonial powers to look in derogatory ways at some of these other communities that they annex and I'm essentializing here this is a very essentialized strawman argument about two various viewpoints right on the one hand we have civilization that may have come about as a result of local trajectories of cultural change indigenous explanations if you will but on the other hand we have this other explanation the cynicization model where civilization is an outcome that's imposed by a foreign power what i'm proposing today is that really it's a combination of two and we'll see some evidence for that but the point is that this kind of material record is very important when we evaluate these sorts of debates and claims now back in the 1970s stebo here published a paper in asian perspectives describing some of these textual accounts and what the the Han encounter when they come into this part of the world and there are a couple of things that he talked about back in 1979 that i think are very appropriate he calls for greater collaboration between historians and art historians and archaeologists and various disciplinary backgrounds and he also very specifically says that we need more reliable information okay one particular quote sometimes an old poem can tell you where to dig so giving us an idea that these literary accounts might be a very good source to start with right to give you ideas about what kinds of sites to look at what kinds of information need to be gathered and of course dating dating of the site can help to resolve many of these ongoing debates and he specifically references go law so using that as a sort of basis uh my colleagues in Vietnam and I have been looking at the rampart I mentioned that much of the site is heavily inhabited today so it limits the kinds of places we can go to to access information so we looked at the rampart which are still there today as maybe a very suitable proxy measure for when the city may have emerged so if you see those kinds of monumental constructions and if you can reliably date them that might give you some idea about the rest of the society we embarked on three investigations starting in 2007 looking at various parts of the ramparts and these were the very first systematic investigations that were undertaken for the ramparts I'm not going to go into too much detail but we could identify various phases of construction different chronological time periods these would be based on relative dates looking at artifacts as well as thermal luminescence of some of the ceramics but also from organic materials radiocarbon dates stratified in various layers of construction the period of interest for us today would be this middle period this is an excavation profile through the first investigation this is the middle wall this is in 2007 I don't have time to talk about too much it was found at the very bottom but we have architectural features and pottery associated with the domescom culture with radiocarbon dates from about 500 to 300 calibrated bcd these features appear to have no structural relationship to the larger rampart that would follow in other words if you knew we were going to build that larger rampart there'd be no reason to build these smaller features right there in any case the period that we are interested in would be these three as well as the materials that were found at the top of that last layer this phase four these are roof tiles that were found but phase three we have evidence for rammed or stamped earth and that's going to be significant as we'll talk about a little bit later but the materials on the totality of data show us that we're looking at construction within this time period you don't know exactly when it's difficult to piece that together but the dates tell us that it happens within this window between 300 and 100 calibrated bcd now the roof tiles they were found starting at about one meter below the current surface of the rampart the roof tiles are ubiquitous at this site if you go anywhere where the road's been cut through or where part of the wall is collapsing in the same stratigraphic layer you find the roof tiles fragments in just this excavation alone thousands of fragments were found more on the interior side some of it may have slipped in the exterior side into the moat or the ditch that we also looked at and the interesting thing about the roof tiles is at this point in time in vietnam or in anywhere in northern vietnam no roof tiles at any other site only at this particular site we have dong sung pottery as i mentioned at the bottom and as i mentioned earlier dong sung culture materials are found all over northern vietnam but the roof tiles are restricted just to this one location we're still trying to figure out what the tiles are doing here and if anybody has any ideas i'd love to talk about it there are various hypotheses some say that maybe there was a roof-like structure on top of the rampart which is after the degree has fallen down perhaps this is garbage these are roof tiles that were taken from buildings elsewhere in the site that they were put here intentionally to help shore up against erosion and rain the monsoonal rains in any case we're still trying to figure out exactly why but the materials found with the tiles give us an idea that perhaps they date to about the late second century bce we also looked at the outer wall i will just briefly highlight the construction sequences relatively consistent with what we saw with the middle wall no evidence of the domeson materials at the bottom we didn't see that here we also did not see the layers of stamped earth that we also saw in the middle wall but the construction phases do appear to be consistent chronologically with what we saw in the original excavation and beyond that it also appears that there were amplification phases efforts to refurbish and build and augment the size of the rampart later on and we suspect that this would be in more recent centuries the innermost wall has been a source of a lot of contention because it doesn't look like the other two walls the other two walls are very irregular in shape this is rectilinear and for a lot of people it could be late and it could be related to Chinese civilization we know that ancient China many of the early settlements and urbanized areas and cities would often use these kinds of straight lines in the morphology of the cities and so a lot of people have theorized that perhaps this is a late construction after the Han come in or sometime after so we excavated a portion of the rampart as well as one of the bastions associated with it and interestingly enough the materials appear to be consistent the same roof tile fragments also uncovered here the chronology coming from greater carbon dates also give us a very similar window 300 to 100 cal per vcd gives us the idea that perhaps this is contemporaneous that maybe we're looking at a system of enclosures put up around the same time we don't know exactly when we don't know if there is a sequence involved but we know that it's within the same window we also again see later historic uses of the site this is a kiln dating to just a couple centuries ago that was placed in this rampart all this was hidden because we had no idea this was here but only discovered it probably dates to either the layer the wind periods Vietnamese history so as I mentioned the roof tiles are absent anywhere else in Vietnam for that time period we don't see roof tiles in Vietnam until maybe two or three centuries later outside of this site but when we look at the roof tiles and we look in concert with some of these other materials excavations that the Vietnamese have done in some of the middle areas the innermost areas have uncovered casting areas as well as casting molds these are molds used for crossbow bolts the tips bronze crossbow bolts these points they found trigger mechanisms made of bronze that probably are associated with crossbow mechanisms as well as farming implements thousands of crossbow bolts have been found in one particular area in a cache mentioned the bronze drum and we have these roof tile fragments that have been found as well again in totality we're looking at this middle period and when we consider that that middle period for these various artifacts in these collections one of the things that I would point out would be if you think about the monumental size the scale this is roughly 25 meters across this middle wall again six and a half kilometers around think about the kinds of resources that would have to be marshal to put all this together if these walls are contemporaneous if they're constructed by the same society the amount of labor that would be necessary all the resources to feed the laborers the idea of even doing this and planning it from start to finish would be very important this kind of monumentality and the control that would be necessary it brings to mind for me some of the ideas proposed by Anderson and others about this imagined community if you are participating in this construction process whether you live at this site or right outside of it what kind of message is that important to you as a participant as a community member but what does it also say to those living on the outside in viewing it if you're building a system like this you're probably expecting that it's going to be for quite some time being used for quite some time we think about the upkeep and maintenance that would be required not just to build the system but then to continue using it so this kind of multi-generational authority that may have existed for me speaks to something that would be akin to an early state a very loosely defined definition of course but if we think about durable institutions of authority of ancient states I see no reason to preclude this particular case starting from our discussions about early civilizations early states or early forms of urbanism in Southeast Asia so maybe one of the earliest that we can point to in late prehistory as I mentioned we don't have a lot of settlement data it's difficult for us to reconstruct demographic information and populations but we do have other sources the Han took census accounts around the first century and they estimated that for this particular part of the empire we're looking at close to a million individuals this would be the most densely populated south of the Yangtze River area now of course there may be some element of exaggeration or bias for taxation purposes but it does speak to how populated this region could have been and even though we're looking at a few centuries later we think about the agricultural potential this is one of the most productive areas in mainland Southeast Asia today and if we think about how many people could have been supported in this time period that in combination with the archaeological evidence for agricultural intensification bronze plowshares other kinds of tools we are probably looking at a fairly high level of population for this time period I conducted some architectural energetic populations I won't bore you with the details but essentially I looked at rates of construction in comfortable areas around the world using similar kinds of materials and tools and I came up with some estimates if we use a very conservative starting point of one million cubic meters and remember some had estimated that maybe two million cubic meters were used in construction but if we just do one million we're looking at a lot of labor and the estimates could be anywhere from a few years to a couple of generations for the entire site to be built by anywhere from a thousand to several thousand people the upshot is that we're looking at a lot of control again so what does this all mean if we're thinking about that first question of early Vietnam does Anzong Buong actually exist? Was there some kind of Ola kingdom that existed associated with the Cold War site? If you ask my collaborators the answer is unequivocally yes we have the dates we have the evidence we know about these connections this is without question the capital of the Ola kingdom I'm not as comfortable going that far out on the lip I think there is some support for some of these textual descriptions we can see evidence of some of those items like the trigger like the crossbow bolt all the centralized production facilities and the evidence for them but until I see a tomb or some kind of writing that specifically refers to this individually I think it's very difficult to say with any kind of certainty for me I'm much more comfortable talking about something complex there is no question that we're dealing with a complex society one that I would characterize as a state but I would prefer to leave it ambiguous this is the for me the Ola polity it dates to this time period but for those that might know something about the history in this region it could refer to any number of different possible kingdoms that people talked about in historical text but what is clear is that this appears to be something that predates the Han intrusion into this part of the world so we can't look at that kind of model as an explanation so going back to that original dichotomy foreign imposition indigenous development I think it's a spurious one to really bring up there's no question that this synergization model the semi-centric view is really not accurate it's untenable we can see all these materials here a very complex society that existed prior to the annexation period but at the same time the archaeology tells us that all this does not happen in a vacuum we can see linkages that are very important all throughout this region and for the remaining time I'd like to talk a little about some of these relationships and how we can tell this particular point in time as you know was the tail end of the warring states period in ancient Chinese history there was probably a lot of turmoil that's pushing people throughout these regions and it's quite possible that it's having an effect even this far to the south over the mountains but we can point to relationships that might be very close and direct but also further to the north these indirect relationships the relationships are not restricted to the north we can see in the first millennium BCE through work by Elizabeth Moore and others hundreds of Iron Age moded settlements all throughout mainland southeast Asia there are various kinds of cultural traditions associated with them we don't really know all the functions for these moded sites they're very different but what we can say is that there are many examples of them and if we think about the sizes most tend to be much smaller than what we see with the gold lost site it is by far the largest so something anomalous is happening in this part of the world something very different and I think a lot of that has to do with its proximity to synodic civilization so again here it is next to the river and if we consider the river as a thoroughfare of connectivity linking communities up and down from its source point in the Yunnan plateau some 1200 kilometers down into the gulf the various communities that would have been in contact along the river along the coast for example this would have been a very important area in terms of interaction a sort of hub that similar to other sites like Kasum Keo and in fact some of the earliest research on silk routes for instance tell us that there are certain nodes that are connected to the early versions of the southwest silk roads and this area would have been one of those nodes so you mentioned some some of the bronze ceremonial drums that have been found we know that they were found in highest concentrations in this area and in that area at the source point of the Red River and they're very similar morphologically and they share iconography and we also know as you pointed out that they have been found these kinds of materials have been found all throughout Southeast Asia so if we consider that particular link what I would also point out is that just to the north in the parts of the Potomne Bomchi we have iconography on rock art for instance we have artifacts found in both areas that share similarities in terms of iconography the feathered headdresses that we talked about earlier in some cases even the star-shaped motif appearing on rock art to the north in the mountains this says something I think about the connections between communities in these regions that maybe for the people living in the Red River the near north was very important so these links to either the Yunnan or to the Lingnan area in southern China now beyond the bronzes we can see other kinds of materials that connect what we might call a cultural continuum there are various kinds of societies all in contact that's not one another some people talked about the Yuan or other kinds of communities that are seen here but there are links between these regions that even points further south and to the west as well the stamped earth some of you may have already guessed this but we see stamped earth in that middle wall construction and there are earlier examples of stamped earth and they are from the north so here we have images of stamped earth used used as walls but also used as foundations for buildings from parts of China this is the Long Shan culture this is a late Neolithic site we have Shang Dynasty walls and foundations also using stamped earth so when we see the stamped earth it is reminiscent of these kinds of constructions I'm giving us this possibility that there are indirect links to the central plains closer to the Yellow River Valley now what's actually different this may be boring for some of us but for me I think this is fascinating the kinds of stamped earth walls that we see closer to the central plains tend to be straight on their edges when we move further to the south closer to the Yangtze River Valley and points further south there appears to be a pronounced taper on the exterior of the walls and this has to do I think with the kinds of soils that are being used more lusts up in the north in the Yellow River area and as you move further south less of that material different kinds of soil this might give us an idea of why we see that kind of construction the Gola site is also tapered right the exterior parts of the ramparts there may be some kind of link to areas of southern and central China further south away from the central plains areas of Chengdu for instance various kinds of sites warring state sites cities that use ramped earth there may be something that's very similar happening in northern Vietnam again I'm talking about these kinds of connections that may have been occurring during the warring states period the roof tiles some of you I'm sure know roof tiles have a long history in different parts of China we have the Gola polity roof tiles but we also know of examples from synodic civilization whether it's the Han empire or other areas the Nanyue Kingdom in the southeast of China they're morphologically very similar but one of the things that I would point out is there is writing on many of the synodic examples these are usually in royal or elite constructions or palaces but they often have stylized writing on them the Gola examples have no writing at least none that we have seen but there is something that I think is interesting the star shape that's seen on the Gola examples are reminiscent to some of the star shapes that we see on some of the ceremonial bronzes and to my knowledge and I would be happy to know if anyone knows more about this but I don't think that that similar kind of motif has been seen in synodic examples like it's very local to areas further to the south so this complicates our ideas about these relationships from north Vietnam two points further to the north whether direct or indirectly and what I would argue is that what we're looking at here would be these forms of elements seeping their way into this part of the world we don't know what kinds of mechanisms specifically but we can see the similarities the cultural affinities but perhaps we're looking at appropriations that are buffered filtered they're coming in through other sources and not directly and perhaps we're also looking at efforts by local elites in the Red River Delta to emulate and what I mean by that is if we look at these materials like the roof tiles for instance as restricted to elite buildings or royal compounds for instance they're seen maybe as exotic forms of authority of political authority and perhaps those living here the elites living in the Red River Delta area may have been thinking about this as a form of leadership strategy how do we show that we have this kind of power as well how do we use the similar kinds of materials and if that knowledge of producing those materials also comes in perhaps we're looking at localization of these materials that might account for some of the motifs like the star on the roof tiles that we see just at this particular site so when we consider this longer project this history of Vietnam the making of it it should be clear that we're looking at many different kinds of interpretations various kinds of actors that are important in this story and that this is a very complex process and the materials that we can see from Golaw sit very interestingly in this kind of gap between the prehistoric leading into the historic phase whether or not An Zung Boon actually existed I think is beside the point what's important also to consider is how the past is used we can see festivals occurring today at the site of Golaw commemorating An Zung Boon commemorating that legendary king whether or not he was real but there is a power to that material right if we think about landscapes artifacts sites all of these parts of the past that get appropriated and used by various people history tells us that once the Chinese leave the picture the 10th century the very first dynasty Vietnamese dynasty that comes to power with an individual by the name of Mokwin goes directly to Golaw to set up his capital and for some people the reason is because it's a symbol the site is a symbol of this pre-Chinese or pre-Semitic past and so it's calculated so it tells us that there are very real links that echo across time and the refurbishments that we see at Golaw as well into the common era into the second millennium also tell us that people come back and continually occupy and reuse the site and refurbish and upkeep it I'll end with just a couple of slides showing what we're doing today as I mentioned we don't have access to the entire site for excavation so we don't have a lot of resources all the time either so we've been turning to remote sensing for some of our future current and future work we did magnetometry at various locations and identified sites that we might excavate this one particular location we were able to identify some anomalies in the ground that we ground-truthed or excavated and they yielded burials just from a couple of hundred years ago so again giving us an idea the persistent links through time of contemporary societies or recent societies to that past but it also gives us an idea of proof of concept these kinds of methods have never been tried at this site by the Vietnamese and we're hoping that this kind of analysis will help us in the future we're also very fortunate in obtaining lidar data very recently and we are just starting to look at the analyses so I don't have that much to talk about but one of the interesting things that I will point out is if you look right here this is the inner wall that rectangle with bastions there is an elevated area in the southwest corner those casting materials that I talked about the furnaces all the centralized control or crossbow bolts all happens in this area and it appears to be elevated and one of the things that we've noticed is that it may actually have its own wall with its own series of bastions now I didn't say this but earlier I could have the legends not only talk about the legend of An Zem Buem but it talks about nine walls being associated with this site we can only see three very clearly but with some of the analyses that we're doing with the lidar it's possible that we might identify other areas that might approximate other enclosures so those are the kinds of questions that we might answer and for the Vietnamese today as you can imagine this is significant for many stakeholders and for many reasons there is an element of looking to the past in order to think about the present and to think about the future as well this is an image from the conservation agency about what they envisioned for the site of Kho Ba moving forward how the materials how the various features might be preserved the cultural heritage and identity of the site how it might be related to tourism in the future bringing in people from all over the world not just Vietnam but all over the world but it tells us about the significance of the site for national meta-narratives and history and also for research and we had had a lot of interest from international researchers but also political figures in Vietnam the former president of Vietnam Chandra Kluen would visit our excavations to find out what we were finding because I think he was interested to know if we were going to be finding materials that corroborated the legendary accounts or contradicted the accounts but in any case the research I think is significant for their ongoing efforts to promote the heritage and maybe even obtain UNESCO World Heritage Site status for the site but again it illustrates the various kinds of agendas that are important for stakeholders whether in research or outside of it and I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have thank you we will now welcome our respondents along with our speakers we're going to start with Ben Rayford I introduced him earlier I'll just remind you that he's he's on the verge of completing his dissertation on the question of scene of foreigner and early Southeast Asian art and I'm sorry Ben will speak second and Pipat is speaking first is that yes what does it read okay yes so Pipat is in the first year of his doctoral work on questions and meta-narratives nationalism and art and historiography focusing in on the Italian period and the questions of seeking the origin and discretized state through interpretation of archaeological and art historical data so Pipat is going to respond first and then we'll move on to Ben and then we'll finish with with Pamela Corey after which we'll give time to our on speakers to respond okay good afternoon thank you to Dr. Rona San and Dr. Nam Kim for such a fascinating talk and I need to officer as they and Pamela for organizing this event is a great honor to have been invited to respond and we'll now offer what a comment or something that I can we'll start by responding to Rona San's her word and then Nam Kim's word so as I as I I guess that form those to ethical that I I got so I sorry it is it's been a track and the God of Siam which is an ethical that Rona San a road is a brought out rather than a full paper therefore is a purpose is to introduce all the content appearing in this book but this product is excellent because it gives us much new ecological information such as the dating of the press to buy out Pata and the currency from the line and new hypothesis which challenge many old existing as of just in my view there are two important arguments in his chapter of his article first is that the existing expanses of the formation of sizable kingdoms on the is is to mean tracks were mainly determined by topography factor for example the explanations that people or the currency tomorrow city was located on the eastern coast because this this area has was played suitable for supporting a large population and good for rice cultivation in contrast one aside it is thankfully proposed that social factors should be considered as the main factors in creating sizable kingdoms on the eastern coast of a high peninsula on Mali peninsula for example at least from the fifth century the girl of the young became a hub for a trade which grew in a significant population and socio-political attention later on for kingdoms namely Shaya Niko on the coast in the run Sting Park and Patani task dominated at the the east coast I quite agree with his hypothesis and if this is difficult to determine what factors are more important however I think the sizes of kingdoms located between the eastern and western coast difference because of the laws of cities such as a city or a city based on hybrid economies the second concerns the contradiction between the reliability of current coast and agricultural evidence in other words it shows conflict between the history core analysis based on myth or clinical and that's based on empirical data I would like to briefly describe the relative of the concy Tamaras history to show the importance of one science about article following the silica would this tradition of historical writing the stories in the thumbnail part near the court called try to link contemporary history to the early with this history in in the opinions of general historians especially in Thailand history before the 13th century can hardly be trusted because the story is liar the legend or something like that while history after the 13th century or the third building of the con see Tamaras and city is more reliable however according to his work there is a lot of ecological evidence and and recent scientific dating showing that the great to bar of the con was built before the 13th century it was probably built around 10th century or more than that I'm not sure additionally his temple was typically related to the northern community as the children and past arrival connected by the ancient sand sand bar or beach rich subsequently this interpretation least asked to think or more about role of ancient communities in the time on link kingdom in the city which I have given more over we might have to consider the relationship between the great to bar of the con and below the toe which was based on a Mandara concept this means that when we study the forms and pants of to bar in the south we have to think about internal development as well as in the interest however what I wonder when I'm reading this I know why cyclical kingdoms change that region from Indonesian to my young listen listen and to to to listen as well as well what the role of Islam was in this area which was popular history in in Patani or Patani besides one of some have since to emphasize in those of Srivichaya Jorah and Srivichaya but Jorah has been far longer Eastern post as well as Chaya however this to issues might be outside his scope or as his book focuses on history of Nakhon see Tamaran as well moving on to Nam Kim word although Nam Kim word is based on north of Vietnam while one of science word is based on southern Thailand and they is a mean history from different approaches both of them made the first is in terms of the study of the real path Dong Song culture represented maritime trade and early civilization in Southeast Asia prior to the advance of India and China the second concerns the real-life beauty of clinicals or the political agenda of more than history or Gaffi regarding Dong Song culture Nam Kim's examination of the goal now right goal now site involves two approaches post-sexual and post-sexual archaeology task post-sexual or post-modern perspective is applied to creating the history or Gaffi of Dong Song culture in order to deconstruct the discord and perception of go-down support paths this show that the grand narrative on this earlier behind this simulation sessions begins in the red river delta another tip created based on the cinematic text which were written after this area was annexed by the hunt and integrated foreign colonialist will we can say that these processes led to the creation of dichotomy between civilization and barbarians and now we don't sound which represents indigenous people was categorized as barbarian in chinese blank cost in other words this also signifies signifies the impotence of power in local cultural explanations and this why are similar to the expandances in the colonial era after examine examine this discord the second step that non-killer work is to investigate the reality of the past in on down some project to excavation and go down side the excavation showed that the original original red part had already been constructed before the period of synthetic domination moreover this side was part of an early civilization of Vietnam which saw the emergence of urbanism and political centralization that means this ecological data have been used to argue against western discord maybe Chinese discord as well which normally overlooked Southeast Asian pre and photo history and defy Southeast Asian cultures as infertile foot more none cute as that history Korean Gola was viewed as a capital city in the period foreign independence from the Chinese and this side was continuously occupied until the lay dynasty lay right this shows that Gola has been perceived as central sorry essential for for many centuries this interpretation is me to consider the idea of site of memory proposed by the animal although his concept I mean a yeah refers to to modern more memorial sites it makes me think about how ancient people could have trying to transmitted their memory to this archaeological site first of all I am reminded of seoul long and seoul long hands article who invented who invented their points down nationalism politics and and seoul Vietnamese archaeological event of the 1980s and the 1980s which argues that the history of down some rocks drums is part of the national narrative of Vietnam and that their interpretation is sort of political tension between Vietnam and China moreover Nam Kim's paper reminds me to bound like a contemporary academic issue in Thailand in which Dong Son culture has been used to argue against the international model once dumps are integrated as a representative of internal trade cultural networks and indigenous common belief system of Southeast Asia before the alive of of Indian influence this revision reflects the idea of anti colonialism and belief in internal development in conclusion the great contributions of Nam Kim's work this to show us that when we study the past we should consider the politics of its creation and use thank you for having me too yeah thank you very much we'll move on to Ben thank you yeah I'd just say thanks very much to our two speakers today for fascinating talks and to actually for inviting you to be a respondent on this panel very interesting to hear about recent developments in the archaeology really state formation in the East Asia with both of you pushing dates really back for these these kinds of processes um so the two polities we've looked at today for raising different contexts geographically and chronologically but there are some similarities the Kogluwa quality has been sterned so far developing from local prehistoric precursors massive ramparts from the third century BC before the arrival of the Chinese period demonstrating intercontrary interactions evolving that you have in your land and possibly the Nanyue in Hongzhou also connecting an inland route with maritime sphere as there are then with the Tambralinga quality with these new thermal luminescent states at Kaukha Sichuan um suggesting an earlier date closer to Funan as it was known to the Chinese um although Sam you should correct me if I'm wrong but the bricks for that particular work were they from the slope for the dam from Kaukha but for the in a structural context yeah and we probably so we right if we have no permission to explore it okay okay so for it it was still very useful yes it's time for you guys to speak up a little bit sorry just if you can speak a little bit more loudly from where people can't hear but it's obviously very useful to do those analysis at this stage be able to demonstrate a case for actually taking that work further but again we have involvement in different interaction the spheres across the Gulf of Thailand and west across the Peninsula connecting an inland overland route with the mountain sphere so there are these these similar houses I want to I can go into generalities of what you've talked about I'd like to pick on something individually from each of your presentations when something which relates to them both so Sam I was very interested in the work on the transatlantic routes because surprise I can tell the very little has actually been done on the ground for these routes and I think the sense that not of this work has been done from looking at maps and I'm interested to know how much work has been done on the ground to actually investigate these routes everything on the map you showed us they were labeled as possibly transatlantic routes of course the the archaeology of trade routes is notoriously difficult to to demonstrate on the ground because with people who are moving it'll be several days maybe two or three days to get across the peninsula perhaps on foot where you're using rivers as well but I wonder what the potential is for archaeological truth in these these routes what kinds of archaeology we might be anticipating you know what you said is its temporary settlements we could be looking at more permanent settlements partway along the routes and you referred in your article to the suggestion that ceramics perhaps were not transported across across the peninsula but rather taken on boats around because of their fragility so think about the kinds of the kinds of goods that might have been transported and what we might what we expect to find in these routes and the other aspect of course is that because because of the distribution of the transfer of the routes up and down the peninsula in the south especially you have an international border a modern international border involved here so in the especially between the Kedah and Yoram which may be easier for local authorities to to first to get I mean I'm sure that the the day before I'm coming I thought that someone would appreciate me trying to go to Yoram but also in the north between Southern Myanmar and Thailand so some of the practicalities and things about what how this might be studied in archaeology archaeologically is it so something that could be could be done and something I wanted to pick at from Naam's presentation that they've also read your book The Origins of Ancient which was very interesting and very detailed and some of the details that were in your presentation you didn't really have time to go into a lot of the detail but absolutely fascinating stuff with the stratigraphy of the of the remarks and you go into a lot more detail there so so you're going to see bits of this in your in the presentation but the you think about the kinds of evidence within this archaeology for levels of social political complexity and whether there's evidence for the state of course the definition of what constitutes a state is it's part of the underlying issue that's um but you talk about the idea of a centralized political complex whether there's evidence for multi-generational longevity of the political institution which is something that might be associated with the state and one of the things you see with your architectural energetics which is very interesting about the this weighing up of the the number of workers in the labor force and the the amount of time it takes to actually produce these round parts so the more laborers you have the quicker it is the less time but the other way the fewer laborers the longer it takes but the two variables there can both on their own and speak of social cultural complexity the ability to mobilize a large workforce or it taking so long that there's more than one ruler and that the the ideas of what that says about the complexity of the agriculture you've also looked at the social stratification the presence of urbanism which itself can have a variable manifestation and particularly just in the your ideas around the evidence for the use of coercion or warfare and how this relates to social political complexity as well because you speak one point about how warfare is an organized and legitimized coercion and you've also mentioned that grant specialization that the new service within the site centralized control of some production of this material the the prospects and the the models of course one of the there's a couple of problems there which you're fully aware of and things to develop which I suspect will some critics will pull on that so one of those is about the assessment patterns and you mentioned the beginnings of study for several patterns within Goloa but I'm also just to know about several patterns outside of this area what the practicality is and the constraints on understanding the set of patterns I think you've mentioned that there's some habitation in there already but in terms of practical archaeology and there are other things which are slowly the development of the understanding of Dongsun assessment patterns and also potentially osteo-archeological data related to warfare related trauma and you mentioned in your book the possible high incidence of cranial trauma especially and what there might be in the existing practical record for this this kind of evidence and yeah the potential for for that material that we looked at is it that the the material hasn't been studied in that way or is it that the that kind of material and evidence doesn't really survive in what is it yeah that's that's those two points actually one each from your presentations but there's something that wants to draw why they're relates to both and that's this idea of the the Dongsun type drum and I've got the Dongsun type drum because recently there's been some finds in in Thailand especially which suggests there is localities of production outside of Northern Vietnam and that's not to say that Northern Vietnam is still clearly the center the main center of production of these these objects they tend to be talked about in terms of what they tell us about the the long distance the prehistoric long distance trade networks but you know so it's that Kaloa we saw this large branch drum possibly a similar pattern on the ends of the roof tiles which is perhaps a kind of localization of this of the Chinese tubular roof tiles which relates in in the context of high status material both with the drum and the architecture potentially high status then in the certain type of insular there are I think two maybe more examples in the that instant time right area and presumably dating just a few hundred years before the new dates you've derived for these bricks in Kaka just a few centuries earlier interesting this closing that gap so the two of us are also meant once again mentioned what you've said about the how important the little song drum is for identity in Vietnam and I know that there have been debates in the past about whether it originated in Vietnam or China but the the two the two studies and I've just mentioned are Nong Nong Ho in Northeast Thailand there's a presentation at the 2016 the staff conference in Bangkok where some mold fragments were found that appear to be related to one's drum production and another site in Khao Sakh in Peninsular Thailand Polly Price and Bernice Benner drum fragments with very unusual metallurgical characteristics the very high copper concentration which is very different to much everywhere else since it's been analyzed I'm not sure quite how to explain it but the historically it relates to war sources in Laos but but that doesn't necessarily tell us where it was made that's the source of all of them so I can't actually say where it was made but potentially there were as this kind of investigation progresses we're maybe going to find that there are other localities where where these objects were were produced like I said they share numbers still this this focus in Northern Vietnam so I wonder what what you might both say about this connection between the what this says about identity related to the drums I was interested in your points about the the connections between Peninsular Thailand and the opposite coast on Mainland South East Asia and this is Tray Root are there how are these how are these drums used and how would they how would they proceed between the different communities in terms of is there is there a couple of lateness that says are you recognised the yeah that the system the public system that is in operation and how the different communities that some distance which are the how they might rate it because as a there's a trade connection but potentially there's competition and emulation and possibly the impetus to produce a random drum or whether it's trading them I'm just interested in your thoughts on how this how this material affects these these kinds of situations okay we're very very rich already and we'll move on to Pamela okay so I have some more general comments about the papers and my comments are quite general you're definitely not at the level of specificity that's what I keep on and Ben so first off just wanted to say that I thought it was interesting and I also kind of appreciated this this sense of belonging I guess that I am sort of extracted from both of your presentations whether it be in the form of your your your sort of personal connections to the material and your motivations for getting into this kind of scholarship whether it be familial the way your family background sort of drives your interest in studying your particular area of the world and maybe transnational connections but also you know I have to say with Sam as a former Cornellian the ways in which we are kind of indebted to the Cornell School of Art History and the formative influence of Sam O'Connor in particular who was Sam's co-chair but also a committee member on for my dissertation and I wonder you know just something to think about the ways in which we see ourselves as indebted to these influences but also the ways in which we at some point try to depart from these schools you know we get a sense of our formation of scholars and then we have I don't know moments of kind of resistance we kind of sense the transparency of our formation and we want to sort of break from it a little bit or depart from it so anyway that's something I was just thinking about and listening to your two papers and a lot of those lines you know how situate ourselves within Southeast Asian studies so going back to the question of area studies and just the fact that what we do as art historians you know art history has proven to be a rich terrain for the sourcing of materials that support the regional argument right especially pre-modern art history and so there's ways in which that kind of material has been used to define the region out of sort of you know passion of scholars but it's also been a way in which it's also material that has been instrumentalized to define the region and both of you spoke about contemporary initiatives that we can see as embedded in political and economic agendas right and the fact that what we do I think all of us both of you in your presentations the ways in which that regional argument came up so rather you're working on the specificity of a micro region and in sort of the neighborhood of Thailand or you're working in a micro region in Vietnam it kind of all goes back to Southeast Asia at some point Southeast Asia comes in as a kind of broader regional meta-narrative and so hence our sort of existential crisis the Southeast Asianists the Southeast Asian art historians or archaeologists where we're constantly trying to define the region but we're also constantly trying to undo it in a way and that makes us Southeast Asianists and so I was just thinking about that too in terms of you know Southeast Asia there's been a lot of discourse over the last few decades about how we need to debunk this fiction this unicorn according to Donald Emerson I believe but the pre-modern also comes often often comes up as a sort of legitimate device for resurrecting sort of the regional body of Southeast Asia and more specifically I think you know as a fellow sort of Vietnam scholar thinking about the unique situation of Vietnam within Southeast Asian studies within Southeast Asian art history but also as something that belongs to the pre-modern sinusphere and situates itself within East Asian studies and similarly to you know these debates about Southeast Asia and some of the seminal seminal texts that we've read that constantly question the construction of Southeast Asia as a region so too do we have similar news happening with Vietnam studies you cited some sources that go back into I believe the 60s even that began to question this construction of the nation but it's really I think within the last decade or so correct me if I'm wrong that there's been a real turnaround in our acceptance of the Chinese occupation myth as Keith Taylor puts it and you know a lot of these shifts I feel like have been driven by the seminal sort of scholars in the field of Vietnam studies Keith Taylor is like the eminent historian of the pre-modern Vietnam and so we you know with his new book that sort of revises a lot of the material from his book The Birth of Vietnam but even three years ago was three or four years ago at a conference we were at and Keith Taylor gave these closing remarks and he said it was time to take the Chinese occupation myth throw it in the trash or throw it in the rubbish and that's been a real sort of change in I think the accepted historical structures that Vietnam scholars have been working with for a long time but are still the predominant paradigms of nationalist historiography in Vietnam you know the conception of the nation relies upon that myth of occupation so I was thinking about not something you necessarily have to respond to but how do we situate ourselves within Southeast Asian studies within Thai studies within Vietnam studies but also within well if we want to think about a subfields of those disciplines or whether those are subfields of art history and anthropology and archaeology or where do we see ourselves within these disciplinary fault lines and leading to the next question this call for interdisciplinary interdisciplinary work especially with the pre-modern materials that you know so much of what we have to fill in requires us to use our imagination as Sam noted you know the pre-modern remains this field that is you know sort of constructed through a lot of puzzle pieces and through interdisciplinary work we get to put those puzzle pieces together through those kinds of scholarly collaborations and research projects but it's also you know it requires interdisciplinary work it also requires transnational work it requires the crossing of these area studies divisions right how can we study Vietnam about studying China in some instances how can we study parts of Southeast Asia without studying India and so something I was thinking about was you know how to contend with that need when many difficulties continue to be presented by area studies as we continue to institutionalize them as programs or centers and you know universities and research institutes how do we also contend with the tensions and biases that are results of imperialists and nationalist agendas and those hierarchies that linger based on models of Indianization or cynicization I'm thinking as an example of ASSA the American Council for Southern and South Eastern Art where it is the Council promotes you know they have a conference every year it is primarily South Asian Art and Southeast Asia maybe gets one panel I've presented my own work at East Asia or China oriented conference and I often feel like I'm sort of invited to the table of the Chinese scholars or the East Asianists so Vietnam has this you have this very ambiguous and sort of unstable place in those narratives despite the fact that we're calling for a better understanding of its entrenchment within this idea of East Asia or South East Asia um finally and I think this probably connects to a few of Ben's comments um and the title of this workshop this idea of apolity is something that can encompass a multitude of forms of statecraft and something that came up in your talk sound that sort of revealed I think your Cornell training if I may say so was this really interest in the agency of the object and um you know production as theater and of course you cited Stan's work on ironworking as spiritual inquiry and thinking about the ways in which those forms of production feed into notions of early states if you want to call them that or early qualities as theorized in what are considered for classical paradigms of the Mandela and the theater state so going back to Walters and Gertz and how we might you know how did we then oh sorry I wanted to mention too there's ways in which now your talk as well reminded me of that a little bit in thinking about evidence of complex labor systems as potentially evidence of a kind of agency a kind of collective agency in terms of shared imagination or or shared will to construct these things in such complex systems so in line with what I think are Walters and Gertz's models of these political formations it's this notion of an active sort of collective agency that helps support and structure the center guess reinforce the center but then how do we then think about those models in relation to like James Scott I guess and the notion of the state and a much more the much more coercive forces that are are at play in terms of reinforcing the state as center and I guess what that is leading to is this question of agency to what extent are we using imagination and speculation to project notions of agency into the material record and into process as opposed to object so that's very general question I guess and that it wraps it up for me thank you thank you very much thank you all three of you and it's a lot to take on I realize you'll probably give a few preferred spot answers and not try to respond to everything that would either of you like to begin I will begin so first um question I'm just going to interrupt from it I think we really need to speak up but as we're speaking to each other but we're also speaking to the crowd so just encourage everyone if you're quiet voices over there from that corner first I would like to respond to the first question from Ajan Pipak about the two pages of questions about why why did it change from Hinduism to Mahayana Buddhism to Theravada Buddhism and how Islam was important in that area in goodness about Thailand first of all I don't think we have a menu I mean to choose we like a restaurant when we went to the restaurant we can choose a menu for ourselves I I I don't imagine the people in that place of town to have that menu when they choose the religion it depends on some kind of you know it can happen organically like people arrived in that area the missionaries you know the Hindu priest came to that area the kinds of social connections social ties with specific areas between India and Southeast Asia and so on and so forth the the trade routes the maritime groups that travel around so I think it's more complicated than choosing something from the menu it's more complicated than choosing India or China as a model to develop something to develop the statecraft in Southeast Asia however um terrible carbonism and Hinduism are different in this in the in the sense of state formation Hinduism is more controlled by the Hindu priest especially insideism the Hindu priest have to be the link between the king and the gods and so the the kings have to share the power with the the priest more than the buddhist monks in terrible carbonism and that's why in the 13th century I believe in in southern Thailand the king with the new dynasty with the new kingdoms with the new networks like Sukhothai Nakhwansi Tamada and the early Ayodhya period they chose to to focus on terrible carbonism and chose the Langkang school from Sri Lanka to be the the model for for them because it gave them more freedom gave them more new identity different from the kingdoms in the past that they that they overcame so that's that's a general question we can go on and on about this I can give you more information if you have time the second one is the charming influence because I work in Nakhwansi Tamada and my essays is more related to the Japanese work by the way at the end of this week for came to me for for coming to me and and told me that I was said incorrectly and said too fast about the the date of the the chanthi chanthi supu it's not 11th century it's 15th century I'm sorry about that so the charm was not I mean the influence of Jampa appeared in Shaya but not so much in that particular place in the great stupa in the concept Marat so that question I can talk more about that too but the Jampa people was important of course as communities in Southeast Asia aiming in in Peninsula Thailand so moving on to Ben's question about trans-Penisola roots it's a good question it has been a debate in in Southeast Asian studies in in the studies of Penisola Thailand for a long time we have two monials basically one is the the real function of these Penisola roots or the circum-Penisola roots so we have trans-Penisola roots or the circum-Penisola roots did they cross over or did they go around it we have conclusion more or less among scholars that it would use they I mean the trans-Penisola roots existed and they were used actually by the people in the past to cross over from one side to the next but did they use it for transporting bulky goods like a big shell of goods and then fragmented goods like ceramics or not or did they use it for like traveling like using for like walking and connecting the the the two codes by people only be it one can yeah we said that proposed that it was used for speed I mean it's it's closer if you cross from one side to the next and only people not goods I mean not ceramics that cross over and in terms of archaeology we have to have like been said correctly ask the the right question that in terms of archaeology if you want to study these kinds of transpenisola roots you have to find more evidence on the ground like the transchipments places if you transport ceramics across a penisola of course the connecting point the transchipment points have to have a bunch of ceramic shields and we have not found that yet on the bridge I mean in between the two rivers on both sides so we still don't have that information and the the similarities between artifacts from one side to the next may be caused by the the shipments I mean the the navigation the maritime navigation from one side to the next to the Strait of Malacas and that is quite common as well so we have this even still and we don't have enough evidence and if we are going to do it we have to do to have as a transnational expeditions and also we have to have a very intensive archaeological expeditions in the future on the ground especially looking for that transchipment places where they transport goods from from one rivers to the next river systems the Don Sun made okay so this is a big question and maybe Professor Nanking can help in that regard as well but I when I look at the iconography of bronze drums they are not the same all over the place they are different and they are quite in detail I mean they they more elaborate and more details in North in the North Vietnam and in China as well but when it comes down to the marine tangos some iconography change the details are gone I mean strip off the details and now we have a debate about you know is it made only in Southern Vietnam and in Northern Vietnam or in Southern China only or it made somewhere else and you know evidence started to come up like the the things that you mentioned from Sukanya about NERD in Mukda in the North Eastern Thailand the most probably made for 8 to 1 bronze drums and also like in Kaosay in Southern Thailand too we don't have a lot of evidence right now but in the future we hope that we have we probably will have more evidence about the multi centers of productions for bronze drums and iconography should have changed from place to place however the whole iconography are the same I mean the core structures the the appearance of it the sections the look of it will stay more or less the same and they will trade it too I mean like Professor Nam has has shown us that the centers of the production the custom were in Southern China in Nien Plato or in Northern Vietnam that's that's that's the fact that we see however there are some like a kind of concentration somewhere else not as much as the ones that we have in the north in the Kaosay Ham too and that's why I mean I try to link that back to the the neighborhood of looking at the same things listening at the same things that have the common visions and that helped in terms of tiding people together as well with the with the same kind of culture that we share over the place however when we look at these kinds of widespread artifacts or artworks we cannot assume right away that they have to say meanings everywhere the meanings change and in the Kaosay Ham the meanings have probably changed as well I mean we don't know exactly because they have no records in written records of that however when people receive it they probably have to change the meanings of it even though it's the same form it's the same thing but the meaning may have to change from to be the symbol of the leaders in Northern Vietnam you can change to something else like the symbol of community unity or whatever I mean we have to study more about that but what I have been saying today is that it showed that they have common visions more or less and that common visions continue not just in the runs grounds but in the vision and images as well in other items that we will find in the future I try to organize these kinds of evidence together in my little work as well so and talk more about that later on and come to Pam's questions it's make me here with uh let Professor Nam Kim answer his questions first and then we can come to the questions about Pam's questions about Southeast Asia as a region about transnational world or spacecraft later on well first I'd like to thank the respondents for the comments and the questions there's a lot of food for thought and I'm writing many things down I don't think there's a lot of time to go through all of it but let me just start with some of the comments because I've been made and one of the things that I'd like to bring up would be this idea of memories and memories associated with sites how they can be attached to places but also how they're transmitted to generations across time and space this is a topic that many people have been exploring with in archaeology Ian Lover for example has written a lot on this particular topic there's also another idea that I'd like to bring into the discussion this concept of political regeneration so Ben Ponson has been writing about this this idea that you take materials whether from text whether from the landscape artifacts other kinds of relics and you use them in different ways as a sort of blueprint for changes in political regimes and dynasties and we can see this in many examples from old history across regions and I think that's an interesting idea to bring up I don't know if you had a specific question but it was more of a comment that I just wanted to sort of build from and I find it very interesting how you talk about the uses of the Dung Son culture material and its material record to argue against those Indianization arguments as a culture it's it's fascinating to think about I didn't really think about it that way but it is very analogous to how it's being used in Northern Vietnam to counter against the sinocentric sorts of perspectives but I think it brings up that larger point that it's important to to complement what we already know the traditional explanations that people have been talking about for decades and use the archeological record the material record in ways that they can kind of enrich our understanding of that past and I'm sorry you had to read my book I hope it wasn't too tedious for you but thank you for your comments and questions the I give the state for example what you were talking about these definitions for state and for urbanism that was something that I grappled with because as you pointed out there are many ways in which we can look at these past entities and social policies and define forms of complexity and I think it's interesting that you brought up that idea of course of power that I do talk about but I didn't have time to really go into the detail here but for me a very important criterion for what we might consider state level societies would be that sort of monopoly over the use the legitimate use of deadly force and I think there is plenty of evidence from the the global case that illustrates not only the centralization of production processes associated with some of those materials in these various consequences but also the what they seem to be standardized in production if you think about the rampart features as fortifications for instance there is a lot debate about that as well I've had people tell me that they think that these features were constructed as part of flight control or irrigation purposes for original purposes I don't discount those possibilities not in the slightest but I would point to the fact that we have these other material indicators as well the iconography showing warriors on boats in some cases with captives sitting in front of them the recovery of weapons the mass production of weapons the various architectural features associated with these grandfathers I didn't talk about this here today but we can see evidence of baffling we can see baffled gains where you force your potential attackers to to move in a certain pattern there are indications that bastions are spaced not only in the inner wall but also along parts of the outer and middle walls as well and you would not have bastions for any other sorts of purpose except to to use as defensive architecture and we know that the bastions from what we can tell and this is really just in the last year or so we started to do surveys about this as indicated by our data but also on the ground the ground treatment but the bastions seem to be spaced at regular intervals these are not natural features there are high points that seem to be on top of the grandfathers and they're flanked on the exterior by these pieces of dry area and they're spaced at or right around the same distance that you would expect them to be given the kinds of firing distance you have with technology so all of these indicators to me speak to the presence of coercive power the importance of competition and militarism we don't have a lot of osteological data unfortunately the soils are not conducive to that kind of preservation I know of one site located in the Goload area this is the I believe it's a Donsun culture period site where there is evidence for blood force trauma on one of the skeletons that I found there but aside from that there's very little osteological evidence and to kind of piggyback off of another comment the use of the drums and I think you talked a little bit about the centers of production and how you might be tied to identity and I think this is a question that came up across the board we don't have to my knowledge a lot of evidence for localized production we do have plenty of evidence for the specimens that have been found in highest concentrations in Yunnan Plateau in northern Vietnam but in terms of casting artifacts the molds themselves from what I understand there's one location this is the Lung Kae Lung Kae site in Citadel that dates to the second or third century of the common era where archaeologists have found a couple of fragments for drum casting because my knowledge that's the only real evidence for local production and what's interesting about that time period is we know of these these ceremonial bronze drums being used in the centuries prior and there are suspicions that when the Han come in they begin to confiscate many of these drums and recast them into other kinds of things but they basically take away the symbols of power of the locals and what's interesting to me is that in the second or third century in one of these citadels there's evidence for Han production or attempts to reproduce these drums because I think they recognize the symbol of power that they have for the local production and I want to get to maybe I'll open the discussion for some of the comments that Pamela offered and we can address them together but this idea of belonging I think it was very interesting the sense of belonging and some of our own personal reasons for coming into these fields of study I think it illustrates that there's a concept that's being tractioned in archaeology or archaeological theory such as multi-coloniality there are various perspectives that we ought to be bringing to the table when we're considering some of these questions and it's not just a matter of the research professional who comes into the situation and asks a certain set of questions but it's also working with locals and dissident communities who have some kind of stake in this process or interpreting that past what is important about that past how are these materials how are these landscapes important how do we continue to serve some kind of function and there are different constituencies that need to be brought to that table not only to discuss the research and to interpret and reconstruct the past but also to safeguard the materials for the future so there's this I think this concept of multi-coloniality that would be important to consider and something else that you brought up that I think I think you should both address is this idea of transnational collaboration so you correctly pointed out that for many of these questions it's quite imperative for us to work interregionally across disciplines but obviously across borders as well and in some cases that's much easier to do than others I think you've alluded to this challenge working between China and Vietnam especially when you think about some of the origins of the province drum there are national sentiments that have to be navigated and I'm thinking of even Korea and Japan for instance and archaeology there are many issues but I do have hope because I know some of our students in our program have been working on materials like beads for instance that have been found in both countries and probably were not manufactured in either country they were manufactured elsewhere in Southeast Asia but they have found their ways in these areas and so they've run counter to some of the traditional forms of knowledge that we've had about these new processes and I don't know if you've had something you'd like to add about that topic about transnationalism and I think it's very important and we have to work more together on that sometimes I mean political issues contemporary political issues get in the way we can avoid that but in the future probably we can't do that but I think now I mean the world is moving to the right I mean the right as a more conservative what happened in the US what happened in Europe what happened in I don't know in Southeast Asia I hope that we will have more liberal offerings in the future and then we can talk more about these kinds of transnational projects together in terms of economics they hold hands but in terms of identities I mean they fought a lot because I'm now working at SPAFA trying to promote the the identities of Southeast Asian people together through culture and sometimes it's quite difficult because sometimes we have to fight for the the kinds of break conditions from UNESCO UNESCO has three brands the World Heritage Site ICS Intangible Cultural Heritage and the World Memories so these are like aboard to the countries or to the two countries together to be recognized as having something important for UNESCO and for the for example like ICS the Intangible Cultural Heritage Thailand has to fight with Cambodia over the corn dams and that is quite I don't know I don't know how to say Privy here is another example which is great it's great more conflict than unity so we have to think about that too in terms of how modern politics get in the way when we talk about this transnational research project together and I agree with Pam that interdisciplinary approach and interdisciplinary kinds of experience are inevitable nowadays art historian students cannot be art historians only you have to know other methodology as well you have to know about I mean how to use other evidence other kinds of records other kinds of disciplines to fulfill your gaps in your research too thank you I think maybe we should open it up to the floor so that we can all go to the reception of course my young teacher or Jackson whatever is over there so there's a lot to think about so I'll put your hands down do I have a gross question well I mean Dr. Kim you mentioned saying you won't believe in the existence of this national hero until you see a tomb like basically you want to see a corpse and just make me think about how these are talking about using traditional chronicles as means of excavating basically and animating history and these narratives are always driven basically by by personalities right by kings or by these great figures great men usually and I mean to what extent does these you know because obviously the personalities are how are how the narratives are this you know in terms of methodology does archaeology try to to go against these very individualized kind of narratives so I mean you know or does it try to you know make things more democratic or egalitarian in a sense or do you find yourself still trying to to shore up these so very centralized or very very personalized that's a very interesting question it speaks to I think a couple of tensions that archaeologists interpreting these kinds of context in your face and a very simple moment it's difficult for us to get into the heads those that live in the past and we while we might hypothesize about various kinds of strategies and leadership what I'm proposing today I have to do at a sort of group level because I don't know I don't know what an individual person how that person he or she may have thought or behaved in these conditions in these contexts unless we're looking at someone's creed for instance it would be difficult to say anything about a specific individual remains or if it's in writing something so without that kind of evidence it's difficult to project and to think about those kinds of questions but at the same time there is a need to discuss these kinds of strategies and how they might relate to political relationships and I think the evidence lends itself to those kinds of considerations if we know that certain material classes are used in a way by various societies and if we see those same kinds of materials in a different place and it's restricted I think it allows us to say something about segments of factions or whatever kinds of groupies you want to call them and how they may be using these materials what kinds of strategies might be going through their heads collectively in that kind of decision making it's difficult to talk about individual people and for me again I'm comfortable talking about a general sense of the polity but what the polity actually looked like and how it operated it's very difficult for us to say I prefer to stay on this this generic level for now as we uncover more and more evidence maybe we can speak to specifics but it's difficult to delve into that too much Can I follow up perhaps I did just exit that with what what was going on was getting up it seemed to me that you're assimilating just under your eyes I was surprised that you maintained the term civilization to begin with and that there's an assimilation or a suggested assimilation between civilization whatever that is polity the state complex forms of society those all seem to be on the same level such that the definition of civilization I'm wondering if the lingering term your lingering usage of civilization is something to more relic of the of the china versus barbarian question and if it really has its place there insofar as it appears to be the notion of civilization appears to be underpinned by a notion of collective sensibility for state early state formation that makes all the sense in the world to me but for civilization I wonder why it's there and is that somehow oriented towards dealing with these questions of kings forming worlds and that's the definition of civilization why can't an individual in their own culture as part of a collective culture as part of an individual relationship to whatever it may be the home the pond whatever I mean why is that not civilization why is it only state polity that or some form of state which can be called civilization I know these are big debates within archaeology as well the notion of civilization so I'm wondering if you're yeah engage in that I guess yeah thank you for pointing that out because it has not dawned on me that in some ways I do conflate these terms but I guess the way I would respond to that is my view of the phenomenon of civilization is not restricted to something that is a state and it's not restricted to forms of politics for instance it's used in a loose sense here that we have shared cultural affinities between various societies or communities that are in this region so we might say that the civilization in question would be something like the Donsun culture or material culture so this is an archaeological horizon or a lens of some kind we can see shared affinities and material culture presumably in cultural practice as well that's spread out geographically across this region but also through space and time as well and it's not directly related to the global polity for me there is a separation here when I'm talking about polity civilization can include cities it can include the hinterland it can include small villages it's part of whomever might be part of that larger collective or cultural practice so and that's how I would distinguish in terms of terminology but you're right to point out that there is a lot of debate about this so when I use the term polity I'm referring to this apparatus of authority or governance that may be making some of these decisions that may be related to some of the political elites located at the site I'm not referring to the rest of Northern Vietnam or to these various communities because we don't really know we don't know the extent of its influence or its reach physically or ideologically those are questions that we don't have an answer to I mean at this point we don't even know what kinds of languages for sure we're being spoken by these disparate groups it could be that there are multiple ethnicities or ethnic linguistic landscapes so it's a very complicated situation just a very quick simple question what are the current critique on archaeology itself because looking at the tighter archaeology at the crossroad and the way both gentlemen when we were talking about it it seems like archaeology is put to a service of almost a certain type of political economy a service of political economy or even in culture and politics as in how I think Dr. Collins basically asked a very fundamental question of archaeological practice within the region in that sense right what is the current critique towards archaeology I mean they have been critique towards anthropology as a kind of very almost less academic dominant overview in that sense but what is the critique of archaeology in general and within this your research on this region I just want to thank you very much that's both of them both of you if you can okay um there it's a there's a there's a sort of evolution if you will in how archaeology is being conducted the kinds of questions that are being asked there was a slide that I showed up here early on from the 1960s of the inaugural issue from the Institute of Archaeology many of those questions that were being asked if you looked at every title on that table of contents they were all dealing with these metanarratives the connection to archaeology and history and if you look at that journal today the table of contents is very different and we're looking at questions that go well into the Pleistocene all the way through to the present time we're looking at not just northern Vietnam but all over the country and it's not really tied to these national historical historical constructions any longer there's still some there's still some element of that but I think the researchers the archaeologists in Vietnam have increasingly recognized a lot of them are collaborating with people from outside of Vietnam who are asking different kinds of questions using various methods to get at these questions and I think once people start realizing there are other questions that might be of interest and there are ways to get at that data whether it's archaeopathanical materials faunal analyses other kinds of methods that can help you reconstruct different aspects of that past now it's not just a matter of defining the culture and the time and place that you can relate to historical things now you can ask other kinds of questions as well and I think the collaborations have moved in that sort of direction is that sort of what you're getting at that's not the point okay for me I mean archaeology has evolved as well I mean in the past of course it has been used as part of the nationalistic endeavor the example that we have in Thailand like in the past Prince Dung Rung has rejected the term Khmer art from the French scholars but call it library art instead for example it's a kind of art you know Khmer actually yeah in Thailand but he called it differently and the whole archaeological operations at that time were like were directed toward creating a kind of Thai nationality and all that kind of things civilizations however now the questions change even the finance department have different questions for this so we have changed to looking at something in details more like question-based more associated with multi-ethnic groups like now I'm saying thank you it's a great question about the construction of what it could look like in the future it implied a lot of canalists throughout the city so here any evidence for these or is it pure fantasy on the part of some somebody who thinks this this would make a great theme park there is some evidence we have parts of the site during the rainy season to get flooded reconstruction some hydrological reconstruction indicated there are boats that would be fed into the site through various openings and various reservoirs some of it I think might be aspirational but there is there is reconstruction that indicates the local river that was connected to the river did come in at one point it doesn't any longer but it did come in at one point and fed the outer boat and the various boats within the site so much so that you would be able to move materials on boats throughout the site the legendary accounts do talk about some of these uses of a boat traveled within the site I don't know how much of that is true but there are some indications not really Chinese layers layers depicting yeah except for the irregular shape I think which many people suspect and I suspect this as well it really conformed to local terrain and topography it was expedient use of the term so we connect hill tops to a high elevation elevation and it precluded the need to marshal even more resources in order to build these features but we're still just scraping the surface I think for understanding why this particular location what is it about the topography what is it about how water may have been moving through this area and how they wanted to harness that and channel the water resources there more questions out there I want to follow up on anything I want to talk about one more I did Pamela, you mentioned this idea of the complex labor systems and this sense of collective agency I forgot to mention I guess what triggered that question was your quoting that Anderson yeah and imagine communities which is really about sort of the national will the national imagination and to what extent are you using that to think about collective agency and the idea of a state yeah or the definition of equality because it's the nation versus states really right right I bring that up as a way to propose it and to see if there might be ways to test that hypothesis in the future I guess that's my question how do we test out that hypothesis about this kind of agency I guess I think there are ways I've seen others try for other sites thinking of sites in the southeast of the United States for instance where archaeologists who looked at constructions monumental constructions in the mountains for example and what they've done is they looked at the basket fulls of dirt and other soil materials that were used in the construction process using that as an artifact essentially and if you can look at the kinds of soil composition the different kinds of color that may be involved and if you combine that with an historic evidence that gives some indication about identity that might be tied to different college or identity that might be tied to where these basket loads may be transported from different outline areas of the hinterland for instance it gives you a sense that people are participating in this larger process that they may be coming from further a field and perhaps it is because they are tied in some way to this sense of belonging to this place that's a ceremonial case that's very different from what we have here but I think that though there are novel or innovative ways that we can try to address these kinds of questions but I also think it speaks to some sense of the state when you think about course of power and how it's not always tied to physical power but it's also tied to ideology so if we consider the ways in which people may be conceiving of identity and how they may belong to something the power of ideology is very important to consider as well is it? Yeah, no I guess I'm still thinking about the extent to which we can see this participation I think is a good way of thinking about it is it non-coercive participation? I mean even if it's coercive vis-a-vis ideology how do we know it's not coercive in terms of actually extracted labor like forced labor I guess I wonder how do we know? But the question then would be does that counter the notion of a sense of collectivity even if it's done through a process of resistance or through a process of pure coercion, ideological or real that doesn't necessarily mean that's not a sense of collectivity developed in that process The short answer of course is we simply don't know what for this case at this time we don't know what the data is but we do have a huge literature and a huge body of literature is about this continuum from coercion to collaboration a kind of literature called the power strategies in archaeology so archaeologists have asked these kinds of questions for a long time it's part of the political economy framework Marxism and political economy and then looking at the power strategies because now I mean the whole questions about state formation is not about what state came first it's not about the primary and security states but how the states operate and like Nam has been doing in his work he has been trying to look at how it is operated I mean those power strategies the monumentality of the the earthen walls and all that kind of things so in these kinds of questions we have I mean archaeologists have proposed that it's not just into all questions but it's a continuum in each society because these societies have unique characteristics in each society we have some of them we have like very coercive kinds of technique from the leaders some would have like the looser technique of leadership so these kinds of leadership strategies or power strategies have been a huge debate in archaeology and each archaeologist would try to prove it using different kinds of evidence it just went to Stonehenge by the way and they like I read their information that they found pick bones bones of the pigs from Scotland in in the Stonehenge so it means that people came all the way you know to to participate in this Stonehenge ceremony so feasting or whatever so it's more it's more than leadership of one ruler I think it's more like community kind of sense of belonging that you know these Stonehenge things is part of us is our sacred place so the sense of sacredness can be included in that kind of question or explanations as well as just leadership I would also add what we're dealing with are snapshots in time so these strategies the feelings the perceptions of the site and of community they change they continue to change I mean they might be changing on a daily basis for all of you know so I don't think that we can rule out that at some point in time groups would have felt a certain way but that how how interaction has changed yeah it could change as well okay I think on that note we can thank you all very much for your time for your thoughts and all of you as well and please do join us next door for Jake and for more informed conversations thank you thank you all you