 Thank you very much for coming today. First of all, I would like to thank Southeast Asian Art Academy program for that, and Center of Southeast Asian Studies for supporting this seminar. Today Dr. Go, Yang Yan, she is going to talk about the topic, when pop and whisper service society and life in a medieval northeast palace. For speaker, Biogatri. Dr. Go is associate chair of research and associate officer of history at the School of Humanities Nanyang Technical University in Singapore. She is a historian and ecologist of pre-modern Southeast Asian who has conducted few work in Myanmar, Indonesia and Singapore since 1991. Her research includes accuracy and early history of Southeast Asia, pre-modern communication, cultural and trade networks, and early urbanization. She is leading a multi-year project combining Pagan, Myanmar and Singapore, focusing on service analysis and urbanization. Her publication includes the Will Turner and his house, kinship in Buddhist Ekmin, ancient Southeast Asia with John Wixig. And she lead the world Pagan and the world early Myanmar and his global connections. If you have any question, please answer after presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much for introduction. I would like to first thank the SOAS Center for Service Asian Studies as well as SOAS Service Asian Art Academic Program for hosting me and inviting me to give a talk on the project I've been working on for approximately six years plus. And so it really gives me a lot of pleasure to be able to talk about it at this event. So the project itself involved a research that was conducted on ceramics that have been excavated from what has been known as the palisade. So it was an elite enclosure or complex that's situated right in Pagan, right next to the St. Fuji Temple. So most of the artifacts I will look at has been excavated by the Burmese archaeologists in the 1990s to 2000. So we have been working on the materials but we were ourselves not directly involved in the excavation itself. To give some background to it, Pagan as probably some of you know is administrative as well as the religious and royal capital of Myanmar between 10 to about 14th century or so. So there have been quite a number of sources that deal with Pagan itself. This is the location of Pagan. The sources comprised chronicles of Yazawin, inscriptions that are called Sa, as well as Chinese accounts, architectural as well as murals and of course archaeology. And in order to understand much more about an urban site like Pagan, what we need is, literally, to look at archaeology, especially in terms of looking at the kind of interaction between elites for instance and the greater population. So for Pagan, the chronicles themselves gave a fairly detailed account of the kingdom or the polity. There were four capitals that were known that constituted what was Pagan today. So the first was Yulun Jun, or Yulud Island. And then the second was Teripitsiya. That's the location of that. Then you have Tampawadi. And then finally, a Vimadana Pura, which is also what is called Pagan. Or Palkarama is another term that was used. How do we define or look at Pagan urban character? So there's a lot that remains to undetermined. So one important thing to look at is what questions are we trying to answer when we are looking at Pagan? And while scholars continue to challenge existing studies, we should look at evidence and data and what these show. So an important question considered is do we have evidence to define Pagan in the following way, as an urban site or urban center? And secondly, if it were an urban center site, what kind of site was it? What type of site was it? So what does our research actually tell us? The framework that I'm using for this study and what we have been doing is this is the framework that we use is to look at urbanization and the urban process or the examination of urban sites or centers. Some of the works that we worked on are utilized by Fox, Refugee and Singer. But in particular, I'm looking at two main ones out of this list. One is MIXIC, who's here, that looks at auto-genetic versus heterogenetics type of studies or urban centers. This is based largely to a degree, it was a modification of Refugee and Singer as well as VG Child idea. And so what we're looking at is two types, two extreme end of a spectrum, auto-genetic that focus more on monumental architecture, administrative center for instance, not very densely populated and manufacturing on the periphery versus heterogenetic, field of monuments, densely populated diversified economy and they use money or a medium of exchange in terms of its monetary system. For much of it, much of what studies on Southeast Asia seems to give hinterland areas or mainland areas the description and categorization of auto-genetic but for island areas that coast of ports and all that heterogenetic. What we're going to look at is to see these two and not necessarily the two types that are opposites of each other in the sense that you are either auto-genetic or heterogenetic but rather to see it as a power spectrum in which case most of the centers and sites that we look at fall along this particular spectrum. The other work that will also inform the study is a work by Roland Fletcher from University of Sydney that looks at agrarian-based urbanism and this suggests that some of these early urban centers and he was looking at an example of Angkor for instance he saw this as low density agrarian urban center whereby you would have in fact the population spread out over a large area. One of the things that we looked at for Burma or at least for Pagans or looking at Burmese urban sites is to also consider or take into consideration terms or categories that is used to describe various types of Burmese sites. So here are some of the examples like P Hockpie which can be country, royal city or a board of nuts for instance if you look in the religious sense. Baya or Pura which was found in the inscription of 1093 and then the most common form which is Miu Miu can be Miu Miu Ji, Miu Nghe for instance Miu Da which is a royal type of Miu and the fourth term Gong Out is actually not really used very much. It appears to be used largely in the colonial context so then the next common type of categories is Yua which is in comparison to Miu so in archaeology we look at different type of activity sites so these are some example, a palace market, industrial site for instance that look at production so it could be iron working, pottery making for instance port, temple, fort, residential dwelling or a type of water facility. One important thing to note is that all urban sites may contain one or more of these above features so it's not necessary that you only see a palace site and nothing else so you should also be looking at what are the connection among this various activity sites within a site complex. So the palace that we have been doing work on is an important activity site and so this is a key to understanding or studying Pagan as an urban site. Why would it be why is there a need to place the AKP or Noether John Sita Palace within the context of Pagan is because we have the materials so this is a clear instance whereby we have the archaeological materials we have the context for it and we still have the remains that we could use to better understand Pagan as an urban center or site so questions that we will ask would be what role does the palace play in the formation of Pagan urban center so in this case we are looking at a palace as a magnet for activities that is associated with its inhabitants. Secondly a second question that we should ask is to see the palace in the context of the larger environs of Pagan so how did the palace interact with the immediate areas within the settlement war and outside the war so this can be partially discussed to looking at how looking at the larger area where would the some of the activities would be conducted outside the palace site itself but in this particular case in the initial look at the palace materials we are able to to a greater extent or not be able to detect that some of the industrial activities and in particular I am referring to the production of roof tiles for instance it appears that the production of these will actually carry out across the Ayawadi river not on this side of Pagan so that is interesting to see the car connection so the question is what was the palace role as important feature of administration and ceremonial and regional activities so did it fulfill both roles and did it have different roles at different times so these are questions that may not exactly be addressed within the something that kind of addressed within a short period of time but something that we should consider that we should continue to consider over a long period of study here is an example of what was supposed to be the third capital of Pagan the larger policy of Pagan that is the Tambawadi according to the chronicles so what you have at the site itself is this particular structure which say that this was the site of the Tambawadi palace site so this was largely surmised from the chronicles itself as well as some preliminary survey that is down on the ground not to necessary excavation so in terms of sources for Pagan these are the type of sources mention it briefly earlier in the earlier slide but here are the more detailed aspects of it so for written documents there are Burmese inscriptions the Burmese chronicles the Chinese historical sources and colonial reports as well archaeological remains we have artifacts monuments temples, palaces, complexes and murals and other media representation so that is Tambawadi palace in terms of the map itself and on the right it shows you some of the main temples but of course not all of them it would be quite a task for the 2,000 plus 3,000 temples in the site so I start with talking very briefly about the different types of sources so here are examples of Chinese accounts that refer to Pagan or Pugan and so this is from Zhou Qifei Linwai Dai Da which described the country of Pagan and the description said I mean the description translated said that the Pagan King and Co-official wear gold headdress the form which resembles the horn of rhinoceros they talk about what kind of transportation they use like horses what were the residents made of in terms of what material was used like tin for instance gold, silver etc and how Buddhism was an important practice this particular passage this particular characterization was also continued in a later text called the Zhu Fan Zi itself which is also described mainly the same type of information of Pagan other sources include chronicles so this is a reference to chronicles most of them been produced largely in the 19th century I mean you do have the earlier 18th century ones for instance like Ukala as well as 20th-day-one Mahau Situ's text which is about 1715 or 16th for Ukala and 1795-98 for Mahau Tin Mahau Situ 20th-day-one Mahau Situ so these are examples of the chronicles this is one important one by Ukala which talked about the expedition carried out by Anoeta in terms of its conquest of Tartone and it described various people that have been taken this is important in terms of occupation because another way to look at urban centers inside is to look at the types of persons who were inhabitants, what kind of activities did they carry out what patients do they actually were they part of so inscription itself also gave us some information about life in Puggan especially during the middle-classic period or mid-deep period so diversity of Puggan was already indicated early in the inscription so these are some examples such as musicians, performers such as singers and dancers for instance, food suppliers agriculturalists other professions like potters for instance, boatmen, canal diggers etc so these were mentioned in the inscription as persons that have been donated to temples is worth monitoring here I will just go through some of this in terms of that they were referred to in inscriptions and other texts but also you can see them in Puggan as well so monks, novices and even nuns it was stated that as many as 4,108 monks recited Buddhist texts in John Sita's palace so this is also partly a reference to what we were doing in terms of the Noether John Sita palace because one of the two one of the kind of complex there was supposed to be John Sita's burders the glaze black on the lower right of course the others are all modern pictures of herders the A.R. Wadi was important was important in terms of transportation as well as other sources like for food and protein that fisherman it was an important source of subsistence so these are depicted on a mural this is if I remember correctly in Sulamani Temple and so more examples of the type of water transportation musicians and dancers here's an example of a sound player and dancer weavers so you have spinning and weaving of one of the main industries and so an example of a loom porters obviously and holding down was an important mount that was called the porters mount and that's where they have practice open air firing and you can see lots of broken porches on it Laker workers was another category of occupation Tadi collectors I'm glad that they are still carrying carrying on this so you can go out for gun and get some and return back to the gun lots of transportation horses chariots of carts for instance these are also noted so now I'll move on to the parasite itself that I've been working on so the site was named based on inscription as well as from the Mies Chronicle this particular photo that was taken in front of the site was this was the first particular MSATP or the Myanmar Singapore Archaeology Training Project this was in 2014 so the palace in terms of its location is is right there marked by X so it's right near the Darbar Gate itself across the road from the palace is this particular new palace site which was built as the tourist attraction so but across the road is the old palace site which you could go and visit when you go to Bagan this is the plan of the palace itself actually the palace site itself comprised two sections one is the noise of palace and the second one is the John Siddharth Palace so work has been done on both the 1990s work excavation was done mostly on Noether Palace and in 2003 they expanded it into the other area so this is what the site looks like they have built this walkway where you can go along and look at the various features images that a lot architectural remains in which we can situate our analysis of the pottery assemblages so here are examples of the pottery assemblage found within the palace site itself an upper picture you can see that it is the clusters of parts for instance have been placed or rather they have built a kind of glass box to protect the cluster of parts here on the lower left is an example of it there are other features as part of the elite enclosure itself like this particular one which could have been a well but of course there is also another running theory that this is part of a latrine so we would prefer it to be a well but we shall see what it is so there are also some interesting features like these ones here some of them that are deep were mostly wells such as this one on the upper left the rest of them like the round features are kind of too overlap being circles with a low stone dates at the bottom of these these are most likely pillar bases so they are meant for pillars they either make a teak or some other wood and then we would have supported a kind of superstructure or wooden or timber superstructure some of these might could have been used for ritual deposits but that is just a hypothesis at present so this is the old Pagam Museum that is what it looked like in 1994 and the bottom that is where the inscription was in 1994 and this is what it looks like for quite a number of years now as this massive structure which the basement of which is where we work and the basement is where all the pottery and all the ceramics as well as other artifacts excavated from the Pagam Palace site were actually stored so when we initially happened on this project which really is our good fortune to actually be that this was brought to our attention and we were given the opportunity to analyze this there were about 270 baskets of this size in rice or cement sacks so that was our project for the last 6 years was to try to make sense of what was happening in terms of the artifacts as you can tell partly from this image itself a lot of the plastic bags are more or less deteriorated some of them still have tags which was paper tags which was useful because it tells us the location it tells us the stratigraphy but there are quite a number that just don't have any provenance so but what we can do is to try to make sense of that to comparison with the other materials that do have provenance so this is our research at the Pagang Archaeological Museum so we do our training for about a range between about 7 days to about 14 days 16 days maximum so we have participants from the Directorate of Archaeology we have participants from the Directorate of Historical Research and from the University of Yangon as well and so the museum staff as well from the curators of the Archaeological Museum so this is our research process how we carry out our particular work so we first go through sorting of ceramics by material so this we work by firing temperature so porcelain stoneware earthenware they are fired at different temperatures so we use that as the main kind of way of classifying various objects so for porcelain it's about 1250 to 90 degrees celsius and above stoneware is between 900 to 1250 and earthenware under 900 degrees celsius then we sort the ceramics by vessel parts then we sort them by vessel types so whether they are bowls or jars or lamps etc then by decoration techniques what type of techniques were used and then by decoration motifs this is how we go about doing that then we do the work of measuring the diameter of rims and bases because features are important features can actually tell us a fair bit about the varieties of specific type of vessels but it also can be used in terms of minimal number of vessel counts so it will help in terms of that too photography drawing artifacts then we get our participants to complete their sorting sheet then do a data entry and of course in the long term everything will be placed in storage this is an example of the rim profiles that the various participants have to do so in terms of some of the examples of what we see at the palace in terms of palace materials we have Chinese porcelain so the one on the upper left is an example of a town green splash wear so this is quite similar to the one from the Batu Hitam or the town dynasty back that is now in Singapore we found I think about three pieces of this, these are two of them unfortunately we do not have the actual context in which they were excavated but we also have example of Song Yuan rim porcelain and Ming blue and white other examples were from examples of Southeast Asian wares so we have Vietnamese blue and white we also have a fair number of Burmese glazed stoneware so the one on the lower left is interesting because the green and white are quite rare in terms of where you do find them and we have been seeing more of them as we carry out the research in the basement of the Burgan palace another type of weather is also quite common in the collection now but not as many in terms of proportion to earthenware is the Mata Banja on the upper right this type of artifact the earthenware represent the largest proportion of all artifacts we have in the Burgan palace but it also shows you the range this is just a small snapshot of what we have in terms of decoration earthenware found in the palace site so we have a wide range of decoration techniques have been used had an impressive instance slip and punctate stamping, slip and burnish as extra we have different type of vessel types, necks and spouts and we also have some unusual items like this particular one this is a five-page earthenware what is unusual is the white painted decoration on the surface on the burnish surface so we suspect that it probably came from or was probably an example of a wear that originated or was brought in from Sri Lanka so the particular part of the vessel is right at this portion where we have been a kundi there is also these under more animatic wear not a huge number of them like this black incised slip burnish earthenware possibly from north east India and then we have also other artifacts so we have in the basement itself the collection of lots of votive tablets of different styles and different types of sizes as well so including this more unusual example of the Buddha in the sitting kind of what we call a western sitting style and then you also this is an example of a votive tablet why we have this on the slide is because you can see on the back of it there has been placed on how a textile dry this includes lacquer lacquer wear as well so it's quite a good collection so what an implication of the research in terms of the larger impact the classification or the typology of most of these ceramics allow us to do certain things one of it is to determine chronology or dating at least a type of relative dating of various sites within the site itself the types of ceramics also allow us to have an idea of the type of activities that we carry out within the larger area of the palace of what was considered palace site the type of vessels too also allow us to probably draw some type of observation about the differences in socioeconomic groups for instance between the palace and outside the palace itself and within as well as outside of the city wall and also potentially look at geographical differences so the types of variety of ceramics are also useful in terms of analysis of material like clay and temper we can also look at provenance where were these likely made techniques also could be useful in drawing comparison across a larger area this is a type of animatic object this we found in the AKP palace or the AKP site itself the Burmese refer to this as shadow these are pottery this they are made from a turnware in this case they could also be plain like the ones on the left or they could actually have design like the pattern impress one on the lower right and the one on the upper right itself is actually a clay stoneware but we have also found examples of it that's been made from porcelain so these are pottery this there have been various theories about what they could be used for but before I get to that from work by emeter archaeologists who works on tegang has published two books that show example of shadow from tegang and then these ones on the lower left and right these are from three so this is from basically a fifth to ninth century in central Myanmar and then we also have what is called gajuk from outside of Myanmar itself this is example of two gajuk from Dien Klat To and these are gajuk from for Dien Klat To we are talking about 9th century site for 12th century we are talking about 13th and 14th century site so there are also examples found in Singapore which is a 14th century to about 1600 site so this seems to be spread out over so there are various theories about what they meant or could be used for theories goes from them being for instance in the case of Indonesia these were used for exchanging food for instance at a wedding ceremony some refer to this as play pieces basically tokens things that you could use as a game piece so at the moment we not sure what exactly could be or the other place that I didn't refer to but gajuk itself or shadow were also found in Ogil in Funan so they seem to be spread out and I think the last time I gave a talk that I refer to this I think they were in Thailand as well and various sites too so what does the pottery tell us so this some of the preliminary this is only up to MSATP 4 so in terms of the proportion of wares so the different colors represent different types of ceramics so blue is mostly tempered earthenware and then you have fine paste ware which is red so what is interesting is is that as I mentioned just now the largest proportion of pottery in the palace of this elite complex were still earthenware so so with tempered earthenware representing the largest number as opposed to what would have been imported ware like Chinese porcelain for instance or other types of ceramics so it suggests that if earthenware was used or utilized by elite as well and so it's not necessary but what you need to look at is then the type of vessels the type of decoration to start seeing any potential differences so what were they used what were they for they were used for different purposes some of it like this particular type of vessel were probably used for activities related for instance the cooking or in the kitchen others like those those with the spouts for instance and long necks for water might actually be more related to ritual purposes and there were other with more rather the rarer ones were utilized in certain areas that were meant for a higher degree of activities not for more daily utilitarian types of things so what this has kind of provided us with is a glimpse into how a medieval palace would have looked like or in terms of how what type of activities might have been conducted within a medieval palace so what we need to do in addition to continuing this research because from what I mentioned just now we will need to touch about 20% of the entire collection so we still have a long way to go but from what we have gathered is that if we were to go with the theory that you would see higher quality items in that yes in terms of the other way you do but in terms of differentiating between other types of imported ware then to a degree you may have more imported ware in the palace but that needs to be compared with what we can find outside the palace so this is a map as well as pie charts that has been produced based on a very preliminary survey that was carried out while we were doing another project documenting the murals in Paghan so it shows you that to a degree you do have some differences but for a large part you do have a majority of temple earthenware in most of it so we need to really look at the design as well as the templates themselves to differentiate those between within the palace and outside well we also done a short surveys in MSATP too and one thing that we need to do as well is to connect some of these distribution of ceramics to the various religious sites of the temples for instance whether they conform or show some type of patterns of use so this is what we carry out this project between Jan 2014 and Jan 2020 that was just a month ago a slightly more than a month ago and so that was it's in total so this is what we have done and I guess we are very proud of having moved everything out the baskets and the rice the cement sacks into crates for instance to make it easier to carry out the next stage so this was done pretty much about MSATP6 so now we are just proceeding with the rest of the materials so the work itself is very important in examining in the context of the larger region especially connection to other areas for instance within the larger Southeast Asia region and in particular I think we have a rare opportunity of having the kind of good fortune to be working on materials from palaces palaces are difficult to actually find so we do not see many examples of palaces in terms of the Southeast Asian region that we could be quite sure to ascertain that it is palaces. Here I go on to what we have created in terms of a ceramic typology for the materials so this is a classification system that we use so we divide up the artifacts in the ceramics versus non-ceramic items and then we further divide them into different categories by porcelain stoneware urtonware for instance and we also have what is a bilingual classification system to help us carry out work more effectively or more efficiently so this is what we have done in terms of having the main type of things that all our participants should look at or should think about when they are filling out the sorting sheets and so here I would like to do a little bit of advertisement in terms of all these materials rather not all these materials but the classification system the typology, the guidebook or the handbook in terms of how we carry out research in MSATP can be found on this website which is hosted by the E-Press NUS E-Press at the same E-Press site there are also three other reports as well two, one of them is on Dian Plateau the other one is on the Singapore Cricut Club which is a Singapore project and another one is an underwater archaeologist on a shipwreck called the Linga Wreck so far we have a handbook on the site about doing and it takes a few months to hopefully by June or July I will put up a database of what we have done so far so for all of you interested in looking at what we have found what we have done with it please do go to the website and take a look just before I finish today I would like to say a little bit about largely because some of the materials that we found that we have been working on at the Pagang Palace site also included items that were most likely produced around probably late 14th century but we can't be sure what most likely is 15th to 16th century so it includes things like the Matabang jars themselves the glazed stoneware the ash glazed stoneware and so these are mostly produced down in Lower Myanmar around the Ewa Twente Myanmar for instance up in the Shan area Myanmar this suggests that the palace area or the particular complex have been utilized or in use so right after supposedly Pagang was I mean Pagang ceased to become the main capital or administrative capital so the particular site itself continued to be used up to probably about 1700 or continued even after that so the manual itself attached to that but for this particular part of it too is to also look at Myanmar significance throughout the period up to about 1600 so there are various kilns sites and Twente is one of them the other ones of Myanmar for instance Patane of the Saint and Wutomah so these are examples of Burmese Saladon that have been found in the Twente area so these are surface filings not excavated so these type of ash glazed green stoneware and some more unusual ones like this under glazed black and quite common Burmese glazed self-properly lead glazed or potentially tin glazed and these this is not from Twente but these are the kind of the green and white that are unusual and we have begun to see more of them in the Pagang palace collection as well so it's still it's still difficult to determine where these were produced I think the latest word of it or suggestion was probably an area for the green stoneware probably around Patane but this particular one they haven't actually ascertained what the kilns sites were yet so they're still looking into it so we're talking about a couple of Burmese archaeologists as well as straight-down archaeologists working on ceramic production in Myanmar so they are continuing the particular search so Matabang Jar another common wear that we do find in the palace materials probably began in 15th century but became very well known to European in the 16th century onwards so in terms of looking at Myanmar's ceramics over a long period of time from the Pagang palace materials for instance up to we need to also consider among part of this larger picture it will help us to to be able to see Myanmar ceramics and classify them into like three main groups the locally produced ceramics which can be subdivided to Burmese earthenware and Burmese clay stoneware the salvization ceramics that were also being exchanged and used as well as Chinese ceramics that comprise porcelain and fewer proportion of stoneware so it is important to look at ceramic distribution we can develop a kind of relative chronology we can also look at its role in determining or informing us about what type of urban site the Pagang was so most urban sites site complexes are not homogenous they often contain more than one feature so it can have a palace area, it can have an industrial production site it can also be a religious site as well so these are various features that we need to take into consideration when we are undertaking our research so our ongoing research allows us to draw at this moment a preliminary observation that Pagang fits the criteria of autogenetic type of urban site or city but whether it was a kind of low density urban centre with a massive sprawl where the population are living pretty much widespread around all over Pagang itself including the area across the Awadi river so something is probably similar to Angkor or whether it's more densely populated where it was more densely populated cannot be ascertained at this particular moment so what we need to do is a long series of systematic surveys as well as excavation to determine where all these various sites are and that will also involve not just within the Pagang main area itself but also areas across the river because it is quite possible that you would have other areas maybe industrial activity site or other areas like habitation site across so in terms of what else we could do in terms of larger study is to look at so right a big distribution of types of artifacts such as the glazed stoneware for instance or matabangas for instance as within the type framework of interaction sphere just to see the larger area or the boundaries that's enclosed by this and then the next stage is to look at the temporal frame to look at it temporally to see whether there's any changes and then to use that to gauge the contributions that's made by these objects okay so this just to show you images of the favorite sorry images of the various participants we have quite a number of them over the years and we try our best to always take photos in the same spot and so you can also see by the the length of color of my hair as well at different times so this is number 5 so we have participants who have come back more than one visit in fact quite a number of them I think including one who is in the audience today participants from MSATP so quite a number were also fortunate and lucky to be part of the Alpha Wood project all of the Alpha Wood program so they were able to come to OS so I would like to say I think for most of the Alpha Meese participants so the project is sponsored by the Singapore Ministry of Education we have been fortunate that they have agreed to sponsor this project for more than 6 years and we have a lot of people to thank but mainly we just want to thank the Myanmar Ministry of Culture the Director of the DG for both archaeology and history as well as the various participants and students and of course my co-P.I who is in the audience as well I must not forget to thank him and also I would like to finally thank everyone for coming to this talk on a Friday night when you could be heading out somewhere else especially on such a nice day so thanks very much everybody and thank you very much for talking can you clarify for me please to what extent you were able to integrate or associate the finds and the salamity that you got with particular areas with the site plan with the stratigraphy with the context and so on or was there a big problem in relation to those two purposes yeah this is there's a slight anecdotal part to this so we have only we will manage to locate the site plan for the excavation about maybe it's about two years ago or slightly more than a year ago and so we are now going through the materials and literally to see the distribution of it so the ones that we have analyzed but not all of them we can't do all of them because as I mentioned earlier some of them were not accompanied by tags and so we are not able to figure out which excavation unit which particular stratigraphy for the those that we have we will then put all these materials and plot them on a device in some sense a kind of symbol or logo in which then I would plot them out on the actual excavation plan and so following that depending on how long that's going to take me because we have to date more or less analyze about I think it was about 40 about 50,000 charts but not all of them have provenance that was the problematic part is that they were just following baskets with no other information so for the ones we have we will try our best to to incorporate them into it so I hope that rescue excavation was it? no actually I don't think it was it's just that they were the unfortunate part is they were looking for architectural features and they were not particularly interested in the ceramics but the fact that they actually kept them was an important thing so we and especially with the 2003 excavations they started to take down information about the actual layer they even keep information on features for instance but the problem is because they've been kept in storage in a basement of the museum so literally when we got to it almost close to 30 years 20 over years you can imagine so that's why the first thing we did was to rescue all the tags we write them we wrote them onto new tags and we bag all of them put them into plastic crates so that even if we don't finish it somebody else could continue with it so that's our hope The chances of knowing the Burmese repetition of beads you didn't find any glass beads in the site? We have pottery and stone beads I don't because do you remember seeing any glass beads? We have, strangely we have not seen any glass beads the brown beads not in the collection but we have we have pottery beads and one other thing that I think I should put into here but in the basement besides the artifacts from the Burgan Palace there were also artifacts that were collected from other sites that were near Burgan including one prehistoric site that one has some stone beads in it but it's not from the same time period and not from the same area but interestingly no glass It's very surprising Yeah, very surprising How did you vote for the tablets? Because I couldn't figure out the colours of the match The voltage tablets actually they were all I think there are still maybe one or two crates that are part of the clinic that has not been analysed or ordered but I would say 6%? Probably not going to say but that was probably a particular you know rather a particular visit that we made so we have probably about 20% or down 20% of animals about being very optimistic so I would say there would be really a small percentage but interestingly they were all in one basket Were they labelled? They are not labelled but not before but it's interesting because a lot of them are just of one type but there are few that were unusual Is that typical of the one that you had up there? Yeah, the one that saw hundreds of thousands but it was almost exactly like the one that we had up there the smaller ones the smaller ones around which is why if anybody is interested in doing a project of that they are most welcome to still you have to take it You mentioned about the post hole in the hospital and they might be related to ritual couples or something like that what kind of material are they? No, this was a hypothesis that has been suggested but I think it was mentioned by one if I remember one of the Burmese archaeologists that we took we took actual archaeological studies in 2017 especially on the Pagan villages and their housing architecture that puts some kinds of like wine or grains So because as is mentioned to us because we were not involved in the 1990s and 2000s excavation so that was one of the things that was suggested yesterday some of that might have been for ritual deposit but probably a large number were actually pillar places for supporting the pillars of our structure as to which one where I think we were not if we were had been involved in that then I guess I would probably have a better place to say what were actually buried now The round disks that you mentioned were all over the place possible for something to do with food production for making bread of some sort or very small the other thing is is it smooth on one side at all or is it straight pottery It's straight pottery so it's like have a broken piece then you just kind of shape it until it's round so some of it that we've so most of the ones that are in the Pagan Palace material mostly earthenware so they've just been shaping around this so I think the suggestion was that they were used as tokens, game pieces of some kind of medium of exchange for something but it's not clear because they're found in various places where it appears to be I mean it's not found only in religious sites or in palace sites on habitation it's not across a wide range of it so that's the hard part it's not true yes it's a pan-Asian thing which could work for the interaction sphere thing but then you know it still doesn't get closer to what they actually were used for so I guess it could also be used for different type of purposes and different areas but what's interesting is that they were using the broken shirts and shaping them to you know they have a kind of secondary function I guess so yeah but so far it's all pottery it costs a whole range from earthenware to stoneware to porcelain the green white some lights and utero essentials is there any speculations to wires or anything like that wireless green yeah I think if you look at it correctly Miao Tan didn't suggest that he says it's thin you have a wire that makes me agree that one we did not know why they were making it but what was interesting was he's suggesting that the technique for making that most of the time when you talk about glaze stoneware they tend to look at what the Chinese would do but in this particular case he's suggesting that that particular glazing tradition might have come from the west or from West Asia for instance but why green we do not actually know they're quite rare but it's really interesting because precisely because they're rare okay I can check out that methodically and then I will launch right end of this term for the website center of certification of website this is a file I saw you saw that thank you