Recent Developments in the Archaeology of Myanma Pyay (Burma): An Introductio

Aung-Thwin, Michael A.

Stark, Miriam T.

ScholarSpace at University of Hawai'i at Manoa

Map 1. Palaeolithic and Early Anyathian sites. (Map by Jane Eckelman)Map 2. Post-Anyathian and Bronze Age sites. (Map by Jane Eckelman)EditorialRECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE ARCHAEOLOGY OFMYANMA PYAY (BURMA): AN INTRODUCTIONMICHAEL A. AUNG-THWIN AND MIRIAM T. STARKWE ARE PLEASED TO WELCOME readers to this special issue of Asian Perspectivesthat focuses on the archaeology of Myanma Pyay (Burma).1 Six papers presentfindings from archaeological research on different aspects of Burma's historyand prehistory. They draw from recent field research, collections analysis, tech-nical studies, and reports circulated within the country's boundaries. In addition,two of the leading archaeologists of mainland Southeast Asia, Professor CharlesHigham and Professor Ian Glover, have graciously agreed to comment on thesepapers and to share their perspectives on the archaeology of Burma. The time hascome for a reckoning of our knowledge of Burma's archaeology and to establish afoundation for the growing number of research projects that have been launched,and will begin in the near future. In these introductory comments, we first ex-plain the origins of, and justification for, a special issue devoted to a single coun-try's archaeology. We then tack between general concerns in the archaeology ofBurma and issues that the following papers raise.One afternoon in April 1999, as a group of us walked toward the anthropol-ogy department on the campus of the University of Hawai'i to hear Bob Hudsongive a lecture on his doctoral research in Burma, we decided that the time wasright to produce a special issue on Burma's archaeology. From a research per-spective, Burma's location makes it a key player in cultural developments thatoccurred in mainland Southeast Asia (as well as in eastern India and southwesternChina), and we discuss this point later in our introduction. From a topical per-spective, Burma has begun to welcome foreign archaeologists to undertake workwithin its borders. Currently, Burmese archaeology forms the focus of postgradu-ate research for several students in Australia, the United States, and Singapore.In July 1998, several Burmese scholars attended the 16th Congress of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association conference in Melaka, Malaysia; they presented re-ports on a possible Bronze Age site in Burma to a standing-room only audience.In April 1999, one of us (MAT) organized a successful session on Burma called"Burma Studies: The Next Generation" for the annual meeting of the Associationfor Asian Studies that included two reports on archaeological research in thecountry.As;all Pcrspcc!;lICS, Vol. 40, No.1, © 2002 by University ofHawai'i Press.2 ASIAN PERSPECTIVES . 40(1) . SPRING 2001One reason for this increased interest stems from Burma's academic leadership,which is genuinely interested in its archaeological heritage. In January 1999, Bur-mese archaeologists hosted a conference on prehistory that was inspired by exca-vations at a new Bronze Age site called Nyaung-gan (described in this issue byMoore and Pauk Pauk). The country has also recently opened up to tourism andcertain fields of scholarship, including (and surprisingly) political science. A newnational museum was constructed in the 1990s, which now displays prehistoricartifacts once stored in dusty boxes in an obscure archaeological department. Eventhe national archives have now been opened for research, boasting a digitizedindex of holdings, scanners and printers, and computers for those using thearchives. A new manuscript archive was opened in the year 2000 with similarelectronic equipment meant for public use. And, what had once been an onerousordeal at the airport now had been largely alleviated by the use of FECs (ForeignExchange Coupons) that give market rates for visitors' dollars, used as such orexchanged for kyats at market rates almost everywhere.Thus it seemed to us on that spring afternoon that the time had come to publishwork on the archaeology of Burma for both academic and infrastructural reasons.Yet, in 1999 one could also count the number ofBurma prehistorians on one hand.For various reasons, most of them are out of touch with new techniques andmethods and sorely in need of modern equipment and adequate funding. If ourgroup, which was genuinely interested in disseminating information on Burma'sprehistory to the rest ofthe field-with access to funding, to modern equipment andtechniques, and a solid grounding on conceptual issues-did not do something,who would? Once we got involved in other projects, the enthusiasm of the momentwould subside, and it would be a much more difficult task to accomplish. And if itnever got off the ground now, chances are, it might not at all during our lifetimes.Those were the kinds ofthoughts that drove us to prepare this special issue.When we arrived at the lecture room, we asked the then editor of Asian Per-spectives, Michael Graves, if he might be interested in a special Burma volume; hewas. Subsequently, one of us (MTS) became a co-editor of this issue, and a co-editor of Asian Perspectives, which facilitated the process considerably. After that, itbecame a matter of hounding potential contributors to produce what we wantedand to do it more or less "on time" in the peer-review process that Asian Per-spectives follows. Not only did most of the scholars we contacted agree to comeon board, we also managed to persuade two of Southeast Asia's most prominentprehistorians to comment on the others' essays. The collected papers in this issuereflect the fruits of our labors.But why Burma? One might reasonably ask why we decided to devote anentire issue of this journal to a country whose archaeological record remains sopoorly known, when other Southeast Asian countries-notably Viet Nam, Thai-land, and Indonesia-have a deep and rich history of archaeological research.Burma's archaeological record has fascinated and mystified Southeast Asianarchaeologists for decades. Burma's borders with Thailand, India, and China makeit a geographic and cultural bridge between what is generally considered SouthAsia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. Understanding the archaeology of Burmais thus essential for explaining a series of developments in Southeast Asia, fromthe earliest hominids in Asia's middle Pleistocene to the rise of complex societiesduring the late Holocene. Archaeologists with geographic specialties elsewhere inAUNG-THWIN AND STARK . INTRODUCTION 3mainland Southeast Asia may also wish to compare their own findings with thosenow emerging from Burmese archaeological fieldwork and to "locate" Burma in alarger framework of mainland Southeast Asia.This issue is loosely structured and widely varied in content. We made littleattempt to fit contributors' essays into a single theme, since our goals are mainlyto showcase recent research and to let the data speak for themselves. We framethe issue by beginning with this introduction, followed by Michael Aung-Thwin's review of the history of archaeological research in Burma. His essaysummarizes archaeological research in Burma by various kinds of specialists over ahalf-century of sporadic work. It is followed by Elizabeth Moore and Pauk Pauk'spaper on a newly discovered Bronze Age site called Nyaung-gan, and the possiblelinks to the subsequent "Pyu" culture that appeared. The latter, in turn, we knowwas the foundation for the Pagan kingdom, so this paper provides us with someevidence for the continuity of human habitation in the Dry Zone, where Burmascholars now think the origins of civilization in Burma may be (in Paul Wheat-ley's sense of urban society and its significance). However, the reader will noticethat precise dating is a very tricky exercise, explained technically but clearly in theessays by Barbetti and Grave who provide a most important discussion of thesubject in terms of the city wall at Pagan, fortification and palace site.Eager as we are to present some empirical data produced through archaeologi-cal research, Burma's prehistory has been shackled for nearly a century by certainprejudices about the unreliability of later Burmese chronicles; the baby has oftenbeen thrown out with the bath water. It is in this realm that we must see a closerelationship between archaeological and historical research, in which archaeologi-cal data must be used in conjunction with documentary data. Without the over-riding chronological and historical framework (and in certain cases, specific detail)that these chronicles provide, we would not have had a clue where to look, whatto look for, or what it all means. The discovery of Binnaka town is a very goodexample: without the chronicles' account of it, archaeologists would not haveknown where to look or what to look for. It would have probably remained justanother mound near an obscure village, rather than a major "Pyu" site with animportant role in the earliest urban culture of Burma.We also would have no basis on which to evaluate whether the carbon dateson Pagan being presented in this volume (for the first time) had any significance.It is only because, for instance, the chronicles attribute the founding of the city ofPagan to A.D. 849 that we have a reference point with which to begin an analysisand ask certain questions regarding the significance of the radiocarbon dates forthe foundations, fortifications, palace, as well as for the nearby "pottery mound"that Bob Hudson's article discusses. It does not mean the chronicles have beenproved correct, but their claims allow us to raise the kinds of questions that wouldnot have been raised otherwise.While our goals for the issue included a desire to publish new data and posenew questions for the interested scholar, we also sought to emphasize the need totrain another generation of archaeologists from Burma. The majority of contrib-utors to this volume are not Burmese, although several contributors have workedcollaboratively with their Burmese counterparts. Hence, we are pleased to publishJohn Miksic's article, which focuses on long-term training for indigenous archae-ologists. Without an on-the-ground program, Burma's prehistory might well re-4 ASIAN PERSPECTIVES . 40(1) . SPRING 2001main mired in the same (external) mold for another generation or more. And, lestwe neglect the coasts-even if the bulk of Burma's prehistoric and historic dataare found in the interior-Pamela Gutman's essay on Martaban trade provides anadditional, although not necessarily alternative, perspective. Since most of the re-search on Burma's prehistory (and history) has been conducted in the interior, thelack of data on the coastal areas may be simply a result of not conducting enoughresearch there.Each article in this issue contains new findings that will affect how we interpretBurma's ancient past, and we are grateful to our contributors for their time andexpertise on these papers. It is our greatest hope that this volume stimulates othersto examine or reexamine important aspects of Burma's prehistory, and that itprovides a baseline for future research. Even more important is the possibility thatthis issue may inspire another generation of young prehistorians to look at Burmaas a wide-open field of study, where a student of the past can literally carve outfor himself or herself a chunk of virgin territory as opposed to devoting researchto someone else's footnote.Our knowledge of the archaeology of mainland Southeast Asia has grown im-mensely in the four decades since Wilhelm Solheim (founder of this journal) andhis students launched their research projects in northeast Thailand, finally puttingSoutheast Asia on the map. Throughout these four decades, generations of archae-ologists have labored over sites from northern Viet Nam to Irian Jaya, and wehave learned much about how populations adopted technological and culturalinnovations through time. Yet our knowledge of mainland Southeast Asia re-mains patchy, and Burma is one of the areas about whose archaeological recordwe know the least. It is already a truism that Burma's location makes its study es-sential for understanding key developments that swept across much of the Asiancontinent: questions concerning Pleistocene hominids and Holocene innovationssuch as the origins of agriculture; the adoption of metallurgy (both bronze andiron); and the emergence of complex polities in the early first millennium A.D.Several of these topics-perhaps most notably middle Pleistocene hominids andfirst millennium A.D. complex polities-remain poorly known throughout main-land Southeast Asia; ongoing and future archaeological work in Burma on thesetopics may require us to revise our frameworks significantly.Until recently, the paucity of archaeological research in Burma has limited ourability to explain pan-regional patterning through time across mainland SoutheastAsia. As articles in this issue demonstrate, findings from recent archaeologicalprojects have already begun to change our perspectives on Burma's historic andprehistoric sequence. We hope that the next few decades hold even more archaeo-logical insights from new and innovative research projects, and that the nextchapter of research on the archaeology ofBurma will enrich our interpretations ofthe general region at different points in the archaeological past.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSSeeing this special issue to publication has required hard work, expertise, patience,and general assistance from a number of our colleagues. We are especially grateful toLahela Perry (assistant editor) and Shirley Samuelson (production editor, Universityof Hawai'i Press) for their assistance at every step along the way; thanks also go toAUNG-THWIN AND STARK . INTRODUCTIONthe University of Hawai'i Press staff for their help and good nature. We also thankthe issue's contributors for working closely with us in such an amicable fashion, forresponding graciously to our requests for more work, and for conforming to ourvarious deadlines along the way. Finally, we thank commentators Ian Glover andCharles Higham for reading and commenting on these most interesting articles;their insights are as important as the findings from each project to furthering ourknowledge ofBunnese archaeology.NOTE51. The editors have decided to allow each author to use either term-Burma or Myanmar, Paganor Bagan-in their respective papers. It should be noted, however, that the word "Myanmar," anadjective for the name of the country, people, or language, has been in use since about the thir-teenth century as such. Even during the height of the colonial period it was still the term used inindigenous speech to indicate the country, people, and language. "Burma," on the other hand, isan English rendition of the Burmese word barna, the colloquial equivalent of the more formalrnyanrna, meaning the same thing. We therefore use the term "Myanma Pyay" (country of theMyanma) for the title of this special issue to follow indigenous usage.Moreover, we use the term "Burmese" for the national group composed of the various ethnicgroups who are citizens of the country, and "Burman," for the ethnolinguistic group itself. Bothare English terms but still preferable to even more awkward terms such as "Myanmarese."As there are at least three different legitimate systems of Burmese romanization, we have de-cided to let authors employ their respective spellings for most place names. We have also omittedthe "u" and "Daw" of Burmese personal names (Mr. and Mrs., respectively) unless they wereincluded as such in the original publication being cited. And since there are no first or last namesin Burmese, as in Indonesian, the proper sequence of the Bunnese name is retained, rather thanartificially creating a "last name" to be consistent with Westernized names.

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