SEAArch – The Southeast Asian Archaeology Newsblog

Japanese archaeologists announce the discovery of six 13th century Buddha statues at Banteay Kdei.

Archaeologists discover ancient Buddha statues in Cambodia
IBN News, 25 August 2010
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The Malaysian cabinet has given the go-ahead to nominate the Lenggong Valley in Perak as a World Heritage Site. Archaeological sites in the Lenggong Valley reveal a long period of habitation from the Pleistocene right up to the bronze age.

Cabinet Agrees To Make Lenggong Valley in Perak Heritage Site
Bernama, 25 August 2010
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The Voyage of the Balangay, a reconstruction of a Filipino watercraft that sailed the Philippine waters last year is now in its second leg of its journey – a trip through the waters of Southeast Asia. The Balangay recently called at Kota Kinabalu and is on its way to Kuching before continuing on to Singapore and Vietnam.

Retracing the sailing bravado of Filipino ancestors
Daily Express, 22 August 2010
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As part of the millenial celebration in Hanoi, the archaeological site at the Thang Long Citadel (the 18 Hoang Dieu archaeological site) will be open to public in October.

Ancient city opens doors for millennial celebration
Thanh Nien News, 20 August 2010
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Speaking after their recent presentations on Bujang Valley in Kuala Lumpur in July, some Indian scholars note the important role that Bujang Valley in Kedah, Malaysia, played in the spread of Buddhism, Hinduism and the Pallava Grantha script in the region.

Remnants of a relationship
The Hindu, 19 August 2010
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Last year, independent researcher Kent Davis made the news with his theory that Angkor temples were a monument to women and to this end was hoping to analyse and quantify the traits of every apsara/devata image (over 1,700 in all). The Phnom Penh Post recently carried an update on Davis and his work and features, quite prominently, the discussion that on this website about Davis’ work (which you can read here).

What didn’t really come through in the PPP article was the paper on the facial pattern recognition study presented at the International Conference on Pattern Recognition in Istanbul, Turkey (it was buried somewhere in the middle of the article). The Cambodian Daily has a better-written paper on the article which you can read on Davis’ site, along with a download link to the facial recognition paper. The work is still very much in a preliminary stage, but quite promising and may potentially find correlations between types of faces with ethnicities or locations within the temple complex. It will be interesting to see what kinds of patterns emerge from a deeper analysis of the quantified attributes of the apsara/devata carvings emerge.

Sleuth researches enigmatic Angkor girls
Phnom Penh Post, 20 August 2010

The many faces of Angkor Wat
The Cambodian Daily, via www.devata.org, August 2010

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It is done!

Now, onto phd applications…