SEAArch – The Southeast Asian Archaeology Newsblog

For anyone interested in that part of the world, Barry Lewis (a friend of mine whom I met at last year’s rock art course at KL) is releasing a book on the archaeological evidence for hunting in Britain. Click here to download the flyer, and place a pre-order on Amazon using this link: Hunting In Britain: From the Ice Age to the Present

Wat Si Chum is one of the more unusual and significant 13th century monuments in the ancient city of Sukhothai. A monumental Buddha is almost encased in a square building and an inner staircase circumambulates the statue with depictions of the Jataka tales, which talk about the past incarnations of Buddha. The wat is the subject of focus in a new book ‘Past Lives of the Buddha’ which is reviewed in this article in the Bangkok Post. You may place an order of the book on Amazon here.

photo credit: Mikel L.

The many mysteries of Wat Si Chum
Bangkok Post, 21 September 2009
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Time Magazine features an article on Zhou Daguan, the Yuan Dynasty official who visited Angkor in the late 13th century and penned his report entitled A Record of Cambodia: The Land and Its People.

photo credit: Jeremy Burgin

Angkor Thom
Time, 09 September 2009
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Champa and the Archaeology of My Son (Vietnam)
Edited by Andrew Hardy, Mauro Cucarzi and Patrizia Zolese
NUS Press, ISBN: 978-9971-69-451-7
Available at Amazon.com

Archaeology in Vietnam is quite vibrant – just take a look at this site and see how much archaeology news comes out of Vietnam. Besides the news, however, it’s quite hard to find any literature about the archaeology of Vietnam in English because most of the literature is in Vietnamese. Which is why Champa and the Archaeology of My Son (Vietnam) is quite refreshing. This volume, hopefully the first of many, presents the results of a joint Italian and Vietnamese team working at My Son and about Champa in general.

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A new book on the Champa sacred site of My Son in Vietnam has been published, featuring the latest research by a number of Vietnamese and international scholars. My Son was a major Cham-Hindu religious centre between the 4th and 13th century and is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. You can pre-order the book here.

Book unveils My Son history
Viet Nam News, 27 November 2008

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A selection of archaeology-related books, new to the catalogue of Select Books, a specialised publisher and retailer of books pertaining to Southeast Asia. For ordering info, please visit the Select Books website.

043005
Early Southeast Asia: Selected Essays. Wolters, O. W.; Craig J. Reynolds (ed.). Us. 2008. 236pp. pb. $65.00 (This collection of previously published essays on early Southeast Asia is introduced by an overview of Oliver Wolters’ (1915-2000) life and career. From 1938-1957 he was in the (colonial) Malayan Civil Service and from 1958 in academia in London and at Cornell where his ground-breaking research and teaching on early Southast Asia became legendary. The eleven essays are grouped as: Southeast Asia as a Region; the Long Durée of Malay history; Mainland Mandalas; and Vietnamese Historiography and Literature.)
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The Thai paper The Nation carries a book review of Bunker and Latchford’s Khmer Gold, Gifts for the Gods, about Khmer Jewellery.

The gilded kingdom
The Nation, 03 February 2008