South and Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology Index (ABIA) – The ABIA Project is a global network of scholars co-operating on an annotated bibliographic database for publishers covering South and Southeast Asian art and archaeology.


Southeast Asian Images & Text – A collection of teaching and research resources put together by the people at the University of Wisconsin. Contains a section of images of Angkor Wat.

Angkor Guide – An independent website by Johann Reinhart Zieger that provides background information to the many temples at Angkor, including practical information about visiting them.

As always, I’m on the lookout for links to resources with a Southeast Asian or archaeology focus. If you have any to recommend, you can send them to me.

The poll got me thinking about the amount of photography I’ve had to do for my research. At the current count, I have taken 7,892 pictures which works out to be about 219 rolls of film (35mm x 36 exposures); with a redundancy factor of about 3 (as in I take 3 pictures of every shot I take), that’s about 2,630 images or 73 rolls of 35mm film. Viva la digital!

photo credit: ideonexus

• Take a peek into Malacca’s iconic red building, the Stadhuys, which is modelled after a now-no-longer-standing town hall in Horne, Holland.
• Farish A. Noor comments about Southeast Asia’s common history.
• Kazakhstan might very well be the birthplace of horse domestication.
• Find out about the layout of the Majapahit site of Bentang in North Lampung (in Indonesian, or the google-translated version here).
• Last week’s big news was about the Peking Man being older than previously thought, but do you know where the Peking Man is now?
• Finally, there’s a new web-based social network just for archaeologists. Check out the Archaeology Network.

In this series of weekly (at least, it tries to be weekly) rojaks (published on Wednesdays) I’ll feature other sites in the blogosphere that are related to archaeology in Southeast Asia. Got a recommendation for the next Wednesday rojak? Email me!

photo credit: neys

• The mysterious Cambodian dinosaur is sighted again, still without any explanations. Any takers?
• Some people spend all their lives chasing bigfoot, while in Indonesia, some people spend their lives chasing the Orang Pendek, who has small, rather than big feet.
• Singapore’s Heritage TV brings you on a video tour around the historic Fort Canning Hill, home to Singapore’s ancient royalty and (literally) tons of archaeological remains.
• The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is criticised for its silence over the Myanmar envoy to Hong Kong’s outrageously racist remarks over the Rohingyas, an ethnic group residing in the mountains between India and Myanmar. The envoy calls these people, who have been denied acceptance and citizenship, as “ugly as ogres“.
• I want one of those: A scanner than can examine artifacts up to two tons. Now, if I only can clear some space in my room…
• Read about a central Vietnamese gong tuner who is on his ancestors’ wavelength.
• Writer Glenda Clarke brings us to the stupas and reliefs of Borobudur.
• The Archaeology Channel presents a 7-minute video about Saving the Temple of Banteay Chhmar.
• The fears of many traditional arts practitioners in Indonesia have come true as Jaipong becomes the first to fall victim under Indonesia’s ambiguous anti-porn law.
• Penang locals are trying to preserve and protect Tanjung Tokong, a living settlement that goes back to even before the arrival of the British.
• In celebration of Charles Darwin’s 200 birthday, we offer you the answer to the question, “What would you look like, 400,000 years ago?” Now you can find out in Devolve Me.
• What do Malaysian kids think about Darwin’s theory of evolution?
• And Darwin might have been more Buddhist than we thought.

In this series of weekly (at least, it tries to be weekly) rojaks (published on Wednesdays) I’ll feature other sites in the blogosphere that are related to archaeology in Southeast Asia. Got a recommendation for the next Wednesday rojak? Email me!

Center for Ethnic Studies and Development

Cham Sculpture Museum’s website unveiled
Vietnam Net Bridge, 21 January 2009

The site offers useful information about the Cham Sculpture Museum, including the history of Cham culture, collections, documents and others. The museum aims to turn this site into an online forum about Cham culture.

The museum was built by the French in the central city of Da Nang in the early 20th century. It has more than 3,000 objects collected from central provinces.

I started to play around with it a little last week with an (way incomplete) archaeological timeline of Southeast Asia just to see its capabilities. Does anyone have any suggestions for what kind of timelines they want to see on SEAArch?