SEAArch - The Southeast Asian Archaeology Newsblog

I’ve been playing around with a site redesign for a couple of weeks now - I thought it was high time to give the site a revamp. The changes are mainly cosmetic, but I’d love to hear feedback from you if you see anything out of place.

If you have any comments and suggestions for the new SEAArch, do leave a comment as well!

I’ve just discovered an archaeology site called Past Horizons that hosts an online store for archaeological equipment and also a worldwide database for fieldwork opportunities. There are currently two archaeology fieldwork projects listed for Southeast Asia: one in Cambodia and one in Thailand.

Cambodia
Khmer Project in Cambodia
19 Nov Update: I sent an email query to them asking for more information, but none was received. Have been waiting for about 10 days now.

Thailand
Origins of Angkor

For more information, click on the links, which will take you to the Past Horizons site. You can also click on the picture to take you to the Past Horizons site where you can search for archaeology fieldwork opportunities around the world.

Do you have any fieldwork opportunity in Southeast Asia? If you do, send me an email so that I can also share it here on SEAArch!

Just came across two websites in the past week for those of you who might be interested in early man in Southeast Asia. Anthropology.net just announced the start of a new web initiative, the Hominin Database, which hopes to be a public repository of fossil remains. It’s really at its beginning phases now, and they’re looking for contributors to help with building the database.

Over at our Facebook site, Jeff Almonte from the Philippines shared a site about Human Origins Patrimony in Southeast Asia (HOPSea), a multi-country collaborative project to share research on Hominid Evolution in Southeast Asia. One thing for sure, you won’t find the Johor Bigfoot here!

Related Books:
- A New Human: The Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the “Hobbits” of Flores, Indonesia by M. Morwood and P. van Oosterzee
- Eughne DuBois and the Ape-Man from Java: The History of the First Missing Link’ and Its Discoverer by B.Theunissen, L. T. Theunissen
- Perak Man and Other Prehistoric Skeletons of Malaysia by Z. Majid (Ed.)
- Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago by P. Bellwood
- Little People And a Lost World: An Anthropological Mystery by L. Goldenberg
- Forager-Traders in South and Southeast Asia: Long-Term Histories by K. D. Morrison
- Southeast Asia: From Prehistory to History by P. S. Bellwood and I. Glover (Eds)

It’s been a slow news day… so I decided to put SEAArch on Facebook!

Facebook is the new social networking website that seems to have taken the internet by storm. I’ve been toying with a starting a Facebook group for a while now, and so now is as good a time as another. I hope to make the Facebook site a meeting place for anyone interested in the archaeology of Southeast Asia to interact, discuss, and even share photos and videos. If you’re on Facebook, get in on the action and join the Southeast Asian Archaeology group.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10760920401

09 July 2007 (The Nation) - The last time I wrote about the new 7 wonders result, I mentioned that voting patterns were a little skewed. This article quite succintly displays why the methodology behind the “new” 7 wonders list was flawed - and like UNESCO says, irrelevant.

Cambodia’s Angkor beaten by Seven Wonders voting system: official

Cambodia’s magnificent Angkor Wat temple was discriminated against by the Seven Wonders contest voting system, which favoured countries with more educated and larger populations, a senior provincial official said Monday.

Chan Sophal, deputy provincial governor of Siem Reap, where the 12th century temple is located, called Angkor Wat being overlooked as a modern wonder “regretable” but said the voting system had always made it virtually impossible for a Cambodian monument to win.

The New Seven Wonders Foundation announced the list of the new seven wonders in Lisbon last Saturday after around 100 million votes were registered by internet or telephone. The new list was chosen from a short list of 21 sites selected from an original list of 77.

“The competition just wasn’t suitable for a country in Cambodia’s situation,” Sophal said by telephone. “It is a country with a very small population, most of whom know nothing about information technology or computers so they could not vote or contribute.”

…

Sophal said technology such as telephones, let alone computers for online voting, were almost non-existent in rural areas. Siem Reap in the country’s north is one of Cambodia’s poorest provinces and the country remains one of the poorest in the region.

The United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has already blasted the competition as irrelevant. UNESCO designated Angkor Wat a World Heritage site in 1992.

…

Read the full article.

Books about Angkor Wat:
- Angkor Cities and Temples by C. Jaques
- The Treasures of Angkor: Cultural Travel Guide (Rizzoli Art Guide) by M. Albanese
- Angkor: Cambodia’s Wondrous Khmer Temples, Fifth Edition by D. Rooney and P. Danford
- Angkor Wat: Time, Space, and Kingship by E. Mannikka
- Angkor Wat and cultural ties with India by K. M. Srivastava

Keeping with the Angkor theme for this past few days, here’s a website I found about the art and architecture of Angkor, the Angkor Blog.

The name is really a misnomer - it’s not really a blog, but rather a well-indexed information site. Sidestepping the usual touristy information about Angkor Wat and how to get around Siem Reap, this site focuses mainly on the temples, the iconography and the mythology that is depicted on the bas-reliefs and scultpure of Angkor. Plenty of pictures and videos so that you know what is being talked about, as well as links to primary texts like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana to explain the various events depicted in art.

That’s it for the series of features on Angkor! If all goes well, I should be returning home today and archaeological news updates will resume tomorrow.

Dear readers, SEAArch has been nominated for the Best Educational Blog category in this year’s Blogger’s Choice Awards!

The awards recognise blogs that are making an impact in the blogosphere, and voting is now on until October. I hope you will show your support by casting your vote for SEAArch in the Blogger’s Choice Awards! Some registration is required in order to cast your vote (to prevent instances of cheating, I guess) but the whole process should take about 10 minutes.