Two thousand years ago, the Wu Emperor of China sent south a naval expedition to seek opportunities to increase trade. The leaders encountered a Southeast Asian kingdom, with an established government, laws, cities and flourishing trade with India and Rome. The expedition report survives in the Chinese dynastic archives, and poses a fascinating challenge to archaeologists : what was the nature of this maritime Silk Road, when did it begin, what manner of people ran it, and how did it affect their lives ? Answers to these key questions are now emerging from five years of excavations and a decade of intense analyses that centre on the Kra Isthmus, the narrow neck of land that provides the easiest passage between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Here, the trade route is dominated by the urban centre of Khao Sam Kaeo, a sprawling settlement atop four hills, next to the Tha Tapao River. For the first time in Southeast Asia, a multi disciplinary project involving geoarchaeology, botany and metallurgy, combined with geographical information systems, has been deployed to unravel the timing of the emergence of the maritime Silk Road and its social impact. We have found that its origins are far earlier than suspected, stretching back into the 4th century BC. Over the centuries, Khao Sam Kaeo became a cosmopolitan hub that drew merchants and artisans from India and other Asian horizons. Gold and silver, carnelian and glass jewellery came from new workshops. In the fields beyond the city walls, new crops of Indian origin were grown alongside the traditional rice fields. Chinese ceramics, Vietnamese bronzes, even Roman tradewares made their way to the markets of Southeast Asia. The vital importance of Khao Sam Kaeo in documenting and illuminating the early maritime trade is seen in the later rise of states like Pasai, Banten, Melaka and Ayutthaya. Here again, on a magnified scale, there were highly specialised manufacturing industries controlled by powerful kings. Revealing the deep seated cultural changes that took place at Khao Sam Kaeo thus illuminates for the first time a critical stage in the history of Southeast Asia.

This book takes stock of the results of some two decades of intensive archaeological research carried out on both sides of the Bay of Bengal, in combination with renewed approaches to textual sources and to art history. To improve our understanding of the trans-cultural process commonly referred to as Indianisation, it brings together specialists of both India and Southeast Asia, in a fertile inter-disciplinary confrontation. Most of the essays reappraise the millennium-long historiographic no-man's land during which exchanges between the two shores of the Bay of Bengal led, among other processes, to the Indianisation of those parts of the region that straddled the main routes of exchange. Some essays follow up these processes into better known "classical" times or even into modern times, showing that the localisation process of Indian themes has long remained at work, allowing local societies to produce their own social space and express their own ethos.

The 36 chapters in this collection have been selected to give an overview ofrecent research into prehistoric and early historic archaeology in SoutheastAsia. In the first chapter Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhornof Thailand comments on the significance of the inscriptions from the important Khmer temple, Prasat Phnom Rung in northeastern Thailand. Following this, Professor Charles Higham gives an original and insightful survey of the prehistoric threads linking south China and the countries of modern Southeast Asia.

This book lies at the crossroads of areal typology, language contact and genetic affiliation. Concerned with mainland Southeast Asia in particular, the various grammatical sketches lay emphasis on characteristics shared by unrelated languages.

The first full history of a great commercial and political center that rose in Asia over almost five centuries.