Bob Hudson's Slightly Whimsical Archaeology of Myanmar
(Burma) & Archaeology of South East Asia Website.
Updated: April 2008
RECENT PUBLICATIONS! FREE DOWNLOAD!
Recent academic publications on the archaeology of
Myanmar/Burma. They are in pdf format. You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view
them (get it free from the web if you don't have it already). All these papers
may be cited for research purposes.
The Origins of Bagan: The archaeological
landscape of Upper Burma to AD 1300
Abstract: The
archaeological landscape of Upper Burma from the middle of the first millennium
BC to the Bagan period in the 13th-14th century AD is a landscape of continuity.
Finds of polished stone and bronze artifacts suggest the existence of early
metal-using cultures in the Chindwin and Samon River Valleys, and along parts
of the Ayeyarwady plain. Increasing technological and settlement complexity in
the Samon Valley suggests that a distinctive culture whose agricultural and
trade success can be read in the archaeological record of the Late Prehistoric
period developed there. The appearance of the early urban "Pyu"
system of walled central places during the early first millennium AD seems to
have involved a spread of agricultural and management skills and population
from the Samon. The leaders of the urban centres adopted Indic symbols and
Sanskrit modes of kingship to enhance and extend their authority. The early urban
system was subject over time to a range of stresses including siltation of
water systems, external disruption and social changes as Buddhist notions of
leadership eclipsed Brahmanical ones. The archaeological evidence indicates
that a settlement was forming at Bagan during the last centuries of the first
millennium AD. By the mid 11th century Bagan began to dominate Upper Burma, and
the region began a transition from a system of largely autonomous city states
to a centralised kingdom. Inscriptions of the 11th to 13th centuries indicate
that as the Bagan Empire expanded it subsumed the agricultural lands that had
been developed by the Pyu.
This is my 2004
PhD thesis, available online through the Australian Digital Theses
Program. The link was recently broken due to changes in the
university system, but now it works again! To download the thesis, click the
link below. You will be taken to a page that contains the thesis abstract and
three links to pdf files. They are big files- you need to be on a fast internet
connection to view or download them.
In Windows, you
can click the VIEW/OPEN link to view the files in your browser, or you can
download them directly. To download, right-click the VIEW/OPEN links to the two
files that contain the words whole (for the whole thesis- 29 MB) and charts
(you've guessed it-these are the large format maps and charts- 4 MB). Then
select "save target as" and you can save the pdf files on your
computer. (The third file, containing the word front, is the table of
contents, 258 KB, which is also included in the whole thesis). Does that
all make sense? OK, here's the link: http://hdl.handle.net/2123/638
The latest archaeological survey map of SRIKSETRA,
showing newly discovered buildings and drainage systems, and illustrated with many
pictures of the artworks and buildings associated with the city. This map comes
as a 1.7 MB pdf file.
An overview of the
archaeology of Myanmar/Burma, with maps and pictures (19 MB): The Archaeology of Burma by
Gutman & Hudson, 2004
And a few shorter papers ... these
are much smaller pdf files.
Pyu Stucco At Pagan (co-authored with Dr Pamela Gutman
of the University of Sydney) looks at one of the earliest temples at Bagan and
discusses its links with the earlier Pyu culture of Myanmar/Burma.
The Merits of Rebuilding Bagan looks at a major controversy in the
world of heritage management! Should hundreds of Buddhist buildings at Bagan,
in Myanmar be rebuilt- sometimes from the ground up .... should they be
repaired and conserved with as little change as possible ... or should they be
left as picturesque ruins?
A
Pyu Homeland in the Samon Valley: a new theory of the origins of Myanmar's
early urban system proposes
that the First Millennium AD Pyu culture was related to an earlier indigenous
society of Iron-Age agriculturalists, and was not the result of mass migration.
A conference paper on ancient geography
and recent archaeology at Vesali, Dhanyawadi and Mrauk-u, in
Rakhine state (Arakan) on the west coast of Myanmar provides the first ever
radiocarbon date for this region..
Ancient dental decoration in the form of a
jawbone with teeth that have been drilled and packed with gold leaf! A short,
illustrated report of interest to archaeologists ... and dentists!
Two
web reports, with pictures that students can use in projects.
In November 2001, we located and surveyed around 1000 old furnaces east of Bagan. One was excavated, and this report contains a pictorial record of what we found. Old iron-producing furnaces in the eastern hinterland of Bagan, Myanmar.
Interested in pottery? Read Making earthenware pottery in Myanmar/Burma- a continuing tradition.
BUT WAIT- THERE'S MORE!
We still have all the old
favourites: "NAIVE IMAGES OF THE BUDDHA"-
a photographic study of some small, unusual, individually crafted bronze Buddha
images from South East Asia; WHAT KIND OF BUDDHA IMAGE IS
THAT?- some examples of the major styles of Buddha image, and THEY THOUGHT IT WAS BUDDHA'S FOOT: a photographic report of
the excavation in Northern Thailand of several ancient pottery kilns. These were
the first kilns to be excavated in the north. If you are familiar with the kiln
project at Si Satchanalai in Central Thailand, you will certainly want to know
about this discovery. There is also HOW DO THEY MAKE THOSE
BRONZE BUDDHA STATUES? some photographs from Mandalay of the "lost
wax" process of making bronze artifacts.
There is BUDDHIST ARCHITECTURE AT BAGAN:
photographs and descriptions of Pagan,
in Burma, (now called Bagan, Myanmar), and its surrounding area, including some
of the medieval Buddhist capital's more than 3,400 surviving
buildings. There are some ARCHAEOLOGICAL MYSTERIES: pictures of unidentified art
or archaeological objects sent in by visitors to these pages. And a page
dedicated to BUDDHIST AMULETS: little medals,
statues, relics or talismans that are a popular element of Buddhist practice in
Thailand.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. I am a former Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow, currently Honorary Associate with the archaeology department at The University of Sydney (Australia). and a visiting professor at the Myanmar University of Culture's Field School of Archaeology at Pyay, the site of the ancient city of Sriksetra. I specialise in the archaeology of Myanmar (Burma) up to 1400 AD or so. My research involves a variety of archaeological methods including field survey, excavations, radiocarbon dating, DNA analysis, textual analysis, the interpretation of aerial photos and satellite imagery, and the construction of archaeological databases and digital maps.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS, AND A COUPLE OF USEFUL LINKS.
1. WILL YOU PLEASE WRITE MY TERM PAPER/ESSAY/PROJECT ABOUT BUDDHISM
FOR ME?
Nobody has quite asked this question, but some have come close. To help
in your research, click here for a page from a
newsgroup, provided by Sudheer Birodkar, which has some good information
on the history of Buddhism. Sudheer Birodkar also has a website devoted
to Hindu
History, which I would highly recommend as a resource for anyone studying
ancient Asian archaeology or religion. You can also click the next link for
more detailed information about Buddhist Scriptures.
Another excellent Buddhist page is by Prapant Svetanant, from Chulalongkorn
University in Bangkok . Remember- your library will also have a lot of
those old-fashioned but still useful items known as "books" to help
with your research.
2. CAN I USE THESE PICTURES? WHAT ABOUT COPYRIGHT?
All these original pictures can be freely used for academic
purposes or school projects, for non-commercial Internet sites, or even,
in the case of one visitor to these pages, as a design for a tattoo! I
always appreciate an E-mail telling me what the pictures are used for. Please remember
that while they are publicly available, they are still copyright, and should be
given a credit in your term paper, essay or project. And they cannot be used
without permission for books, maps, brochures, or other commercial
publications. 
3. I SAW A STATUE WITH LOTS OF ARMS. IS IT BUDDHA?
A tricky question. If the religious statue or picture has four
arms, it is probably not an image of Buddha . It is more likely to be a
Hindu god. Then again, Tibetan and Nepalese Buddhism, which is in some ways
still quite close to Hinduism, especially with regard to religious iconography,
sometimes features Buddhas with multiple arms or heads, such as this 14th Century Tibetan bronze of the bodhisattva
Avalokitesvara. However Theravada Buhddhism- as found in Sri
Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia- does not portray Buddha in this way.
While Buddha has been an animal- such as an elephant- in some of his past
lives, he is not portrayed as an animal. If a statue has an animal head, it may
be Egyptian or Hindu, but it is not Buddhist. The Hindu god Ganesh, pictured
here, has both an animal head and multiple arms (click the picture for a larger
version). Buddha was human, not a god. He sometimes sits on an elephant
throne, or is protected by a kind of hood over the top of his head, formed by a
naga, or snake, but he is never represented as having animal features.
In Buddhist tradition there have been many Buddhas. Some people say four, with
the fourth one Siddartha Gotama, the figure who lived 2,500 years ago and is
commonly known as "the Buddha". There is also said to be a fifth
Buddha who is waiting in heaven to come to earth some time in the future - he
is called the Buddha Maitreya. In Burma, many people believe that there have
been 26 Buddhas. Others say there have been thousands or millions of Buddhas.
And because Buddhists believe in reincarnation, the many Buddhas have had many
previous lives, which are sometimes described in traditional stories called
Jataka. These Buddhas can sometimes be shown in Buddhist artworks. It's
confusing to the non-Buddhist, but to the Buddhist who knows about
religious history, the stories and imagery are as real as Bible stories are to
the Christian who has studied the Old and New Testaments. An image, say, of
Buddha sitting on a snake throne, tells a story to the Buddhist that is as
meaningful as an image of Jesus dividing loaves and fishes, or throwing the
moneychangers out of the temple, is to a Christian.
4 CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT MY ANTIQUE STATUE IS WORTH?
I'm afraid I am not able to give valuations of Buddhist or other
Asian religious statues: it's not my area of expertise. To the devout Buddhist,
an amulet or statue may have value depending on its historical association or
religious events connected with it. To the art dealer, the value depends on the
market at the time.
BUDDHIST ARCHAEOLOGY, ART AND ARCHITECTURE: SAMPLE PICTURES.
This is part of the courtyard surrounding the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon. Worshippers visit this magnificent complex every day, especially in the evening when it is cool. Foreigners have to pay a fee to get in, but foreign Buddhists do not.
Painted marble Buddha images in a temple at Sagaing, opposite Mandalay on the Irrawaddy river in Burma (Myanmar). Sagaing was an early capital of Burma. Click on the image for a larger version. Visit the linked pages listed above for more.
A Burmese nat, or spirit figure. These coexist happily with Buddhism in Burma, even though they probably pre-date the arrival of Buddhism. The nat is often a spirit of someone who has died a violent death. There are many legends of people being deliberately killed and buried, for example, under a city gate, so their spirit would be the city's protector, but I'm not aware of any archaeological evidence of this. A king of the Pagan period is said to have built a special temple south of Mandalay for the nats, in which the spirits all paid homage to Buddha- a clever way to allow the people to retain nat worship, within a framework of Buddhism.
To contact me about anything on this site, copy and paste the address below to your e-mail (this is a move designed to reduce spam)
bhudson@mail.usyd.edu.au