Kingdom on the Beach Ridges: A Landscape Archaeology of Tambralinga in Peninsular Siam (original) (raw)

Peninsular Siam, or Southern Thailand, the northern part of the Malay Peninsula, is an isthmian tract between the South China Sea and the Bay of Bengal (Fig. 1). It has been an important crossroad of civilizations since the mid-first millennium b.c. Unlike the lower part of the Malay Peninsula, which was heavily forested and almost impossible to cross, the isthmian tract was a thin ribbon with relatively narrow mountain ranges in the middle. A series of transisthmian routes comprised of rivers and walking trails provided passageways between the west and east coasts. There is significant evidence that coastal communities in peninsular Siam were part of an intraregional long-distance exchange network in maritime Southeast Asia. Local communities circulated their resources and goods prior to the integration of this region into the greater trans-Asiatic trade network. For example, a number of Dong Son bronze drums and lingling-o earrings dated to around the first half of the first millennium b.c. and emanating from coastal Viet Nam were found in peninsular Siam, indicating that an intraregional exchange network centered in peninsular Siam may have provided a key geographic focus for the emerging broader maritime trans-Asiatic trade network more than two millennia ago. Since at least the mid-first millennium b.c., a maritime trans-Asiatic trade network developed and expanded, linking vast regions of the ancient world, including, but not limited to, the Mediterranean world, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and China. This network seems to have been comprised of a number of regional but overlapping interaction spheres. The one that was most influential to communities in peninsular Siam was the sphere in the Bay of Bengal wherein the cultural connections between the isthmian tract and the east coast of India were intensified. The archaeological sites of Phukhao Thong (Chaisuwan 2011) and khao Sam keao in the northern reaches of the isthmian tract have provided evidence of possibly the earliest phase of social interactions between the two regions in the mid-first millennium b.c. (Fig. 2). These sites yielded a considerable number of semipreciousstone and glass beads, as well as ornaments, gold objects, and pottery. Some of them