Customer Reviews

The Archaeology of Mainland Southeast Asia: From 10,000 B.C. to the Fall of Angkor (Cambridge World Archaeology)

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This is really two books in one. Its first two hundred pages are about the prehistory of Southeast Asia, up to the emergence of chiefdoms towards the end of the first millennium B.C. An additional one hundred fifty pages take the story forward, from the beginning of state formation and written history through the development (but excluding the art history) of Angkor.

Prospective readers should be aware that this is a technical book that is directed to a specialist audience, namely, archaeologists and archaeology students; people who do not fit into either of those categories, may find that the book is too difficult or has more detail than they want.

On the other hand, people who are in the book's target audience as described above, should find the book generally suitable as a synopsis of mainland Southeast Asian archaeology (excluding Burma), circa 1989. Detailed site information is presented within a framework whose themes include sedentism, trade, subsistence, social organization, religion and ritual, and access to resources. Continuity of cultural development in Southeast Asia is emphasized, and in particular the origin of civilization in Southeast Asia is seen as a consequence of local and incremental adaptations to Indian religious and political ideas, rather than as a wholesale replacement of indigenous cultural practices by Indian ones.

My paperback copy bears the notice: "Transferred to Digital Reprinting 1999". The book is entirely in black-and-white. The visual appearance of its text is glossy and saturated, but readable. Line drawings show up very well. The quality of photographic reproduction, however, is unacceptable (the same or worse as one might see in a newspaper). However, since its few photographs seem incidental to the text in any case, this need not discourage people from buying the book in its current, "digital reprint", incarnation.