Archaeologists have made some progress in the study of ancient Southeast Asian textiles, but the results of this form of research are likely to remain limited to verifying the types of plants used to make the fibres and dyes, and possibly the weaving techniques employed. It seems likely that we will have to depend on indirect methods for the foreseeable future in our attempts to reconstruct the textiles used in early Southeast Asia. Historical sources contain some data, but these have serious limitations. Most surviving documents only refer to textiles in passing. Many terms used to refer to them are no longer understood. Old Javanese vocabulary concerning textiles is extensive, a sign of their interest in this topic and its importance in society, but there is scant chance that the literal meanings of these words will ever be recovered.

For several years I taught a course on traditional arts of Southeast Asia in the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries, in which I emphasized the importance of textiles in trying to understand the roles of what in the West we call art and artists. No female artists and very few male artists are mentioned in ancient inscriptions. Artists were not a separate category of people in ancient Java; as in early twentiethcentury Bali, the making of objects possessing what is now called artistic value was a common activity of children as well as adults, as were performances of music and dance. Artists were not marginal members of society, though some people were certainly recognized as more skilful than others in creating textiles or pottery, both of which were exclusively made by women. The high aesthetic and technical value of Southeast Asia textile production only came to be acknowledged in the West in the midnineteenth century. Since that time, scholars have elevated the importance of textiles as a medium of artistic expression in traditional Southeast Asia from the status of a craft to the cultural equivalent of painting and sculpture.

Textile art in precolonial Southeast Asia had great ceremonial and symbolic value. Locally made textiles commanded high economic value not only within Southeast Asian societies but also in diplomatic gift exchange with China.

Archaeological research began in Singapore in 1984. Since then, over half a million artefacts have been recovered from systematic excavations. These remains fall into two periods: the Temasek era (fourteenth to sixteenth century) and the Singapore era (1819 to the present). Historical sources from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries demonstrate that during this time Singapore was still a source of maritime manpower for rulers vying to control the local waterways, and that ships took on provisions here, but the only artefacts on land that date from this 200- year period are two ceramic sherds excavated at St. Andrew's Cathedral.

The artefacts from excavations are reliable proof that Singapore was home to a sophisticated multicultural society with a complex set of links to local and long-distance trade before 1350. Although these basic outlines of ancient Singapore are now clear, there are still important questions about Singapore's history that further research, including work in laboratories and archives, may be able to answer. The important questions concern the provenance of artefacts, many of which were not made locally but were imported; the nature of Singapore's ancient ecology and environment; reconstruction of artefacts; statistical analysis of intra-site variation; and comparisons with other sites in the region.

Texts, Legends and Surface Finds

The Malay Annals

The pre-colonial artefacts from Singapore confirm the hypothesis that Singapore in the fourteenth century corresponded closely to the way it was depicted in the Malay Annals as a bustling multi-ethnic port. The Malay Annalsare not entirely reliable as a historical source; they were compiled for a political purpose, to support the claims of the Malay royal family who ruled Melaka in the mid-fifteenth century, when Islam replaced esoteric Buddhism as the main religion in the court. Numerous recensions of the Malay Annalsexist; the oldest version, and the one probably closest to the original, is known as the Raffles MS 18. This was composed in Johor in the early seventeenth century, apparently just after Singapore had been devastated by an attack by Aceh. The composer himself may have been a Singaporean; this would account for the fact that the first sections glorify Singapore as the first great Malay trading port.

This book was inspired by a conference in Bagan, sponsored by the Nalanda- Sriwijaya Centre, ISEAS, in 2012. Participants in the conference were invited to submit chapters for a book about ancient Bagan's connections with the rest of Asia. This book contains ten chapters, each by a respected expert in early Myanmar history. The publication of this volume marks an important step forward in reintroducing scholarship on Myanmar and Myanmar scholars to the rest of the world. Four of the authors are Myanmarese academics, and one of the three author-editors is of Myanmar ancestry.

The conference sought to gather evidence with which to dispel the myth that Myanmar has always been a hermit kingdom or nation. This book presents abundant evidence that the kingdom of Bagan, which flourished from around 1000 to 1300, played a major role in the development of the economy, religion, art and technology in the area which stretches from India to China.

At the time the conference was conceived, Myanmar was just reestablishing contact with the outside world. The publication of this book demonstrates that Myanmar's growing integration into the international community does not signify a new relationship; Myanmar has more often been a catalyst for development and communication between West Asia, South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia than a passive bystander. Buddhism formed one of the major contexts in which Myanmar exerted considerable influence over early Asian civilization. Bagan was also an economic power, and one of Southeast Asia's oldest and largest urban cultures. Myanmar is now resuming its role as an integral part of Asia which it played a thousand years ago.

The editors and authors would like to pay tribute to the late Pamela Gutman, who passed away during the interval between the conference and the publication of this book. She is greatly missed by all scholars with an interest in Myanmar. Her publications will long remain important contributions to the study of this fascinating nation. We would like to dedicate this volume to her memory.

On the surface, Southeast Asian archaeology presents an extreme example of the dichotomy between the theoretical extremes of the orthogenetic and heterogenetic types of city. The remains of major monumental complexes such as Angkor, Borobudur/Prambanan and Bagan contrast sharply with the remains of trading port-cities such as Palembang, Barus and Singapore. This apparently simple picture, however, begins to display more shades of grey the more one peers beneath the surface, as further exploration begins to provide more detailed information about the lives of these ancient cities. Research at the site of Trowulan, east Java, in the early 1990s necessitated a revision of the previous assumption that Majapahit's 14th-century capital was merely a complex of royal and religious buildings. Surface survey in the wake of large-scale looting of bricks for modern construction revealed dense scatters of pottery, both local and foreign. This pottery demonstrated the existence of numerous occupations and a dense population.

Archaeological observation at the sites of Bagan and Sriksetra (Pyay, Prome) is beginning to shed light on the distribution of population and range of economic activity at these sites. The occupations at the two sites overlap to a considerable extent, indicating that for a period of time they were linked in a complex economic relationship which written materials hint at but do not describe in detail.

Data obtained from the study of pottery distribution patterns is capable of measuring the degree of socio-economic complexity at a site. Preliminary analysis of recent discoveries indicates that Sriksetra and Bagan, like Trowulan, may have been hinterland capitals with some heterogenetic as well as orthogenetic characteristics. Preliminary pottery data indicates that Sriksetra and Bagan were similar but differed in several significant aspects, including internal settlement patterns and presence or absence of Chinese ceramics.

While our knowledge of pre-modern interaction between Southeast Asia and its neighbours to the east and west is increasing, we still know little of the interaction between Southeast Asian societies during this period. Stylistic studies of art suggest that Southeast Asian societies interacted and exchanged cultural and artistic traits to a relatively high degree, as well as economic commodities (Brown 1994).