Ancient Knowledge and the use of landscape: Walled settlements in Lower Myanmar.

Moore, Elizabeth

Abstract

A major challenge to achieving an archaeology of landscape is matching hard material facts with textual sources. This paper attempts to redress the balance between the two in Lower Myanmar studies. The archaeological evidence is favoured, but without losing the unique value of what is conserved in the epigraphic and chronicle tradition.Archaeological artefacts such as laterite walls and finger-marked bricks are difficult to tally with descriptions of cities and places found in inscriptions, chronicles and early Chinese travellers' accounts. Likewise,persons and places not mentioned in inscriptions are often deemed not to have existed. Both these approaches, in the self-imposed restrictions placed on their use of the evidence, prejudice investigation from the outset. This has particularly been the case in relation to texts demonstrating integration of monastic groups into early first millennium AD walled sites located in Lower Myanmar.

Citation

Moore, E. (2004). Ancient Knowledge and the use of landscape: Walled settlements in Lower Myanmar. In Traditions of Knowledge in Southeast Asia, Part I. Proceedings of the Traditions of Knowledge in Southeast Asia Conference 17-19 December 2003 (1-28). Yangon: Myanmar Historical Commission, Ministry of Education

• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2004
• Deposit Date: Jan 3, 2012
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 3, 2025
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 1
• Pages: 1-28
• Book Title: Traditions of Knowledge in Southeast Asia, Part I. Proceedings of the Traditions of Knowledge in Southeast Asia Conference 17-19 December 2003.
• Keywords: Suvannabhumi Mon Lower Myanmar Burma archaeology Thaton Mon Pyu Bamar
• Additional Information: Corporate Authors/Creators : Conference on Traditions of Knowledge in Southeast Asia