Khao Sam Kaeo: An Early Port-City between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea ed. by Berenice Bellina (review)

This is the most comprehensive report on an early Southeast Asian site connected to the maritime trade route yet produced. This book revises concepts of the formation of the maritime trading network in the South China Sea which appeared in late prehistory, and grew until it spanned thousands of kilometres from Taiwan to India.

Khao Sam Kaeo (KSK) is about 450 km north of Langkawi, on the east coast of the Siamo-Malay Peninsula and at the northern frontier of the isthmian region where Indian and Graeco-Roman civilizations knew several ports existed in the first century CE. KSK was inhabited for at least 200 and possibly 400 years and at its maximum extent covered at least 34 hectares. It is located near the mouth of the Tha Tapao River, which may have been connected to an overland route leading to the west coast. The site had been severely looted before archaeologists got there. The authors have done an excellent job of evaluating the reliability of conclusions drawn from looted artefacts now in private collections.

KSK provides evidence of where and how the vast range of artefacts which reached the Malay Peninsula between 400 BCE and 100 CE were made. This book sheds copious new light on a region which was already proverbial for its wealth and sophistication when written sources began to appear in the early centuries CE. This volume illustrates the globalized nature of life in the peninsula in late prehistory, and the complex communication network which existed in the South China Sea centuries before written records of it become available.

One question bedevilling scholars is the identity of the group or groups responsible for this leap forward. It was once assumed that non-Southeast Asians were the main instigators of this network. Unfortunately, archaeology cannot answer this question. Authors of this volume variously emphasize the roles of Indians, Mon-Khmer, and Malayo-Polynesians. At KSK, archaeologists have found items from the Mediterranean, India, southern and eastern China, Taiwan, the Philippines, and probably Indonesia, but these do not tell us what languages were spoken by residents of the site.

One term proposed in this book for KSK’s social matrix is a ‘transethnic South China network culture’. The terms ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘hybrid’ are used to describe this culture, but without differentiation. In fact they can best be used to denote contrasting societies. ‘Cosmopolitan’ is usually used to describe societies composed of a set of different cultural groups who live side by side but maintain separate identities. This is consonant with the ‘treaty port’ system of China, or the ‘port of trade’ described by Karl Polanyi and Conrad Arensberg in 1955 (Trade and Market in the Early Empires). In this system, different ethnicities have their own Chinatowns, Little Indias, Kampong Melayu, etc. Hybridity is a situation in which a new culture arises by combining elements of two or more previously separate cultures, such as the Peranakan groups in Southeast Asia. Which term best applies to KSK? Archaeological evidence could support either interpretation. Southeast Asian artefacts and manufacturing techniques are more common in the southern half of KSK, while ‘Indian’ and ‘Chinese’ artefacts and modes of craftsmanship are prevalent in the northern half. There are combinations of exotic and Southeast Asian styles and techniques in both zones, indicating that ‘localization’ of foreign styles in Southeast Asia had already begun.

Many scholars assume that the ancient Malay Peninsula functioned mainly as a connecting point between merchants from China and India (or the South China Sea and Bay of Bengal). It is more accurate to think of the Asian maritime network in late prehistory as three separate spheres, one in the Arabian Sea, one in the Bay of Bengal, another on the South China Sea. The Isthmus was not so much a stopover as it...