Connecting Empires and States: Selected Papers from the 13th International Conference of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists

Chapter 27: A Look at Settlement Patterns of 5th–16th-Century Sites in Myanmar

349 A Look at Settlement Patterns of 5th–16th-century Sites in Myanmar Chapter 27 A Look at Settlement Patterns of 5th–16th-Century Sites in Myanmar Goh Geok Yian Abstract Settlement patterning in premodern Myanmar remains a little-studied subject. On the one hand, Burmese-language studies of early Burmese “cities” mostly describe physical features of walled sites. English-language works, on the other hand, emphasize the artifacts excavated, the presence of fortifications, and the quest for corroborative evidence between physical characteristics of sites and descriptions in Burmese chronicles. There has never been any systematic study of the hierarchies of sites which ranks the sites according to their relative sizes, their locations, proximity to resources and each other, probable population sizes, and the shapes of their walls. Bob Hudson’s dissertation ranks Pyu-period sites according to sizes of city walls and their geographical locations, but he stops short of proposing an argument regarding the significance of these data. This paper examines the nature of early Burmese urbanization through a diachronic study of settlement hierarchies in Myanmar from the 5th to 16th centuries. Introduction Since the 1998 publication by Aung Myint on aerial photos of early Burmese “cities”, a number of archaeologists and historians have examined early “urban” sites in Burma. Their publications cover a range of subjects from the theoretical comparison between types of “cities” (Miksic 2001), architectural and archaeological finds at specific Pyu and Burmese sites [Gutman and Hudson 2004; Moore and Win Maung (Tampawaddy) 2006; Moore 2009; earlier studies on the Pyus by Janice Stargardt 1990]. Only Bob Hudson and Elizabeth Moore have alluded to the significance of undertaking a study of the settlement hierarchies of early Burmese urban sites (see Krech, this volume). Hudson compared settlement sizes of various Burmese sites. Moore’s use of aerial photographs to develop a typology of moated sites in northeast Thailand is significant for locational analysis of early settlements in Thailand (see Moore 1988). The approaches of Hudson and Moore through aerial photographs and satellite imagery has unexploited potential for a systematic comparison of the variety of walled settlements in Burma. The classification and locational analysis of walled settlements in Burma are a gargantuan task. The total of walled settlements in Burma remains unknown; some may not appear in aerial photos, even those taken in the 1950s. The endeavor to classify and analyze the patterning of walled settlements of Burma between the 5th and 16th centuries will require archival and ground research which would take at least a decade of sustained research to complete. This paper will suggest strategies which can be employed in the study of early walled settlements in Burma; it will also propose a working chronology of sites based on the following variables: “city” wall shape, settlement size, number of walls in situ, proximity to water, proximity to other resources, and proximity and the relationship to other contemporary sites (which is admittedly difficult to determine) which a field survey could test. 349 Connecting Empires hi res combin349 349 8/24/2012 9:49:41 PM 350 Goh Geok Yian A Chronology of Burmese Walled Sites The earliest documented Burmese walled “settlements” have come to be known as “Pyu”.1 Some have claimed to have deciphered aspects of Pyu writing, particularly one face of the Myazedi inscription which bears Pyu writing. The general consensus is that Pyu writing remains largely inscrutable; Moore (2009: 106) rightly points out that being able to read the 12th-century Pyu inscription from Myazedi does not necessarily equip someone to read inscriptions from sites like Halin. For the sake of the argument, “Pyu” will be used to refer to a cluster of sites which date to a period between the first and 5th / 6th century CE. It is generally agreed that the four main “Pyu” sites of Beikthano, Halin, Sriksetra and Maingmaw are the earliest, with Sriksetra representing the largest in land area and most recent in chronology. Within the last half decade, Burmese academic and popular works have suggested that Tagaung, a site in the Shan region of northern Burma, is Pyu, and dates to the period between 700 and 300 BCE, based on the presence of Pyu burial urns and other artifacts (Khyit San Win 2005). The only carbon date obtained from Tagaung gives a reading of 770–900 CE; the sample came from “a cluster of urns [found] during construction of the new museum” (Bob Hudson, pers. comm., 2006, quoted in Moore 2009: 109). Despite the lack of confirmation...