gems, archaeology, archaeogemology, Thailand, Malaysia, SE Asia

The late fourth and third centuries BCE witnessed the political unifications of Mauryan India (including north India after 321 BCE, and most of the subcontinent by 265 BCE) and Han China (206 BCE–220 CE), and the completion of connections between the different regional networks linking the classical western world and Asia. This chain of intertwined networks inaugurated a trading boom and major transnational cultural processes. For Southeast Asia, a producer of several products sought after by her two major economic and political neighbouring regions of China and South Asia, this interconnection opened an avenue to economic and cultural integration. It is argued herein that the inception of this network coincided with the fashioning of political and socio-cultural configurations that predicted certain patterns described for the later historical periods. It is also argued that the much earlier integration within long-distance maritime networks of pre-existing local and regional networks had already allowed, and encouraged, the emergence of a chain of separate, independent, local “trading” polities both in what is today South Asia and in Southeast Asia. Evidence tends to suggest that the levels of complexity and the sizes of these polities varied, contributing to the development of a hierarchy and possibly to different economic specialisations within this network. Economic specialisation seems to have involved various social groups at distinct socio-political levels of organisation, and occupying different environments. Amidst those emerging exchange-based complex polities, the “port-entrepôts” or port-cities constitute the focus of this essay.