TUBERÍAS

The volume of evidence now available allows Upper Burma to be included in regional overviews of southeast Asian prehistory rather than to be ignored due to lack of data, as has often been the case in the past. This development is exemplified in two key publications. Higham, in The Archaeology of Mainland Southeast Asia (Higham 1989) made minimal reference to Burma/Myanmar and effectively did not view it as part of the southeast Asian system. His approach at the time suggests that evidence for including Burma in a regional synthesis was simply not available to international scholars. However by 2002, Higham’s Early Cultures of Mainland Southeast Asia was considering the bronze axes and other goods excavated at Nyaunggan as belonging to the “Southeast Asian Bronze Age tradition”, and he proposed the Chindwin Valley as the westernmost point to which the Bronze Age of Southeast Asia can be traced (Higham 2002:

156-159, 166). A broad chronological and cultural sequence for Upper Burma, based on regional comparisons, can now be suggested, though it must again be stressed that given the relatively few formal excavations, many of which are still in the process of analysis and dating, a tentative, chronology must for now sit alongside an equally tentative view of common datasets.

Nyaunggan, which features less than one bronze weapon/tool or polished stone personal decoration per skeleton, but equipment (possibly) for alcohol production and an average of 70 pots of grave offerings per funeral, dates very broadly to the period 1500-500 BC (page 61). It is not the only such site excavated in the Chindwin, although it is by far the best reported. Its neighbour Monhtoo has been described at having pottery “more advanced” than Nyaunggan, but it is considered to be a similar site (Ko Ko Kyaing 2003: 52). The suggestion has been made that the bronze axes in the graves at Nyaunggan, low in number but morphologically variable, were trade items rather than the result of local production (page 61). If this is the case, then the burial could relate to the earlier stages of Southeast Asian bronze production, the period from 1500-1000 BC during which knowledge of the smelting and casting of copper and tin “seems to have spread very rapidly along the Neolithic exchange routes” (Higham 2002: 117). A morphological difference has been noted between the bronze axes at Nyaunggan and a less rounded, longer form in the Samon Valley (Nyunt Han, Win Maung & Moore 2002: 6) where the evidence for manufacture, as indicated by the finds of moulds (page 60) is stronger. Whether imported or locally produced, the relative scarcity of bronze materials at Nyaunggan cannot be taken as a precise indicator of chronology. If Myanmar followed regional tendencies, and “bronze only became truly abundant in mortuary rituals in the iron age” (Higham 2002: 121) then without absolute dates for Nyaunggan its estimated period is best left broad. What Nyaunggan does indicate is the existence of a pre-iron culture involved in skilled stonework and the production or exchange of bronze weapons, with mortuary rituals that involved communal eating and/or communal offering of food to accompany the deceased, and perhaps the consumption of alcohol.

Win Maung distinguishes between Chindwin and Samon “Bronze Age” cultures, with Halin having elements of both (Win Maung 2003b: 7). Nyunt Han et al (2002: 6) consider that the Chindwin area contains “Bronze Age” sites that are generally earlier than what the authors call transitional sites, and those transitional sites that are so far known are found in and west of the Samon Valley. Due to the lack of formally excavated sites, the focus of this part of the thesis has necessarily been on a kind of horizontal, rather than vertical, archaeology, looking at the regional distribution of artifact types. This evidence suggests that there was a consistent though not completely homogenous pre-iron culture right across Upper Burma. Bellwood has suggested that the more intensive use of bronze in Southeast Asia correlates with the rise of pre-Indic, ranked societies, probably involving exchange between regional elites (Bellwood 1999: 116). Mortuary finds in the Samon Valley indicate a broadening of the range of bronze artifacts, suggesting that this may be the area where social ranking was beginning to intensify, and indeed represents the transitional phase, the precursor of urbanism, proposed by Nyunt Han et al (2002).

There is evidence, at least in terms of the presence of polished stone tools and ornaments, of a

“Neolithic” occupation of upper Burma which left its mark from the Lower Chindwin down the Ayeyarwady to Minbu, from the confluence of the Samon, the Panlaung and the Ayeyarwady near Mandalay south along the Samon Valley, and into the Ayeyarwady-Samon watersheds (Figure 13, Figure 31). In individual cases, stone axes continue to appear in iron age contexts, and for that matter as pagoda offerings at Bagan (page 58),but in terms of gross numbers of samples, the spread of stone axes, along with polished stone bracelets (Figure 29), largely on river plains that are used today for a mixture of paddy and dryland farming, suggests the dispersed occupation of about 37,500 square kilometres across Upper Burma.

Upper Burma, including the Samon and Chindwin areas, has a broad spread of artifact classes involving or associated with bronze that suggest an equally widespread early metal culture. These classes include polished stone rings (Figure 19), bronze spear and arrow heads (Figure 40), bronze axes (Figure 30), burials involving megaliths (Figure 34) and distillation bowls (Figure 67). The artifacts appear from the Chindwin to the Samon Valley and its western watershed, around Taungthaman and at Halin. Survey evidence (see accompanying CD-ROM) suggests that Halin and the Samon Valley sites then experienced a broadening of artifact groups, in association with iron, while the Chindwin area did not. This supports the picture of a dispersed Upper Burma

“Bronze age” assemblage followed by a “Late Prehistoric” assemblage that was more focused on the Samon Valley and its western watershed, with an extension toward Mount Popa, with its nearby sources of carnelian, agate and quartz crystal (Campbell-Cole 2003) and a northward extension to Halin. The Samon Valley sites present a timescale that extends from before the appearance of iron and carnelian around 500 BC (page 88) to after the adoption of the Qin Dynasty tally tiger as a model for carnelian tiger beads (page 83), the earliest date for which must be around 200 BC.

Halin stands out in terms of the current data because it is a single site with no immediate neighbours sharing its pre-metal and Late Prehistoric assemblage. This is unlikely to be simply the effect of a lack of exploration of its hinterland for “Neolithic” and “Bronze” materials, because the Halin area has been explored for more than a century, with a number of early urban and/or Bagan period sites identified. The occupation of Halin in the Late Prehistoric period (its role in the early urban system will be reviewed later, see page 132) may have related to the exploitation of its salt resources. Higham has proposed that an expansion of bronze production during the Iron Age, along with the replacement of marble, slate and marine shell jewellery by carnelian, agate and glass, and the increased production of efficient iron weapons and agricultural implements, was symptomatic of the breakdown of the “long-standing affinal alliance and exchange system between independent communities” and indicated the increasing domination of new centres which

controlled the best land and resources (Higham 2002: 226-227). With its salt fields, Halin fits this model as a resource centre.

The “horizontal” evidence, the distribution of artifact types, indicates a Late Prehistoric expansion in the Samon Valley and its western watershed, as indicated by the increasing complexity and variety of materials associated with burials (Table 3). This area, along with Halin, is the focus of finds associated with burials of beaten bronze coffin decorations (Figure 53), bronze wire packets (Figure 48), bronze bracelets (Figure 35), bronze-handled iron swords (Figure 47), symbolic bronze spearheads (Figure 40), bronze bells (Figure 49), blue glass bracelets (Figure 39) and carnelian tiger beads (Figure 62). Carnelian beads in general are found widely across Upper Burma in both Late Prehistoric and early urban contexts, but they are not reported archaeologically around Nyaunggan and the Chindwin sites (Figure 63).

Table 3 Pre-urban datasets, comparing Upper Burma and the Halin/Samon Valley areas.

Artifact groups found across Upper Burma in the pre-urban/Late Prehistoric period.

Artifact groups found in the Samon Valley and at Halin in the pre-urban/Late Prehistoric period.

Polished stone axes. Polished stone axes.

Polished stone rings including star shapes or t-section (flat rings found on wrists of skeletons and in burial contexts generally).

Plain polished stone rings only, no star shapes or t-section.

Perforated ovoid “ringstones” (also found between Halin and the Samon near the Myitnge-Ayeyarwady junction, and at Padah-lin, east of the Samon).

Socketed bronze axes. Socketed bronze axes

Megaliths associated with inhumation burials. Megaliths associated with inhumation burials.

Bronze bracelets.

Blue glass bracelets.

Bronze spear or arrow heads. Symbolic bronze spear heads as well as functional bronze spear or arrow heads.

Bronze-handled iron swords.

Bronze wire packets.

Bronze bells.

Beaten bronze coffin decorations.

Carnelian beads, etched or plain, round or oval (not reported at Nyaunggan and the Chindwin area).

Carnelian bead assemblage includes tiger beads.

Earthenware distillation bowls Earthenware distillation bowls

Two of these artifact groups, the glass bracelets and carnelian tigers, lend themselves to a possibility of comparative dating. Blue glass bracelets appear in the upper stratigraphic layers of circular earthworks in eastern Cambodia and western Vietnam. Radiocarbon dates for these sites tentatively suggest a terminal date around 400-200 BC. Similar bracelets to the Cambodian and Burmese examples have been found in southern Vietnam and at Ban Don Ta Phet in western

Thailand, the latter site dated to the 4^th century BC (Dega 1999; Albrecht, Haidle, Chhor Sivleng et al. 2001). Recalibration of the radiocarbon dates associated with the carnelian tiger at Ban Don Ta Phet is c.400-200 BC. The later part of this range is more likely, as there are strong indications that the model for these beads comes from the 221-207 BC Qin Dynasty of China. On the current evidence, the Samon region from c.200 BC onward is the likeliest source of these beads (see page 83, Figure 62). The bronze gourd flute from Myaukmigon (page 87) suggests another Chinese link with the Samon Valley in the period c. 300 BC - AD 9.