Extent Advisor Tse Siang Lim has his doctorate conferred at ANU
Why did the first Southeast Asian kingdoms appear when they did during the first millennium AD? This is the question Extent Heritage Advisor Tse Siang Lim tackled in his PhD thesis at ANU.
Siang was recently awarded his well-earned doctorate from the Australian National University for his thesis which argued that the rise of the first kings and queens in this region was driven by increasing inequality, brought about the shift from hunter-gathering to agriculture.
His work has led to a more complex understanding of political economies in human societies; using the past to show what happens when individuals rise to power increasing inequality is left unchecked.
Congratulations to Dr Lim and his impressive achievement and his contribution to such an important area of inquiry and the archaeology of the Asia-Pacific.
Thesis title
“Ceramic Variability, Social Complexity and the Political Economy in Iron Age Cambodia and Mainland Southeast Asia (c. 500 BC-AD 500)”
Abstract
“This thesis investigates and defines the material processes underlying this important phase of socio-organizational intensification by identifying and analysing variation and distribution patterns in the production and consumption of both burial and occupation ceramics from three Iron Age mortuary sites in northwestern Cambodia - Phum Sophy (c. AD 87-562), Phum Lovea (c. 3 BC-AD 539) and Prei Khmeng (c. AD 23-623) - through the theoretical lens of the political economy. Patterns derived from these sites are not only compared with burial ceramic typologies from another contemporaneous site of Non Ban Jak (Mortuary Phases 1 and 2) in Thailand (c. AD 220-820), but also interpreted within the broader context of Iron Age socio-organizational intensification across other Mainland Southeast Asian sites for a wider regional perspective. As such, this thesis examines the correlation between these patterns and differential mortuary wealth in order to test its hypothesis: that the political economy - specifically the wealth-finance sector and the inequality it generates - is the primary driver of socio-organizational intensification and change during the Iron Age on Mainland Southeast Asia. In doing so, this thesis not only demonstrates the utility of both ceramic petrography and the chaine operatoire approach in identifying emic and nuanced ceramic typologies in archaeology, but also the capacity and potential of archaeological ceramics in illuminating the social dynamics and mechanisms involved in the evolution of complex societies.”