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ဟုေပယ် မိတၱ (၁)
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Archaeological evidence suggests that between about 500 BC and 200 AD, a ricegrowingpopulation was living in a densely settled system of small villages in the Samon Valley in Upper Myanmar. This area was at the crossroads of ancient trade routes. Wealth was accumulating due to agriculture and to access to the copper resources of theShan hills, the semi-precious stone and iron resources of the Mount Popa plateau, andthe salt resources of Halin. This wealth is evident in grave goods unique to the Samon region, which includes items traded from or inspired by Qin and Han Dynasty China.
This paper will explore the possibility that the appearance early in the First Millennium
AD of the walled Pyu cities of Maingmaw, Beikthano, Halin and Sriksetra, at remarkably consistent distances from the Samon Valley, may be a consequence of intra-regional population flow from the Samon area. While the Pyu cities shared cultural elements such as religious and decorative items, and coins bearing auspicious symbols, with neighbours including Dhanyawadi and Vesali on the west coast, the Dvaravati
settlements of Thailand, and trade centres such as Oc Eo in Vietnam, their relationship to the landscape, to each other and to the Samon valley suggests that they formed a distinct
economic and cultural system (Gutman & Hudson 2004).
Pre-urban Upper Myanmar, c. 1500-500 BC.
Pre-urban artifact groups are distributed across Upper Myanmar in two distinct
geographical patterns. Artifacts widely seen across the whole region include polished
stone rings, bronze spear and arrow heads, bronze axes, burials involving megaliths and
earthenware distillation bowls. Finds of polished stone axes and bracelets, 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 (for references to individual
artifact finds, which number in the hundreds, see Hudson 2004). The distillation bowls
strongly suggest the production of alcohol (Win Maung 2003a), a substance that appears
to have been so widespread in the ancient Asian world, and to have caused such social
problems, that it was proscribed in Buddhist scripture. The extensively studied site of
Nyaunggan (Kyi Kyi Hla 1998; Proceedings of the Workshop on Bronze Age Culture in
Myanmar 1999; Glover 1999; Higham 1999; Khin Lay Yi 1999; Kyaw Han 1999; Nyunt
Han 1999; Nyunt Htay & Khin Maung Win 1999; Pauk Pauk 1999; Pe Maung Than &
Win Naing 1999; San Nyein 1999; Sein Myint 1999a, 1999b; San Nyein 2000; Tayles,
Domett & Pauk Pauk 2001; Yee Yee Aung 2002; Sein Myint 2003) gives a glimpse of
how people were living at the time, or more accurately, as the main evidence is from a
cemetery, how people behaved when someone died. While the individuals at Nyaunggan
were not buried with great personal wealth- there is less than one bronze artifact or
polished stone personal decoration per skeleton- the archaeological finds represent an
average of 70 pots of food per funeral. This may be compared with the early phases of
Noen U-Loke in Thailand, where similarly large quantities of grave goods suggest the
“achievement and expression of status through communal feasting on domestic animals”
(Theunissen 2002: 271-272).
Archaeologists have left the dating of Nyaunggan broad. The finds of bronze axes
suggest it 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”,
but as “bronze only became truly abundant in mortuary rituals in the iron age”(Higham
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2002: 117-121) the small number of bronzes at Nyaunggan may extend the possible date
of the site to 1500-500 BC. Nyaunggan indicates the existence of a pre-iron culture
featuring 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 probably the consumption of alcohol. Similar sites should
be expected eventually to be found across Upper Myanmar.
The Samon Valley, c. 500 BC to AD 200.
Some artifact classes are, according to the available evidence, focused on the Samon
Valley, around Pyawbwe, south of Mandalay (Figure 2). These are beaten bronze coffin
decorations, bronze wire packets, bronze bracelets, bronze-handled iron swords, symbolic
bronze spearheads, bronze bells, blue glass bracelets and carnelian tiger beads (Hudson
2001; Nyunt Han, Win Maung & Moore 2002; Win Maung 2003b). Pottery with rice
husk inclusions is part of the Late Prehistoric (c. 500 BC-500 AD) mortuary assemblages
of the Samon area (Moore 2003: 36), indicating rice agriculture. The increasing wealth in
the Samon Valley can be credited to the successful exploitation of natural resources such
as agricultural land and minerals, and the dominance of trade routes. There are extensive
copper resources not far away in the Shan Hills (Chhibber 1934; Bender 1983), and iron
(Chhibber 1926; Wuntha 1980) and semi-precious stones including carnelian, agate and
quartz crystal (Campbell-Cole 2003) near Mount Popa. The expanding variety of grave
goods seems to relate to social differentiation. Some individual burials, such as one
excavated by a Myanmar-French team at Ywahtinkon (Patreau, Mornais, Coupey et al.
2003) contain a range and quantity of goods far greater than those around them. The
clustering of burials in groups to which coffins were added from time to time (Patreau,
Pauk Pauk & Domett 2001; Patreau, Mornais, Coupey et al. 2004) suggests a system of
kin-based chiefdoms, with each group dominating a small, easy to manage village amid a
network of similar villages densely packed on the landscape. The decoration of
individual coffins with beaten bronze sheets (Win Maung 2003b) also suggests that some
burials were more important than others.
Evidence such as the appearance of carnelian beads among the grave goods suggests that
this society was already functioning in the middle of the first millennium BC, when
carnelian began to arrive in southeast Asia from India (Glover 1991; Glover & Bellina
2001). A comparison can again be drawn with Noen U-Loke in Thailand, where later
burial phases feature an increase in agate and carnelian beads, suggesting that “status is
more dependant on visual display of storable wealth in the form of new high value
personal ornaments” (Theunissen 2002: 271-272). The phase in which these new artifact
groups appear in the Samon Valley is not a “Bronze Age” culture, despite the prevalence
of bronze among the metal grave goods. From around 500 BC, after iron came into use in
Myanmar (Stargardt 1990: 13-14, 28), it is more a matter of “iron for hoe, bronze for
show”. The adoption of iron for tools and weapons means increasing economic growth. It
has been estimated that iron brought about a tenfold increase in economic efficiency in
ancient Asia (Elvin 1973).The wealth resulting from this expanding efficiency is shown
in glittering (when new) bronze display goods.
Pre-Pyu Halin.
Halin shares the archaeological signature of the Samon Valley. Iron swords with bronze
handles, carnelian tigers and coffin decorations are among the similar artifact classes
found in these two places. Most of these finds come from around the salt fields south of
Halin’s Pyu walls, and the occupation of Halin in the Late Prehistoric period may have
related to the exploitation of its salt resources. Higham has proposed that an expansion of
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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 pre-urban resource centre, a supplier to the Samon.
Dating the Samon artifacts, and some links with China.
Two of the artifact groups, 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 Myanmar examples have been found in southern
Vietnam and at Ban Don Ta Phet in western Thailand, the latter site dated to the 4th
century BC (Dega 1999; Albrecht, Haidle, Chhor Sivleng et al. 2001).
Dozens of carnelian pendants carved like a tiger have been found in Myanmar, mainly in
the Samon Valley. On the basis of the effort taken to carve them, they seem to have been
important and probably expensive items. There is a remarkably close morphological
relationship between the Myanmar carnelian tigers (Glover & Bellwood 2004, Plates 3 &
5) and bronze Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC) “Tally Tigers” of China (Figure 1), which were
symbols of military office (Museum of Chinese History, Guidebook to the Exhibits 1964;
Cheng & Cheng 1993: 193; Gengwu 2001: 64). Assuming that the Chinese model was
the original, the Samon region from c.200 BC onward is the likeliest source of carnelian
tiger beads.
Two more individual finds that indicate Chinese links with the Samon Valley were
shown to the author by local people in the Pyawbwe area in 2003. A cast bronze horse
standing loose on a wheeled platform had been found by farmers. On stylistic grounds
(see, for example, Wen Fong 1980: 342, 346), a Chinese origin, perhaps Han Dynasty, is
a possibility. Another informal find, a bronze gourd-shaped object, decorated with
sculpted figures on the narrow end, was similar to the Chinese sheng flutes which are
attributed to the Late Warring States-early western Han periods, c. 300 BC to AD 9 (see
Chinese Bronzes of Yunnan 1983: 116). The appearance of what are likely to be Chinese
bronzes and the apparent use of the Qin tally tiger as a model for carnelian beads shows
that the Late Prehistoric society of the Samon valley had trade links with China as well aswith India, the original source of carnelian beads.

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