This comprehensive and absorbing book traces the cultural history of Southeast Asia from prehistoric (especially Neolithic, Bronze-Iron age) times through to the major Hindu and Buddhist civilizations, to around AD 1300. Southeast Asia has recently attracted archaeological attention as the locus for the first recorded sea crossings; as the region of origin for the Austronesian population dispersal across the Pacific from Neolithic times; as an arena for the development of archaeologically-rich Neolithic, and metal using communities, especially in Thailand and Vietnam, and as the backdrop for several unique and strikingly monumental Indic civilizations, such as the Khmer civilization centred around Angkor. Southeast Asia is invaluable to anyone interested in the full history of the region.

Ian Glover is Emeritus Reader in Southeast Asian Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. He has undertaken excavations in East Timor, Sulawesi, Western Thailand and Central Vietnam on periods ranging from Late Pleistocene cave deposits, Iron Age cemeteries and the emerging Cham Civilization of Central Vietnam. His academic interests include early technologies of bronze, iron and glass and the effects of inter-regional trade on cultural evolution.
Peter Bellwood is Professor of Archaeology at the Australian National University in Canberra. He has carried out field research since 1967 in Southeast Asia (Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines) and numerous Polynesian islands. He has a special interest in archaeological and linguistic aspects of Austronesian prehistory in both Southeast Asia and Oceania, and in the prehistories of early farming populations in all parts of the world.