Bérénice Bellina
Early trading polities of the Isthmus of Kra’s forested and maritime hinterland
ABSTRACT
In Southeast Asia, archaeological research has recently shown that the earliest centralised polities with complex urban patterns and monumental works qualifying as incipient States emerged by the late 5th and early 4th c. BCE (Kim 2013; Bellina 2018; Bellina 2017; Stark 2015). Understanding of their hinterland is still very limited. This presentations summaries the results of a research conducted since 2005 in the Isthmus of Kra in the Thai-Malay Peninsula, a narrow piece of land located between the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea. It argues that in this region, Maritime Silk Road incipient trading states’ emergence went along economic specialisation, cultural differentiation and cooperation between different groups participating in local and long-distance networks. Amongst these so-called “marginal” groups emerge sea nomads who appeared to have already played a crucial economic and political role as part of these maritime polities hinterland.