Beyond the Silk Road Metaphor: Transregional Maritime Exchange and Social Transformation in Iron Age Southeast Asia

Over the past 30 years, intense archaeological research has revealed a great degree of regional and transregional mobility of objects along the Southeast Asian coast. Some of them had moved from a long distance: beads and glass containers, intaglios, seals, fine ceramic and gold coins of western origin, to large bronzes, mirrors and lacquer ware connected to East Asia. These finds spreading over several significant sites between the Thai-Malay Peninsula, Vietnam and Southern China have given rise to larger-scale spatial and chronological narratives, among which the most prominent has been Maritime Silk Road exchange. Scholars are divided as to whether this is a suitable term, with some emphasizing its orientalist overtones and colonial baggage, and others finding it useful for “productive investigations of the interregional networks trading in commodities other than silk” (Bille et al The Maritime Silk Road, 2022). This paper will investigate how productive the concept really is for understanding transregional connectivity. Arguing that the Silk Road paradigm sacrifices much spatial and chronological differentiation for a globalizing narrative, it will suggest a more suitable approach to transregional exchange that gives more weight to local and regional dynamics of connectivity and their change over a period of 600 years.