via Antiquity, 22 January 2020: Late-prehistoric Balinese site shows evidence of regional trade reaching China, Vietnam and the Roman World.
Excavations at the stone sarcophagus burial site of Pangkung Paruk on Bali have yielded the largest collection of Roman gold-glass beads in early Southeast Asia found to date, together with elaborate gold ornaments and two Han Chinese bronze mirrors. Unprecedented in Island Southeast Asia, these artefacts find parallels at Oc Eo in Vietnam, at other sites in the Mekong Delta and on the Thai-Malay Peninsula. Analyses of these new finds and comparison with others from across the region provide insights into the early to mid first-millennium AD trans-Asiatic networks that linked Southeast Asia to South Asia, the Roman world and China.
