| Abstract: |
Where does Kao Sam Kaeo stand within a wider narrative of Southeast Asian cities? Can it be considered to qualify as an early city at all? Furthermore, does its socio-political configuration suggest that the city-State concept can be applied to this trading centre? In order to answer these questions, the first part of the discussion begins with a few definitions of the city in the Southeast Asian context, followed by a brief overview of the various contemporaneous moated settlements of Mainland Southeast Asia and of the Early Historical Period enclosed cities of Oc eo and Akgkor Borei. This overview is complemented with an introduction to the few data available for the more-or-less contemporaneous settlements excavated in the Thai-Malay Peninsula and to Indian enclosed cities of the Early Historical Period. It is argued here that, among the various sources of urban inspiration, Khao Sam Kaeo may owe much to the contemporaneous moated settlements that are found in many parts of Mainland Southeast Asia as well as to the South Asian enclosed cities that arose during this region's second urbanisation, which took place by the early to mid-1st millennium BC.
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