| Abstract: |
Epigraphic reassessments and archaeological fieldwork in southeast Sumatra during the past four decades have brought ample confirmation that this is where the maritime-oriented polity known as Srivijaya was founded in the late seventh century in Palembang, and where its political center remained until its demise some seven centuries later, notwithstanding a complex and still badly understood relationship with Java, with outlying polities on the Thai-Malay Peninsula, and with western Borneo. Recent finds of protohistoric and early historic sites embedded in long-distance religious and economic networks, downriver from Palembang and in the Jambi area, now document the formation process of the new state. A number of archaeological sites within the city of Palembang confirm the existence of a harbor-city acting as the central place of the Buddhist, trade-oriented polity until it was moved to Jambi in the eleventh century. Both the Musi and the Batang Hari river basins have now also yielded a profusion of remains of brick temples attesting to the control of a vast hinterland from which resins and gold would be fed into trade networks. Radical shifts of the power balance in Southeast Asia, and the growing competition of Cola and Song maritime networks resulted in the final demise of Srivijaya in the late thirteenth century.
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