W. Higham, Charles F. “Death and Mortuary Rituals in Mainland Southeast Asia: From Hunter-Gatherers to the God Kings of Angkor.” Chapter. In Death Rituals, Social Order and the Archaeology of Immortality in the Ancient World: ‘Death Shall Have No Dominion’, edited by Colin Renfrew, Michael J. Boyd, and Iain Morley, 280–300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 

New Zealand archaeologist Charles Higham’s chapter provides a sweeping background of the mortuary practices in Mainland Southeast Asia across historical epochs, showing how these have culturally evolved. Starting from marine hunter-gatherers in Tham Lod and Ban Rai sites, he ends the survey in Angkor. Some of the excavation sites such as Khok Phanom Di, and Ban Non Wat and Noen U-Loke in the upper Mun Valley of northeast Thailand, while located in the same country and landmass, are actually in different elevation zones (281-282). The choice of excavation sites therefore depended on how well they could serve as models for mortuary ostentation for a particular economy (hunter-gatherers to pastoral economy) and historical epoch (from neolithic to Iron Age) and not on how they could speak for a particular geography. In taking all these sites together, Higham places the archaeological sequences near rivers and estuaries on the same bearings to the ones in the highlands and within the larger context of social and physical environments of Mainland Southeast Asia which stands between the trading ports of China and India. While beginning his survey from the emergence of Homo erectus in the area, he cuts to the discussion of early anatomically modern humans who practiced burial rituals by interring their dead in various positions with limited offerings from at least 25,000 years ago. It would have likely been practiced earlier but many sites that can speak for the preceding ages have been submerged by the end of the last glacial age (280).

The chapter addresses issues such as socio-ecological relations, human adaptation to environmental changes and food strategies among different economies: from hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists, to pastoralists. Throughout his analysis of each group, Higham charts two things. First, a genealogy through twenty generations of rapid accumulation of cultural deposits that reflects the presence of thick shell middens which has caused the dead to be buried superimposed in tightly nucleated groups. Second, he tracks the cranial abnormalities and patterns of dental avulsion which suggests that the burials contained people related by blood. Suggesting a continuity from neolithic, bronze age, and iron age burial sites is no small feat and it is due to this large scale review that Higham’s chapter begins like a straightforward processual study. However, the latter parts strongly exhibited the tenets of post-processual archaeology, particularly in mapping historical social structures with attention to how mortuary practices indicated social inequality and perpetuated structures of power and status. In his analysis, Higham does not fail to note that some societies have established uniform ritual practices for all members of these societies; the inclusivity of these practices seems to supplant other indicators of prestige such as gender, age, and wealth (293). Mortuary rituals thus act like pinholes that capture the dynamic cultural and social evolution in Mainland Southeast Asia.

The study combines high-level scientific excavation methods with a humanist and particularist approach to interpreting the transitions between historical epochs. Higham is able to employ the processual school’s functionalist and eco-determinist views which explains the development of rituals and material culture. For instance, mortuary treatments such as wrapping the corpse, placing it on a wooden bier or in a coffin, and using blood-red ochre is taken as indication of the culture’s belief in rebirth. Social status was reflected in burial of treasures and through the practice of mortuary feasting. Bronze Age and Iron Age communities continued burial practices, including placing the dead in lidded ceramic vessels adorned with intricate designs. Other symbolic details that were found pertained to fertility and blood, such as snake motifs and the use of red interiors for the vessels. Cluster burials suggested restricted access to specific kin-based segments of the cemetery which coincided with agricultural advancements and increased production. Later burial sites made use of exotic goods like carnelian, glass, agate, iron, gold, and silver to showcase social achievements as reflection of a fledgling maritime trade network. 

With the opening of the Maritime Silk Road, Higham posits that Southeast Asia received not only exotic goods but also ideas often linked to esoteric religions like Hinduism that elites turned into pathways to elevate their social status. Such correlation between ideology and material culture in mortuary practices reached its pinnacle in the Kingdom of Angkor during the early ninth century. The construction of massive temple mausolea, such as Angkor Wat and the Bayon facilitated the worship of ancestors. By way of conclusion, Higham points out that this practice was borne out from the belief that rulers descended from divine ancestors, and the need to reinforce such belief. Complex infrastructures entailed the exploitation of a large workforce, including stone masons, sculptors, architects, priests, goldsmiths, and laborers.Village communities and their surpluses were also assigned to the maintenance of these temples, indicating a significant economic and social investment in religious structures. The tradition of such mortuary rituals and the related worship of ruler images demonstrate the lasting impact and influence of Angkorian practices on present-day traditions in the region (295). Rather than see this continuation as a result mainly of socio-economic and ecological factors, Higham implies the existence of a lasting human agency that perpetuates intricate funerary display and deposition. In other words, the thriving of elaborate mortuary practices was carried on by people despite adverse conditions and were only amplified by the increased diversity of material culture. Higham’s chapter can be read both as a narrative of social and economic evolution in Mainland Southeast Asia and also an attempt at fathoming the temporal depth of the transcendent affective power of grief.