Abstract
Gold is fairly widely, though irregularly, distributed throughout Southeast Asia in igneous and metamorphic hard rock deposits and in sedimentary placer deposits. The region was known to the Indian merchants of the 1st millennium BPE as Suvarnabhumi: ‘Land of Gold’, which is thought to refer to the mainland, including lower Burma and the Thai Malay Peninsula, and Suvarnadvipa: ‘Islands of Gold’, which may correspond to the Indonesian Archipelago, including Sumatra. The historical sources inform us that the Chinese were clearly impressed by the quantities of gold present, and there is evidence to suggest that the gold deposits were one of the stimulating factors in the development of early contacts with India and China. Gold first appears in the archaeological record in 400 BPE, at about the same time as iron, semiprecious stone polishing and glass working, suggesting that the techniques of gold extraction and working were quite plausibly introduced to Southeast Asia via Indian and/or Chinese merchants seeking gold ores.
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