SURFACE COLLECTION

Archaeological Travels in Southeast Asia tackles the most pressing issues of cultural-heritage management in an engaging and accessible way. In each chapter the author makes the past relevant to the present through his encounters with archaeological sites. While the book s anecdotes are associated primarily with Thailand and Indonesia--from a decaying National Museum in Manila, to the search for traces of the thousands of Communists who were killed after an attempted coup in Bali, to the discovery of a bottle of perfume found among the personal effects of Indonesian ex-president Sukarno--they have broad international interest because of the issues they raise. These archaeological stories, again and again, remind us what history both remembers and conceals.