ARCHAEOLOGICAL HERITAGE RESOURCE MAPPING: PYU ANCIENT CITIES, MYANMAR

摘要

The Pyu ancient cities, Halin, Beikthano, and Sri Ksetra are located in the dry zone of Irrawaddy River basin. These brick-walled centres flourished for most of the First Millennium CE. These three Pyu Cities were inscribed as a serial World Heritage Site in June 2014. This process involved the preparation of documentation to map the distribution and extent of archeological heritage resources and their relationship with the environment. Archeological heritage resources are not always possible to locate only by ground survey. With limited resources and time, geographic documentation of these resources became challenging. An integrated approach was taken, using high resolution satellite imagery and topographic maps in combination with existing archaeological resources documentation and ground survey by Global Positioning Systems (GPS). The results showed that archaeological cultural heritage resources could be spatially located. The resources identified on the newly-created digital maps were classified according to archaeological properties such as palace site, city wall, hydrological system, excavated structure, unexcavated mound. The maps also classified the archaeological cultural heritage resources according to their potential outstanding universal values (OUV) of World Heritage criteria. This integrated approach was proved to be a successful tool in mapping the archaeology of the Pyu ancient cities. This method is easily replicable and adaptable to the other archaeological cultural heritage sites.