This article assesses indigenous perceptions of water through a comparison of the water management strategies at three ancient sites located in different ecological zones of Myanmar. Two of our examples are in the high-rainfall regions of Lower Myanmar: Thagara in the Dawei River valley flanked by mountains on the east and west, and Kyaikkatha on delta lands at the egress of the Sittaung River. We contrast these adaptations with the micro-exploitation of the scarce water resources at Bagan (also spelled Pagan) in the arid zone of Upper Myanmar. In the southern wet regions, despite the different geographical setting of Thagara and Kyaikkatha, the focus was on drainage and control. Multiple ramparts and moats were used to conserve the scarce water in the dry months between December and April and control the heavy floods of the rainy months between May to November. At Bagan, sited directly on the broad Ayeyarwady River, water management of inland streams and seasonal lakes maximised the gentle slope of the plain while also coping with intermittent flash floods in the rainy months. The sites of Thagara, Kyaikkatha, and Bagan demanded specific adaptations but are alike in the absence of extensive transformation of the landscape. This balance of manmade and natural elements provides common ground despite their variable size and urbanised extent, ecological setting, and occupational sequence to highlight the shared significance of water management in their longterm urban success.
The IRAW@Bagan project is aimed at developing an integrated socio-ecological history for residential patterning, agricultural practices, and water management at the classical Burmese (Bama) capital of Bagan, Myanmar (11th to 14th centuries CE). As part of this long-term research program investigations have been initiated in the Tuyin-Thetso uplands, located 11 km southeast of Bagan’s walled and moated epicenter. This mountainous area figures prominently in the chronicles of early Bagan, given that it was one of five places around the city that a royal white elephant carrying a Buddhist tooth-relic kneeled down, prompting King Anawrahta (1044-1077 CE) to build a pagoda (i.e., temple) there. Numerous 13th century religious monuments were subsequently built on the Tuyin Range. Recent explorations in these uplands have drawn attention to an additional feature of historical significance, a rock-cut tank located along the eastern edge of the Thetso-Taung ridge. Referred to by local villagers as Nat Yekan (Spirit Lake), this reservoir appears to have been integral not only to the initial collection and subsequent redistribution of water across the Bagan plain via a series of interconnected canals and reservoirs, but also, through its associated iconographic imagery, it may have been intended to symbolically purify this water, enhancing its fertility prior to its flowing into the city’s peri-urban zone. Hydrological modelling, excavations, and both iconographic and epigraphic analysis are used to build a multilayered understanding of Nat Yekan’s economic, political, religious, and ideological significance during Bagan’s classical era.IRAW Bagan စီမံကိန္◌းသည္ ၁၁ရာစ0မွ ၁၄ရာစ0အ4တင္◌း စ789ငန: ္◌းကားခ့ေဲ ◌သာ◌ျမ@Aာတိ0႔၏ ပ0ဂံႏ◌ိ◌0ငGံေ◌တာ◌္4တင္ ဘက္ေ◌ပါင္◌းစံ◌0ေ◌ပါင္◌းစည္◌းထားေ◌သာ လLမႈေ◌ဂဟ သမင0ိ ္◌းေ◌ၾကာင္◌း◌ျဖစ္ေ◌သာ လLေ◌နထ0ိငႈA ပံ◌စ0 ံ၊ စ0ိကး8် ေိ ◌ဳ ရး ေဓလစ့ ႐0ိကA်ား◌ႏ◌ွင္◌ ့ ေ◌ရအရင◌္ းအျမစသV ံ◌0◌းခ်မႈမ်ားအား ◌ျပ@Wည္ေ◌ဖာ◌္ထ0တXန ္အဓိကရY7Xယ8ါသည္။ အဆိ0ပါ ေ◌ရရွည္ သ0ေ◌တသန စီမံကိန္◌း ေ◌လ့လာေ◌ရးအားဗဟ0ိအခ်ကV ခ်ာ◌ျဖစ္ေ◌သာ ပ0ဂံၿမိေဳ႕ဟာင္◌း၏ ေအရွေ႕တာငက` ္ ၁၁ကီလ0ိမီတာေ◌ဝး4ကာေ◌သာ တ0ရင္ ◌ႏ◌ွင◌္ ့ သကbိcးေ◌တာင္ ဧရိယာမွ စတငWcပ္ေ◌ဆာငပeဲ ့ ါသည္။ေ၎တာငgန္◌းဧရိယာသည္ ပ0ဂံရာဇဝ9ငgင္ ေအနာ◌္ရထာမင္◌းႀကီး (၁၀၄၄-၁၀၇၇ AD)အဓိဠာန္◌ျပဳ၍ လႊတW ိcက္ေ◌သာ ဗ0ဒၶျမYတbယ္ေ◌တာ◌ ္ တင္ေ◌ဆာငqည္◌ ့ဆင္◌ျဖဴေ◌တာ◌္ကိန္◌းဝပXာ ငါးေ◌နရာ4တင္ တစecအပါအဝင္◌ျဖစqည္◌ ့ထငာX းs ေအရးပါသည◌္ ့ ေ◌နရာလဲ ◌ျဖစ8ါသည္။ မ်ားြစာေ◌သာ ၁၃ရာစ0 ပ0ဂံေ◌ခတ္သာသနကိ ေအဆာကVအံ◌0 မ်ားလည္◌း တ0ရင္ေ◌တာင္ေ◌ၾကာ တစ္ေ◌လ်ာက္တည္ေ◌ဆာက:ား ၾကသည္။ အဆိ0ပါေ◌တာငgန္◌း4တင္ လေကgလာ စLးစမ္◌းရွာေ◌ြဖမႈသ7Wည္◌း သမ0ိင္◌းတ@vိcးအရ သာသနကိ ေအဆာကVအံ◌0မ်ား ကဲ့သ0ိ႔ေအရးပါေ◌သာသကbိcးေ◌တာင္၏ ေအရွ႕ဖကV ြစန္◌း4တင္ တ7Xိေs◌သာ ေ◌က်က္ေ◌ရက@ာV းအထLး◌ျပဳေ◌လ့လာ◌ျခင္◌း◌ျဖစqည္။ ေ◌ဒသခံ wxာသLwxာသားမ်ားက ေ၎က်ာက္ေ◌ရက@Vားနတ္ေ◌ရက@yc ေ◌ခၚဆိ0မႈအရ ေ၎ေရလွာင{@|ကီးသည္ ကနဦး ေ◌ရစ0ေ◌ဆာင္◌းသိ0ေ◌လွာင~ပီးေ◌နာက္ ပ0ဂံ4လင္◌ျပင္ တစ္ေ◌လ်ာကXိ s ေ◌ေရလွာင@{ ာ်A းတLးေ◌◌ျမာင္◌းမ်ားႏ◌ွင◌္ ့ ဆကqယ္၍ ေ◌xျပ@Wည ္ ◌ျဖန္ေ႔ေဝပးယံ◌0သာ မကဘ ဲ4ထင္◌းထ0ထားေ◌သာ ႐0ပWံ◌0◌း႐0ပ္◌ႂ4ကမ်ားသ7Wည္◌း ကန္ေ◌ရအား ဒ0မဂၤလသန္႔ရွင္◌းစငက ယAႈေသဘာေ◌ဆာင္၍ ◌ျဖန္ေ႔ဝျခင္◌း◌ျဖင္◌ ့ ပ0ဂံၿမိ႕ဳအနးီ တဝ0ိက္၎ကန္ေ◌ရရာရွိရာ ေ◌နရာေ◌ဒသမ်ား သာယာစ78င ္ ြဖံ႔ၿဖိးေဳ ◌အာင ္ ◌ျပဳလ0ပမbီ ံထားသ7ycမွတ ရပါသည္။ ဂႏ◌ဝၲ ငc8 ဂံ ေ◌ခတV 4တင္◌း ထငာX းs ခ့ေဲ ◌သာ နတ္ေ◌ရကန္◌ႏ◌ွင္◌ ့ပတqတက္◌ႏြ◌ယ္ေ◌ေနသာ စီးြပားေ◌ရး၊ ◌ႏ◌ိ◌0ငGံေ◌ရး၊ ဘာသာေ◌ရးစသည္◌ေ့ သဘာတရားေ◌ရးရာ အဆင◌္ ဆ့ င္◌အ့ ား နားလည္ေ◌စရန္ေ◌ရအရင္◌းအျမစVသံ◌0◌းခ်သိပၸံပညာ၊ ေ◌ရွးေ◌ဟာင္◌းသ0ေ◌တသန တLးေ◌ဖာ◌္မႈ◌ႏ◌ွင္◌အ့ တL ႐0ပWံ◌◌0 း႐0ပ◌္ ေႂ 4ကလ့လာမႈ ◌ႏ◌ွင္◌ ့ ေ◌က်ာကbာ စိစစ္ေ◌4တ႕ရွိခ်ကA်ားအားအသံ◌0◌း◌ျပဳ ေ◌လ့လာ တင္◌ျပ4သားပါမည္။
Myin Ma Hti is the local name meant that the mountain horse never touches. In Myanmer, this name is very popular as the Buddhist religious place. Most pilgrims usually visit to the area of Myin Ma Hti. In 1997, a new limestone cave was discovered during the field trip of local geological team and the first explorer gave the name for the cave as Myin Ma Hti Cave No. 2. In their 1997 report, the archaeo-faunal remains and stone implements were recorded as teeth and vertebrate bones of bull, ox, deer and polished stone rings and implements that could be estimated as the Neolithic context dated as 6,000-4,000 BP. In 2019, the environmental assessment team accidentally arrived into the cave and they found some significant remains of stone tools mingled with a pile of bone fragments after the local people dug the floor of cave to build the religious stupa. Then, rescue archaeological works had been initiated to take recording and making catalogue of bone fragments and stone pieces. Most of the findings are the bone fragments and wasters of stone rings. The special findings are potential bone tools with the cut and scrape marks of edging and sharpening. The anthropogenic feature could be examined with the ash layer 3-meter depth approximately. In this report, the significance of archaeofaunal evidences and stone implements accidentally found in MMH2 will be described as the preliminary survey of prehistoric cave in Aung Pan Township,
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