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Situated at the eastern terminus of the mighty Himalayan range, Southeast Asia’s early metal technologies are intimately related to similar developments in neighboring Eurasian populations – namely, in present-day China and India (Fig. 1). This chapter will summarize past and current academic thinking on how regional base metal (copper, tin, lead, iron) production, exchange, and consumption was initiated and evolved from the début of the Mainland Southeast Asian (MSEA) Bronze Age through to the Historical era, c. 500 AD. The Island Southeast Asian Metal Age will be briefly treated at the end due to the significant time gap in its appearance.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Major regions and sites mentioned in the text

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Pryce, T.O. (2014). Metallurgy in Southeast Asia. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_10178-1

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