Heterogenetic cities in premodern Southeast Asia

Archaeologists working in non-Western areas of the world tend to employ monothetic, unilinear definitions of ‘urbanization’. The definition of what constitutes a ‘city’ in archaeological terms is also ambiguous. Most definitions are biased by dependence on early archaeological work in the Mediterranean and Southwest Asia. Models of city formation must be based on multi-linear, polythetic criteria, in order to accommodate non-Western phenomena. A polythetic functional definition of urbanization recognizes two distinct forms of the city: orthogenetic and heterogenetic. Literature on Southeast Asia has mainly concerned itself with orthogenetic sites. This article presents archaeological data on under-studied heterogenetic cities in insular Southeast Asia.