1. JAN WISSEMAN CHRISTIE, Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hull, Hull, HU6 7RX, UK.

Two years ago I embarked on a long-term project aimed at extracting data on a number of aspects of the economic social history of early Java from the substantial corpus of inscriptions surviving from the period of the 9th through 13th centuries. These inscriptions, most of which relate to the financial arrangements of early javanese states and their members, are particularly rich in information connected with material culture, domestic industries, local marketing and international trade, settlement patterns, farming and social organization. I plan to correlate as much of this material as possible with the available archeological data in order to produce a reasonably comprehensive study of the economic and social history of late first and early second millennium Javanese states.

In pursuit of this end, I have already produced studies of: changes in potting traditions; weaving, dyeing and the shifts in the technology of textile production; the international trade in textiles and the development of sumptuary regulation; domestic marketing and the interfaces with international trade during the Asian trade boom of the 10th to 13th centuries; irrigation and religious uses of water; changing demographic patterns and shifts in the structure of villages.

At present I am working on currency, the use of money, laws concerning purchase and debt, and the whole question of material value and its literary and legal expression. Future areas of investigation include metal-working and the trade in ores; shipping, fishing and the uses of the sea; agriculture and patterns of land tenure; popular religion; and the administrative organization of early Javanese states.