Written as a travelogue, Surface Collection: Archaeological Travels in Southeast Asia tackles the most pressing issues of cultural-heritage management in an engaging and accessible way. In each chapter the author makes the past relevant to the present through his encounters with archaeological sites. While the book's anecdotes are associated primarily with Thailand and Indonesia—from a decaying National Museum in Manila, to the search for traces of the thousands of Communists who were killed after an attempted coup in Bali, to the discovery of a bottle of perfume found among the personal effects of Indonesian ex-president Sukarno—they have broad international interest because of the issues they raise. These archaeological stories, again and again, remind us what history both remembers and conceals.

"The book relates stories from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Burma in a series of nuanced and elegant travel meditations which are full of unexpected discoveries, conundrums and ironies. . . . Surface Collection is a feast for anyone who values an intelligent and sensitive travel narrative, full of self revelation and the grace of discovery of the other. It is an elegant and vivid travel story infused with a deeply perceptive understanding of the complexities, false leads, contradictions and joys of discovering the past of others and seeing it through new eyes. Denis points out that bearing witness to the past includes bearing witness with our bodies and our emotions as well as our intellect. In doing so on his travels, he gives us a range of extraordinary insights into the hidden and subtle past and present of Southeast Asia." - Historic Environment