1/10 Gold Unit

The Pyu city-states of upper Burma produced some of the earliest coinage in Southeast Asia, and Beikthano — occupied roughly from the 1st century BCE through the mid-first millennium CE — sits among the oldest of those urban centers. These fractional gold pieces circulated within a trading network that connected the Irrawaddy valley to Indian Ocean commerce, with strong Indic monetary influence visible in the unit system itself. Archaeological recovery at Beikthano has been limited, and most examples surface without stratified context, making precise dating within the four-century attribution window genuinely difficult.