Myanmar is the largest country in mainland Southeast Asia. Since the reforms of 2011, the tempo of archaeological research has increased, and, in 2014, three Pyu cities (Sri Ksetra, Halin and Beikthano) were awarded World Heritage status. The ERC Project shows that Pyu cities present early, regionally important examples of settlements evolving from the late Iron Age into early urbanism in a context of spatial continuity. Sri Ksetra is the prototype of the type of urbanism found at Angkor and Pagan centuries later, where water management was imbedded in extended urban space.