PRELIMINARY READING.
You could read them in this order, which will take you from a broad outline through to the more complex historical, archaeological and historiographical arguments.
Strachan, Paul 1989 Pagan : Art & Architecture of old Burma Curriculum (in the Education building) 700.9591 1 An outline of the conventional history, exploration, and architecture at Pagan. Strachan is also a prolific publisher of other books on Pagan through his company, Kiscadale.
Luce G.H 1969 Old Burma-Early Pagan (3 volumes) Fisher Research Q 709.591 2 Luce was an expatriate English scholar who lived in Burma in the earlier part of the 20th Century. This work concentrates on the 12th Century.
Aung-Thwin, Michael. 1985 Pagan : The Origins Of Modern Burma Fisher Research 959.102 6 Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii, he is the leading modern scholar of Pagan.
Hudson, Bob 1997 Pagan and its Monasteries. Unpublished thesis. Archaeology Department Reading Room, University of Sydney. Lots of graphs, pictures, maps. Available on University of Sydney campus for perusal in the reading room, or at the Yangon University Library in Myanmar.
Aung-Thwin, Michael. 1998 Myth and history in the historiography of early Burma : paradigms, primary sources, and prejudices Fisher Research 959.102 12 This is the university's summary from the catalogue: "After a careful re-reading of primary sources written in Old Burmese, author Michael A. Aung-Thwin set about tracing the history of five key events that took place during the Kingdom of Pagan in order to disentangle that history from myth. He found that four of the five events, which have been considered the most important in the history of early Burma, are actually inventions of late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonial historians caught in their own intellectual and political world. A fifth is a genuine indigenous Burmese myth, but it too has been embellished by modern historians. Aung-Thwin concludes that these five key events, which have been taught as Burmese history for the past hundred years, actually have no basis in history."
Pe Maung Tin and G H Luce, 1960 The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma. Rangoon University Press This is the mythological history of Pagan, full of wonderful folktales, gruesome murders, and perhaps quite a bit of genuine history hidden in a document compiled in the Glass Palace of a 19th Century king of Burma by a panel of scholars who wanted to bring together all the Burmese history books into one volume.
Dr Tilman Frasch, a German scholar, has also published his PhD dissertation on Pagan- if you can read German. There is a copy in the Australian National Liibrary in Canberra.
MORE ADVANCED READING.
Now it's time to hit the catalogue seriously. First- the data:
Pichard, Pierre Inventory of Monuments at Pagan Fisher Research 704.948943 14 (Volumes 1-6) Fisher Rare books (Volumes 7 & 8). Pierre Pichard, who is the director of the Ecole Francaise D'Extreme Orient, based in Bangkok, has kindly let us have draft copies of the final two volumes ahead of their publication- they are not available for loan, but you can refer to them within the library. Fisher Library at the University of Sydney is the only place scholars can see this data until it is published, and we are very grateful to Pierre Pichard for making it available.
Then try these Burmese authors writing in English:
Daw Thin Kyi (she was professor of Geography at Rangoon U)
Than Tun (still around- a grand old scholar based at the Universities Historical Research Centre in Rangoon)
Aung Thaw (a renowned Burmese archaeologist)
And for a Russian architect writing under a Burmese pen name:
U Kan Hla. (look for an architectural journal in the Power Library)
There are many articles on Pagan in the Journal of the Burma Research Society, which is on microfiche in Fisher Library.
By this stage, you probably know more about Pagan than you will ever need to- but if you use keyword searches, check the Expanded Academic Index in Fisher, and cross-reference from the bibliographies of what you have read already, there is a wealth more stuff to find out about Pagan, medieval Burma, or Southeast Asian archaeology in general. Go for it!