Joyce C. white and Elizabeth G. Hamilton, editors 2018. Ban Chiang, Northeast Thailand, Vol. 2B: Metals and Related Evidence from Ban Chiang, Ban Tong, Ban Phak Top, and Don Klang (original) (raw)
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Asian Archaeology, 2020
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Asian Perspectives 50.1: 53-69, 2013
Intensive surface surveys are a well-established method in the landscape archaeology of many parts of the world, but have remained relatively rare in Southeast Asian research up to present. This paper summarises the contribution of existing surveys in the latter region and offers results from a short but informative survey of a metal-producing landscape in central Thailand. We argue that there is much to be gained from a fuller integration of systematic landscape reconnaissance into wider Southeast Asian research agendas and consider some of the strengths and weaknesses of such an approach in this cultural and physical environment.
2007a On the Origins of Metallurgy in Prehistoric Southeast Asia: the View from Thailand
Research over the last 30 years has markedly improved our understanding of metallurgical developments in prehistoric Thailand. The chronology of its earliest appearance, however, remains under debate. Current evidence suggests that tin-bronze metallurgy appeared rather abruptly as a full-blown technology by the mid-2nd millennium BC. Questions also continue to arise as to the sources of the technology. Current arguments no longer favour an indigenous origin; researchers are increasingly pointing north into what is today modern China, linking metallurgical developments to the regions of the Yangtze valley and Lingnan and their ties to sophisticated bronze-making traditions which began during the Erlitou (c. 1900-1500 BC) and the Erligang (1600-1300 BC) cultures in the Central Plain of the Huanghe. In turn, links between this early 2nd-millennium BC metallurgical tradition and the easternmost extensions of Eurasian Steppe cultures to the north and west of China have been explored recently by a number of scholars. This paper assesses broadly the evidence for 'looking north' into China and eventually to its Steppe borderlands as possible sources of traditions, which, over time, may be linked to the coming of tin-bronze in Thailand/Southeast Asia.
DATING EARLY BRONZE AT BAN CHIANG, THAILAND
In 1982, the dating for the earliest bronze grave good at Ban Chiang, Thailand, was revised from the fourth to the early second millennium B.C. Some scholars did not accept the revised dating, and have argued for a date of younger than 1500 B.C. The debate has focused on bronzes that were grave goods and has not addressed the non-burial metals and metal-related artefacts. This article summarizes the burial and non-burial contexts for early bronzes at Ban Chiang, based on the evidence recovered from excavations at the site in 1974 and 1975. New evidence, including previously unpublished AMS dates, is presented supporting the dating of early metallurgy at the site in the early second millennium B.C. (c. 2000-1700 B.C.). This dating is consistent with a source of bronze technology from outside the region. However, the earliest bronze is too old to have originated from the Shang dynasty, as some archaeologists have claimed. The confirmed dating of the earliest bronze at Ban Chiang facilitates more precise debate on the relationship between inter-regional interaction in the third and second millennia in Asia and the appearance of early metallurgy.