The excavation of Non Ban Jak, Northeast Thailand - A report on the first three seasons

Non Ban Jak is a large, moated site located in the upper Mun Valley, Northeast Thailand. Excavations over three seasons in 2011-4 have revealed a sequence of occupation that covers the final stage of the local Iron Age. The site is enclosed by two broad moats and banks, and comprises an eastern and a western mound separated by a lower intervening area. The first season opened an 8 by 8 m square on the eastern mound, while the second and third seasons uncovered part of the low terrain rising into the western mound, encompassing an area of 25 by 10 m. The former revealed a sequence of industrial, residential and mortuary activity that involved the construction of houses, kiln firing of ceramic vessels and the interment of the dead within residences. The latter involved four phases of a late Iron Age cemetery, which again incorporated house floors and wall foundations, as well as further evidence for ceramic manufacture. The excavation sheds light on a late Iron Age town occupied at the threshold of state formation

Care of Infants in the Past: Bridging evolutionary anthropological and bioarchaeological approaches

The importance of care of infants and children in palaeoanthropological and human behavioural ecological research on the evolution of our species is evident in the diversity of research on human development, alloparental care, and learning and social interaction. There has been a recent surge of interest in modelling the social implications of care provision for people with serious disabilities in bioarchaeology. However, there is a lack of acknowledgement of infant and child care in bioarchaeology, despite the significant labour and resources that are required, and the implications this has for health outcomes within societies. Drawing on the recent proliferation of studies on infancy and childhood in evolutionary anthropology and bioarchaeology, this paper presents ways the subdisciplines may draw on research developments from each field to advance a more holistic understanding of the evolutionary, social and health significance of infant and children care in the past.We acknowledge the Wenner Gren Foundation for the funding of the symposium that stimulated and contributed to the development of this pape

Secondary burial practice at megalithic jar site 1, Plain of Jars Laos

In 2020 a Lao/Australian archaeological research team revisited one of the largest megalithic jar sites in Laos, Site 1, and undertook excavations in an effort to more fully understand the ritual practice at the site. This paper reviews previous research undertaken at the site and describes the recent excavation which revealed evidence of secondary burial practice dating to the 8th to thirteenth centuries. The research confirms the use of Site 1 as a burial site where multiple individuals were interred in secondary burials in shared mortuary contexts

The First New Zealanders: Patterns of Diet and Mobility Revealed through Isotope Analysis

Direct evidence of the environmental impact of human colonization and subsequent human adaptational responses to new environments is extremely rare anywhere in the world. New Zealand was the last Polynesian island group to be settled by humans, who arrived around the end of the 13th century AD. Little is known about the nature of human adaptation and mobility during the initial phase of colonization. We report the results of the isotopic analysis (carbon, nitrogen and strontium) of the oldest prehistoric skeletons discovered in New Zealand to assess diet and migration patterns. The isotope data show that the culturally distinctive burials, Group 1, had similar diets and childhood origins, supporting the assertion that this group was distinct from Group 2/3 and may have been part of the initial colonizing population at the site. The Group 2/3 individuals displayed highly variable diets and likely lived in different regions of the country before their burial at Wairau Bar, supporting the archaeological evidence that people were highly mobile in New Zealand since the initial phase of human settlement.: University of Otago Research Grant (http://www.otago.ac.nz/research/otago004140.html); A grant-in-aid by the School of Medical Sciences, University of Otago (http://osms.otago.ac.nz/); The Mason Foundation (http://research-hub.griffith.edu.au/display/fosc_MASONG); Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund (http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/programmes/funds/marsden/) grant number UOO0711. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Infant Death in Late Prehistoric Southeast Asia

Important infortnation on demography, epidemiology, inter-population differences in growth, infant burial practices, and social aspects of the community can be gleaned from the study of perinatal bones. The increasing number of perinates unearthed from prehistoric sites in Southeast Asia provides a rare opportunity to investigate these issues. The high number offull-term infants represented at the site of Khok Phanom Di in Central Thailand (4000-3500 B.P.) remains an enigma. This is an important issue for bioarchaeologists as infant mortality patterns are sensitive barometers of the health and fertility of a population. This study investigated the perinatal age distributions of several chronologically spread sites in prehistoric Southeast Asia with differing subsistence modes and evidence of social complexity. Results show that the age distribution in the collection from Khok Phanom Di is different from the other skeletal samples, with a comparatively higher number of full-term perinates represented. Explanations including infanticide, issues of health and disease, and infant burial practices are considered. It seems likely that the age distribution results from different burial rites of pre-term infants as a consequence of social and cultural differences between Khok Phanom Di and the other sites. This study emphasizes the important contribution bioarchaeological research and the comparative study of infant burial rites can make in understanding aspects of social change in prehistoric communities. KEYWORDS: bioarchaeology, infant burial practices, perinatal age at death distributions, prehistoric mainland Southeast Asia, social organization

The people of Noen U-Loke

This is the second volume reporting on our research project entitled "The Origins of the Civilization\ud of Angkor": In 1992, when one of us (R.T.) was appointed to the Phimai office of the Fine Arts\ud Department, we resolved to consider the enigma presented by the many large, moated and banked\ud settlements that are so prolific in the upper Mun Valley. Our initial model saw these sites as dating to\ud the Iron Age, and as such, the immediate precursors to the early states of this area. Our first concern\ud was that the prehistory of this area had been the subject of a lengthy period of research by David\ud Welch and Judith McNeill, and we did not wish to venture into the area where they had been active.\ud With their goodwill, we therefore selected an area immediately to the west of theirs, and began several\ud seasons of site surveys. The moated sites are densely distributed, and we mapped many. In 1995,\ud we decided to begin our excavations at the site of Ban Lum Khao which is, paradoxically, one of the\ud unmoated settlement so far examined. Our choice reflected the clear field evidence for a Bronze Age\ud cemetery, a period we felt it necessary to consider as the precursor to any cultural changes noted in\ud the ensuing Iron Age. Subsequently, we have excavated at Prasat Phimai and he moated sites of Non\ud Muang Kao, Noen U-Loke and Ban Non Wat.\ud The purpose of this volume, is to report the results of our two seasons at Noen U -Loke, and\ud the single season of research at Non Muang Kao. It is a step towards the realisation of our goal, to\ud illuminate the prehistoric societies of the upper Mun Valley during the two millennia of cultural\ud changes that led ultimately to the swift transition to the state as represented at Phimai and beyond,\ud to the civilization of Angkor itself. Future volumes will consider the much larger excavation of Ban\ud Non Wat, at which point, we plan to synthesise all our findings made during 12 years of excavations.\ud We are most grateful, therefore, to our colleagues for contributing their current findings in this part\ud of our report series.\ud Our research at Noen U-Loke proceeded with a permit issued by the National Research\ud Council of Thailand, for which we are indebted. The backing of the Thai Fine Arts Department was\ud also a vital prerequisite to our research. We are most grateful to all our colleagues who worked with\ud us in the field, and who have contributed to this report. Without the good will of the villagers of Ban\ud Nong Na, we could not have worked in their community, and we thank them for their welcome and\ud cooperation. I (C.H.) formatted this publication using the Indesign II program.\ud The Fine Arts Department of Thailand has been most supportive of this research programme, and\ud we are most grateful to Khun Arak Sanghitakul, the Director-General, for authorising the publication\ud of this volume.\ud This research was funded by the Marsden Fund of the Government of New Zealand, and in part\ud by the generous support of the Earthwatch Institute

Nancy Tayles

[Extract] Nancy Tayles is a New Zealand bioarchaeologist with a research focus on the Southeast Asian region and has worked in New Zealand and the Pacific (Fig. 1). She was born in 1947 in Auckland, New Zealand, where she was raised. Nancy first trained and worked in accountancy, before embarking on her career in archaeology in 1979

Ban Chiang, Northeast Thailand, vol. 2C: The Metal Remains in Regional Context ed. by Joyce C. White and Elizabeth G. Hamilton (review)

[Extract] The third volume of the Thai Archaeology Monograph (TAM) Series on the metal remains at Ban Chiang provides important interpretations of the metal evidence within a regional social context. This edited volume presents substantive contributions from multiple scholars on copper mining and smelting from Thailand and Laos, provenance research on artifacts from the sites of Ban Chiang and Dan Klang, and a thorough regional synthesis of metal technology systems in Northeast and Central Thailand. This corpus of work presented by the authors supports the theory that there was a maintenance of regional economic networks with community-based, nonhierarchical, social organization of production in these metal age societies