From Hunting and Gathering to Farming in Northern Thailand

Summary

Southeast Asia’s prehistoric zooarchaeological record is peculiar: faunal assemblages are seemingly ‘diverse,’ and generally include a large number of mammalian/reptilian/avian and molluscan species, but often these assemblages lack telltale evidence for human consumption. Therefore, one of the primary challenges confronting zooarchaeologists in this region is identifying what taxa were actually exploited by prehistoric foragers and how these patterns changed over time. This paper investigates forager subsistence in northern Thailand over the past 12,000 years. Using new zooarchaeological evidence from Tham Phii Man (Spirit Cave), Tham Phaa Can (Steep Cliff Cave), Tham Sai (Banyan Valley Cave) and Non Nok Tha (Partridge Mound), I argue that prehistoric hunter-gatherers only exploited some species present in these faunal assemblages and that this pattern of exploitation shifts in the early to mid-Holocene. These new datasets show that the transition from hunting and gathering to farming in mainland Southeast Asia was complex and requires an explanation of in-situ foraging adaptations to understand why it was successful.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Recent Developments in East and Southeast Asian Archaeology II: Sites, Landscape, and Environment

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14352