Institutionalized a Sacred Place: Social Logic and Transformation of Space in an Early Northern Thai Cultural Landscape

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Early archaeological sites of Wiang Nong Lom and Chiang Saen in Northern Thailand appear to have a variety of their spatial pattern than the sites in the later periods (late 14th century). Although temples were constructed follow the state-sponsored Buddhist ideology, some building patterns in many early archaeological sites vary from location to location, illustrating different kinds of spatial orientations. The main hall of the temple is the primary space for monks and laypeople to hold activities together. Archaeological evidence indicates two types of the temples’ main hall, one with walls and one without walls. The main hall that appears without walls also found a significant number of community’s buildings associated with it, such as wells and kilns. This type of hall also appears to have more public engagement. This paper aims to examine how the spatial pattern differences and changes, between the halls without walls (open spaces) and ones with walls (closed spaces), reflect on the social patterns and relationships and impact on the transformation and communal notions of space. This paper wishes to offer another interpretation of how physical landscape plays a role in communal patterns of spaces, and vice versa, in both early and recent communities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24965