A Bioarchaeological View on Long-Term Development in Prehistoric Central Thailand

Author(s): Chin-hsin Liu

Year: 2019

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Paradigms Shift: New Interpretations in Mainland Southeast Asian Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeologically, Metal Age sites in northeast and central Thailand exhibit different patterns in site formation, size, and mortuary practice. With geophysical characteristics of each region in mind, these differences have led to an on-going discussion on, for example, the origin of metallurgy and cultigens, and subsequently, their influence on population interaction and organization. The discussion centers primarily on the internal development vs. external transmission of technology and cultural practices. Over past decades, morphological and chemical analyses of human skeletal remains from prehistoric Thailand have provided significant insight into people’s lifeways and by proxy, population histories, land-use variation, and sociocultural development in the region. This paper reviews the bioarchaeological evidence fundamental to the discussion. It utilizes data from a program of isotopic analyses of skeletal remains from multiple, small-scale sites in central Thailand, including a Thailand Archaeometallurgy Project (TAP) site, to evaluate the two perspectives and to provide an outlook/perspective on pathways for future bioarchaeological research.

Cite this Record

A Bioarchaeological View on Long-Term Development in Prehistoric Central Thailand. Chin-hsin Liu. Presented at The 84th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Albuquerque, NM. 2019 ( tDAR id: 452131)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

min long: 92.549; min lat: -11.351 ; max long: 141.328; max lat: 27.372 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23419