High-tin Bronze in Southeast Asia: Where Did it Come from, How was it Made, and Who Used it?
Author(s): Elizabeth Hamilton
Year: 2025
Summary
This is an abstract from the "Archaeometallurgy, Eurasia and Beyond: Papers in Honor of Vince Pigott" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
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One noteworthy feature of metallurgy in Southeast Asia is the appearance of quenched high-tin (tin between 20% and 30%) artifacts in the later 1<sup>st</sup> millennium BC. This intractable alloy cannot be worked cold but only hot-worked. Thin-walled (o.2-0.3mm) vessels of quenched high-tin bronze have been found at several sites in late first-millennium BC Mainland Southeast Asia. However, in two sites in northern northeast Thailand, Ban Chiang and Don Klang, quenched and hot-worked high-tin bronze artifacts are found only in fine (1 mm thick) wires that appear to have been used as necklaces, along with distinctive bangles. In neither site is there any evidence of the thin-walled vessels found elsewhere in MSEA. The distribution of vessels and fine wires is mutually exclusive: no sites with fine wires have vessels, and no sites with vessels have fine wires. Given the difficulty of working this alloy, especially to produce thin wires, we postulate the existence of a specialist wire- and bangle-producing and exchange industry that was responding to strong and distinctive local preferences.
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Cite this Record
High-tin Bronze in Southeast Asia: Where Did it Come from, How was it Made, and Who Used it?. Elizabeth Hamilton. Presented at The 90th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 2025 ( tDAR id: 509610)
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Record Identifiers
Abstract Id(s): 51278