Micronesian Area Research CenterRichard F. Taitano

An online publication of the Micronesian Area Research Center

University of Guam

An online publication of the Micronesian Area Research Center

University of Guam

donn bayard

wilhelm g. solheim ii

by

and

1965 - 1968

non nok thaArchaeological Excavations at

northeastern Thailand

Aerial photograph of the Non Nok Tha region, showing the northeastern side of Phu Wiang, the Phong River, and the site itself (arrowed). The tree-covered village of Ban Na Di is located one km north of the site, across the lighter-colored rice paddies.

Archeological Excavations at

Non Nok Tha

Northeastern Thailand

1965 – 1968Region, Site, and Synthesis

By Donn Bayard and Wilhelm G. Solheim II

with the assistance of Virgil Meeker

and a contribution by R. H. Parker

Dedicated to the memories of

Achan Chin You-di

“the father of Thai prehistory”

Hamilton Parker

and

Ludy M. Solheim

Contents

Forward By Pisit Charoenwongsa

Preface By Donn Bayard

1. Introduction: The Thai-Hawai`i Archeological Salvage Program and Non Nok Tha

Wilhelm G. Solheim II

2. The Phu Wiang Region and the Khorat Plateau

Donn Bayard

3. Excavations at Non Nok Tha: 1965 – 1966

R. H. Parker

Introductory note by Donn Bayard

4. The 1968 Excavation

Donn Bayard

5. Chronology

Donn Bayard

6. Ceramics

Donn Bayard

7. Non-Ceramic Artifacts

Donn Bayard

Wilhelm G. Solheim II

8. The Burials and Their Implications

Donn Bayard

9. Non Nok Tha in Economic, Social and Regional Context: Conclusions

Donn Bayard

References

Index

i

PREFACE

By Donn Bayard

This report has been an inordinately long time in preparation and publication; the first drafts of Chapters 1 and 2 were written in the early 1970s, while draft versions of Chapters 8 and 9 were not completed until the end of 1987. In his introductory chapter, Solheim outlines the factors leading to this thirty-year lag between excavation and publication, chief among them the 8,000 km gap between me at Otago and Solheim and the excavated material in Hawai`i. The delay is particularly regrettable because Non Nok Tha has generated considerable interest and debate due to the evidence for early metalworking that it produced and the controversial chronology supporting this evidence. In our defense, however I should add that a considerable body of publications-–almost 700 pages appeared about the site during the years 1967-1984 (see Chapter 5, footnote 4 for details).

Given this delay, the volume of previous publications, and the fact that many excavations in Thailand since 1970 have yielded richer and more reliably provenanced and dated materials than those from the pioneer excavation at Non Nok Tha, one might ask why this report is being published at all. First, at 340 m2 it remains to the present day the largest excavation in terms of area in Northeastern Thailand, and as such it produced an enormous quantity of data, much of which has not yet been published in any detail. Secondly, as one of the readers of the manuscript stated, “its historical importance remains undiminished”: The real importance of Non Nok Tha lies in the fact that the unexpected data it produced and the controversies it spawned stand at the beginning of a new era in Thai and Southeast Asian archaeology. Non Nok Tha and the archaeologists working there have been instrumental in motivating the series of new and vigorous excavation and survey projects that have led to a substantial rethinking of the prehistory of Southeast Asia (Karl Hutterer).

ii

Non Nok Tha could thus be viewed as having provided a “kick start” to modern Southeast Asian prehistory as far as interest by Western archaeologists is concerned; this is reflected by the number of entries in the bibliography of this report that postdate 1968 as opposed to those published earlier. However, I should note that no such impetus was needed for Vietnamese archaeologists, who were already engaged in a vigorous program of research into their own past Non Nok Tha was being excavated.

The report is organized along traditional lines. Solheim’s introductory chapter discusses the background of the survey program that led to Non Nok Tha’s discovery by Chet Gorman and the other more minor excavations carried out during the 1963 – 1966 survey. My second chapter discusses the environmental and ethnological background of the Phu Wiang area. R. H. Parker and I outline the procedures, stratigraphy and problems we encountered in the 1965 – 1966 and 1968 excavations at the site in Chapters 3 and 4. The complex and still-controversial dating of the site is addressed in Chapter 5, and Chapter 6 provides full data on the large number of whole ceramic vessels and the less impressive volume of sherdage recovered from the site. Chapter 7 covers the non-ceramic artifacts; I discuss the metal and metal-related materials, while Solheim describes the stone, shell, and bone material from the site. In Chapter 8 I provide a fairly full summary of the site’s 224 burials, their contents, and implications for possible prehistoric social organization, and the concluding chapter attempts to provide a fairly traditional (non-nomothetic) culture-historical syntheses of the Phu Wiang region during the period spanned by Non Nok Tha. The planned second volume of this report (all of which is already written in draft form) will include detailed grave-by-grave descriptions of the burials; specialist reports on the physical anthropology of the Non Nok Tha skeletal material; soils, ceramic, and bronze analyses; and details of the faunal remains from the site, with a list of the fauna exploited by contemporary villagers.

A note on orthography: In translating Thai and Northeast Thai (Phasa Isan) words and site names, I have almost in all cases attempted to follow a simplified version of the standardized system used by the Thai Royal Institute and the American Library of Congress (personal and common place-names like Bangkok, Mekong, and Vientiane are the chief exceptions). Thus the nine vowels of Thai and Phasa Isan are translated as follows: i, e, ae (front); u’, oe, a (back rounded) and u, o, o (back rounded). For typesetting reasons, the last two could not be properly distinguished as o and o in the text, nor could aspirated and unaspirated ch; vowel length and tone are also not shown. In a few cases the use of this system results in a spelling different from that preferred by the excavators of a site; in such cases, the excavators; spelling is given in brackets when the site name first appears in the text, as with “Non Pa Kluai [Kluay]” of “Nong No [Nor]”.

AcknowledgmentsIn his introductory chapter, Solheim thanks the many people to whom he is indebted for planning and carrying out the 1963-1966 program and its aftermath. But there are also many people to whom I am grateful for help and advice in my part of the excavation and analysis. We are both thankful for the sound advice offered by the two readers of the draft manuscript; their comments did much to improve this report. Portions of my part of the manuscript were also read by Athol, Anderson, Charles Higham, Michael Pietrusewsky, Vincent Pigott, and Joyce White, and I am grateful for the useful suggestions they provided. I am particularly grateful to Brian Vincent for undertaking ceramic analyses of

iii

some of the exotic sherds from Non Nok Tha, and to both Vincent and Joyce White for providing me with unpublished provisional data on sherd densities at Khok Phanom Di and Ban Chiang respectively. Over the past twenty-odd years I have received much sound counsel on metallurgical matters from the late Cyril Smith, from Robert Maddin, and particularly from Noel Barnard; I wrote my first letter to Noel from the porch of my village house just after the completion of the 1968 excavation and have valued his friendship and advice ever since. Correspondence and conversation over the years with archaeologists Bill Macdonald, Judy McNeill, David Welch, and Richard Wilen on Non Nok Tha and related matters have also proved of great benefit to me.

In Thailand there are many debts to acknowledge. My American assistant in 1968, Terry Marsh, was able to lift from me the burden of handling a four-wheel drive vehicle, as well as doing quite creditable field drawings. Among Thai officials, Dr. Kavi Chutikul, then Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture at Khon Kaen University, kindly offered me laboratory space and other assistance in 1968; the Nai Amphoe of Phi Wiang District was also most helpful. I greatly enjoyed working with the late Khun Viraj Khunnamas, the Thai Fine Arts Department representative on the 1968 excavation, and am grateful to Khun Charern Poltachar, his equivalent at the beginning of out fieldwork in 1965, for sympathetically introducing a somewhat culture-shocked Farang graduate student to village life in Phak Isan. But most of all, both Solheim and I wish to acknowledge the longstanding friendship and interest of the late Achan Chin You-di, who might with full justification be called, “the father of Thai prehistory.” We respectfully dedicate this report to his memory.

On a more personal level, I am equally indebted to the villagers of Ban Na Di adjacent to Non Nok Tha during my eight months there; their tolerance of and interest in a young Farang have made a life-long impact in me. I dedicated my 1971 doctoral dissertation to them collectively, but particular thanks are given to Nai Bunma Ngaemdaeng, assistant

iv

headman; to the late Nai Thiang Nuthao for sharing his ecological information with me; to my friend Khamporn Phithaksin, assistant in 1968 and during the later Pa Mong survey; and to the late Nai Bao Phimsi, my “foster father” who always provided me with humorously given but very sound advice. Finally, after thirty years of continuing friendship and correspondence, I, like Solheim, am particularly grateful for the support and fellowship of Thaweechai Uthaiwee. Chong hai thuk khon thuk than yu di mi haeng!

In Hawai`i there are also people I must thank. Both Solheim and I are deeply grateful to our wives, Daisy Bayard and particularly the late Ludy Solheim, for many hours spent reconstructing pots, and for putting up with the family disruptions that the preparation of this report has occasionally entailed over the past 27 years. Personally, I am extremely grateful to my Hawaiian `ohana, Ruby and Leighton Donlin and Priscilla and the late Fred Cappis, for our Hawai`i stays in 1980 and 1987; their help with everything-–and their general aloha-–proved invaluable. Karen Essene, Judy Ito, and Walter Yee of the University of Hawai`i Computer Center provided valuable help to us on computing matters, as did Harry Partika. Geologists Larry Lepley and John Belshé supplied provisional classification of lithic materials from Non Nok Tha. Over the years, Peter Gilpin spent many hours in the lab and darkroom producing photographs of Non Nok Tha artifacts. I thank the many University of Hawai`i graduate students who helped us analyze the Non Nok Tha materials; Solheim mentions most of these in his introductory chapter, but I must add special thanks to Ragnar Schousboe for his careful and consistent analysis and computer coding of many of the Non Nok Tha restorable vessels. As far as the production of this report is concerned, both Solheim and I are deeply indebted to the wholly voluntary efforts of Virgil Meeker over the past twenty years: Out of interest alone, he undertook the heavy burden of organizing the figures for this report as they were gradually executed in Hawai`i and Otago, and he did a superb job, He also devoted his efforts to keeping the Non Nok Tha collections in orderly storage while they were being analyzed, as well as aiding Solheim in analysis of artifacts and vessel reconstruction. Without him this report would not have been completed.

Finally, I also thank the drafting staff at the Otago Anthropology Department, who spent long hours over the years since the early 1970s producing many of the figures presented here. Peter Duncan, Sue Wilson, and Murray Webb were involved earlier on, but for the past fifteen years Martin Fisher has been struggling on and off with often muddy and sweat-stained field drawings, and I gratefully acknowledge his patience and persistence, Our secretarial staff and Computing Centre personnel have also offered much useful help and advice over the years, and I am of course grateful to the University of Otago for support during leaves in 1980 and 1987 to allow me to complete portions of this report. Funding for the field research was provided by a number of grants from the American National Science Foundation, as Solheim details in the introductory chapter.

CHAPTER 1Introduction: The Thai-Hawai`i Archaeological Salvage Program and Non Nok ThaBy Wilhelm G. Solheim III

The salvage archaeology program undertaken by the Fine Arts Department of Thailand and the Department of Anthropology of the University of Hawai`i began in the field I northeastern Thailand in August 1963 with its primary support from a U. S. National Science Foundation Grant (GS-288) followed by a second grant (GS-523 and GS-956). Our work in the field came to an end in June 1966. Events leading up to this program go back to December 1958. The program evolved, and the first stage continued in the field until 1968. Our program was the first organized research in prehistoric archaeology in the plateau area of northeastern Thailand. We found much exciting and unexpected data that led directly and indirectly to an almost complete revision of Southeast Asian prehistory. This final report on one site discovered during the first year of our program in Thailand should support at least some of the claims we have made for what were at the time several elements of an astonishingly early and high development of culture in northeastern Thailand.

My first visit to Mainland Southeast Asia was in October 1958, when I stopped in Thailand and Cambodia on my way from London to Kuching, Sarawak, to take up a Fulbright Fellowship at the Sarawak Museum. I met several of the Thai archaeologists at that time, including the late Achan Chin You-di, who was associated with out program in Thailand through all if its stages. In December 1958 I stopped in Saigon, Viet Nam for a week and there met Olov R. T. Janse, who had excavated at Dong Son in the late 1930s. He told me about the Mekong Valley Project, with its headquarters in Bangkok, we agreed on the need for a large-scale salvage program in the areas where various kinds of development would take place to rescue data on past and present peoples before these data were destroyed or irreparably disturbed.

Upon completion of my Fulbright Fellowship in Sarawak in June 1959, I returned to the United States for a few months and then back to Kuala Lumpur in February 1960 for a five-month program with the National Museum of Malaya. In June 1960 I went to Bangkok, renewed acquaintances at the National Museum, and talked with Achan Chin and others about an archaeological salvage program for the areas to be disturbed by the Mekong Valley Project, without specific reference to Thailand. They agreed it was a program that should receive high priority. I was able to visit with C. Hart Schaff, the Executive Agent for the Mekong Development Committee. He was interested in the idea of an archaeological salvage program in connection with the project, and from that time on until he left that position, he gave me moral support and encouragement in my attempts to organize an international salvage program for the lower Mekong Valley.

I spent considerable time and energy over the next five years or more trying to develop an international program along the lines of the Nile Valley Salvage program in connection with the building of the Aswan Dam, but I was never successful. I received moral support from many people, but without some impressive archaeological ruins to point to that would be destroyed by the Mekong Project, it was impossible to attract the attention needed to have institutions and governments commit money and time. My major reason for wanting an archaeological salvage program for the area was that prehistorically, the whole area was almost completely unknown; even historically it was little known. We did know that the

2

high, early historic civilizations of Funan, Chenla, and Cambodia were present in the Mekong drainage, so it was logical that there would have been people living in the area before this; but you don’t get commitments of money and time to work on an unknown quantity, at least in archaeology.

Robert Hackenburg joined me for a time in trying to develop an interest in the people who would be directly affected by the Mekong development—-those who would be displaced or other wise directly affected by specific dams. At that stage, in the early 1960s, almost all work was concentrated on technical aspects of the project and there was little feeling among the technical experts that the people were of any relevance to its development. We tried to point out otherwise (Solheim and Hackenberg 1961), but we were not overly successful. The same attitude among members of the Mekong Committee was encountered by Bayard twelve years later.

I began to realize in the fall of 1961 that while international programs were fine, I was getting nowhere and work on some dams would soon begin. The first area where Mekong dams were to be built was in northeastern Thailand. I decided that if I really believed in what I was saying, I would have to start developing a specific program for this area.

I stopped in Bangkok twice in 1962 to talk with Thai archaeologists at the National Museum and officials of the Fine Arts Department. I talked with Dhanit Yupho, the Director-General of the Fine Arts Department, and he approved of the idea but indicated that their small budget was committed to other projects and that I would have to find the necessary financing.

I was fortunate to gain two American allies who were living in Bangkok at the time to help with the development of the project. One of these was Elizabeth Lyons, an American specialist supported by the U.S. Department of State. She was an advisor to Director-General Dhanit Yupho. The other was Patricia Young, the wife of the American ambassador to Thailand at that time. Without their organizational assistance in Thailand, it is questionable whether the project would have come about.

I submitted a proposal to the U.S. National Science Foundation in the fall if 1962 for the funds for a three-year salvage program in northeastern Thailand, to be a joint project of the Fine Arts Department of Thailand and the Department of Anthropology of the University of Hawai`i. The Program Director for Anthropology, to whose division the proposal was directed, let me know that the National Science Foundation rarely supported salvage programs as such. Because nothing was known of the area or nearby areas, there was no other way in which I could focus my proposal. It was rejected; primarily because they felt it too much of a gamble to support a three-year program when it was not known whether anything was to be found in the area. They suggested I apply for a one-year project and if anything was found I could reapply for a second and third year. This I did. In August 1963, in Thailand, after making the first exploration of our project, I received word that my proposal had been accepted.

FIRST YEARChester Gorman, a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai`i, arrived less than ten days after we received word of NSF approval of the project. He and Nai Vidya Intakosai, for the Fine Arts Department, began the systematic field survey in northeastern Thailand, while I had to return to Hawai`i for fall semester classes. I returned to the field with Allen Mosher, another graduate student in the University of

3

Hawai`i Anthropology Department, to join Gorman in early March 1964. We continued working into May when the rains started.

Twenty-one sites were found during the first season’s explorations in three different reservoir areas (Fig. 1-1). Two small rock shelter sites, both probably prehistoric, were found in the Lam Phra Phloeng Reservoir area, ca. 50 km southwest of Nakhon Ratchasima. From these sites simple tools of sandstone and utilized sandstone flakes and cores were recovered, in association with earthenware potsherds in the upper levels (Solheim and Gorman 1966:155–123). The Lam Pao Reservoir stretches in several directions from the subsequently constructed man dam, which is ca. 22 km north of Kalasin. We found ten sites in this reservoir area, all of them historic. Three of these sites had standing or fallen carved stones that were probably from the Dvaravati Period, the earliest historic period of Thailand. One of these sites (Lam Pao 7) had a group of standing stones in an oval immediately adjacent to a wat compound (124-163)Fig. 1-1

Ubonrat Dam (See Fig. 1-1) is about 47 km northwest of Khon Kaen and now backs up the Ubonrat Reservoir. In this area we found nine sites, three of them historic in their upper levels but prehistoric below, and two probably completely prehistoric. The three partly prehistoric sites-—Nam Phong 6, 7, and 8-—had quantities of cord-marked pottery and some artifacts of bronze. Nam Phong 4 was a sandstone shelter where very few artifacts were found but past of the rock surface had a number of geometric figures worked into it, including several that looked like bronze celts. Nam Phong 9 was a sandstone shelter with the red outline of nine human hands on the wall (Solheim and Gorman 1966:164–179). A final report of this first season’s discoveries has been published (Solheim and Gorman 1966), and several shorter articles include information on the program and the first season’s progress

(Solheim 1962, 1963, 1964a, 1966a-c, 1967a). Additional financial support for the first season’s program came from the Mosher Fund for Southeast Asia Prehistory. Esso Standard Eastern furnished all petrol supplies, and these were considerable. This assistance we warmly welcomed.

4

SECOND YEARWith further NSF funding, the plan for the second year of the project was to make small excavations in a few of the sites discovered during the first season’s explorations, carry out more intensive exploration in the neighborhood of those sites, and to test the Nam Phong sites 6, 7, and 8 to be able to select one of these, if they had any depth, for a major excavation during the third year of the project. As was the situation the first year, I had to be back in Hawai`i to teach the first term and could only return to Thailand in February the following year. Ms. Ernestine Green, a graduate student in archaeology from the University if Hawai`i, and Mr. Verapong Pengprecha for the Fine Arts Department began work in November 1964 at the Lam Phra Phloeng dam site. They excavated Lam Phra Phloeng 1 and 2, located two other small rock shelters in the same area and excavated these, and made further exploration up the valley, where they found nothing. (This move up the valley was the first time any of my students used elephants for transportation.) The artifacts, used stone, and unused stone from these sites (Solheim and Gorman 1966:116-123) were brought to Hawai`i where they were analyzed by myself, partly with the assistance of the archaeology graduate students in the University of Hawai`i, Department of Anthropology.

The three Nam Phong sites were tested and the Nam Phong (NP) 7 was selected for the primary excavation to be made during the third season. A summary report on the test excavations at these three sites is presented below.

I returned to the field in late February 1965 with my wife and daughter, and we joined the party at Lam Pao 6 (Nong Nok Tha, Solheim and Gorman 1966:160-161) shortly after they had arrived there. Here we excavated the total area within the oval of standing stones. The most common artifact from this site was roof tile. There were washed, weighed, and counted at the site during excavation. Because they were so bulky and heavy, many of them were placed together and left in the excavated area, which was refilled. The rest of the artifacts and tiles were brought back to Hawai`i for description and analysis. This work has been completed by Jane Allen and, it is hoped, will be published in the future. After Lam Pao 7 we moved to Sahatsakhan, where we excavated Lam Pao 6, a site that we thought was similar to Lam Pao 7. Very little material was recovered from this site.

Summary of Test Excavations Made in Nam Phong 6 (NP 6)Ernestine Green and Verapong Pengprecha conducted test excavations in Nam Phong (NP) 6 from January 8 to 17 1965. This site is somewhat irregular mound called Don Kok Pho (Bo Tree Rise; see Fig. 1-2). It is surrounded by small rice paddy fields and there is a small stream flowing just to the north of the mound. Its maximum measurements both north south and east west are about 300 m. In 1965 it was cut approximately in half by an east-west-running fence, which went across the highest portion of the mound. This northern half of the mound sloped downward toward the stream at the north side. The center of the mound was about 6 m higher than the northern side. The grayish black soil of the mound was distinct from the red soil of the surrounding paddy fields. A garden of watermelon and maize was present at the western side of the portion north of the fence at the time of testing 1965. The first reported cultivation of a portion of the mound was said to have taken place in 1963 (Solheim and Gorman 1966:175).

5

Fig. 1-2

This mound was recognized was an archaeological site by Gorman at the end of the first field season in May 1963 because of the considerable quantity of potsherds on its surface of both porcelain (from Sukhothai, Ayutthaya, and Ming China) and unglazed earthenware (Solheim and Gorman 1966:174-176). The earthenware sherds, including many that were cord-marked, indicated considerable variety in form for this pottery. A spindle whorl was found, as well as fragments of clay pipes, metal, a marine bivalve shell, and a broken tektite. Surface search before the testing was begun turned up more of the sherds, pipe fragments and pieces of broken grinding stones.

The earthenware sherds were of several different pastes and tempers and included a few incised sherds.

Ten test pits were excavated by 10 cm levels. The pits measured 1.0-1.5 m and were placed along the north side, not including the garden area, and across the center of the mound (Fig. 1-3). It had been intended to follow natural layers in excavation as soon as these could be distinguished, but in the small pits no stratigraphy was evident. Even with the one extended burial that was found, no indication of its pit was evident.

6

Fig. 1-3The collections from the test pits have not been analyzed, so little can be said about the site of value for the comparisons with the obviously related sites of Nam Phong 7 (Non Nok Tha), Nam Phong 8, or the sites inside Phu Wiang. The earthenware pottery in the top 30 cm was primarily plain, with cord-marked pottery common from level 4 and below. From levels 6 and 7 in several squares along the north side, as well as level 7 in Square 7, were found a number of very thick sherds with laterite pebble temper, as much as 3 to 4

cm thick (refer to Chapter 6). Similar very thick pottery has been found at other sites in northeastern Thailand. Fragments of shell and animal bones were found in the top two levels of all squares except in Square 8, where shell and bone were also found in level 3; these remains were not found at lower levels. A few metal (probably iron) fragments were not found in level 3 of Square 10 and level 4 of Squares 7 and 8. A few small red glass beads were found in level 9 of Square 8 and level 10 of Square 9.

A burial with the skeleton extended on its back was found in levels 11 and 12 of Square 8. The body had been placed roughly NNW to SSE with the head towards the south. One earthenware vessel had been placed on top of the right led near the foot; another pot at the outside of the left thigh, and to the left near the head of the left femur was an iron axe of hoe blade. It could well be that the red beads found in level 9 were associated with this burial.

Two unusual features were found. A few pieces of fired clay, apparently daub from wattle-and-daub structures, had been collected from the surface. Daub was found only one of the test pits, but in this pit it was found in seven different levels. In test pit 4, daub was recovered from levels 3, 4, and 9 through 13. In the lower set of levels, it was found scattered in considerable quantity. Wattle-and-daub structures are in use at the present time in Ban Na Di, a small hamlet nearby and neighboring Nam Pong 7, for granaries (P1. 3a) built totally above ground. If one of these buildings were burned, the fragmented fired-clay daub would form a small mound on the surface of the ground. If undisturbed for many years and it was not washed away, it would form a deposit that when excavated would be found in two or three 10 cm levels, but probably no more. The fact that daub was not found in any of the none other test pits suggests that the daub from levels 3 and 4 was not a random find but had some relationship with the daub found in the lower levels.

7

Without further excavation, I can think of only two possible explanations. One would be that a wattle and daub structure, first built at the time level 13 was the surface, was rebuilt at some time following its destruction in the same location as the earlier structure, and that this cycle of construction and destruction through burning was repeated several times. The second possible explanation would be that at the time when level 3 (or level 9) was the surface, a pit was dug down into level 13 and lined with a wattle-and-daub frame. If considerable organic material was put into the pit and this was fired before the nest rainy season, the daub could have been fired as well, and what remained in the wall —-not falling into the pit-—would on excavation be found at many levels in the circumferential squares.

The other feature was in Square 10. From level 10 into level 14, at least 17 earthenware vessels containing cremations were found, apparently originally placed all together at one time, or over a relatively short period of time, without noticeable individual placement. In level 10, fragments of bronze (?) were found associated with the pottery-—the only bronze found in these ten test pits. The excavation of this pit had run behind the others. The other pits hit sterile soil in levels 9 and 10 for Squares 1, 2, and 3, in level 11 for Square 4, in 12 for Squares 6 and 8 and in level 13 for Squares 6 and 9. Square 5 contained very little cultural material in level 14, while Square 10 still had several vessels in level 14. They had to be left in the test pit, as the move to Nam Phong 7 had to be made without further delay.

Nam Phong 7 (NP 7, Non Nok Tha)The purpose of this work is to present the final report for the excavation of Nam Phong (NP) 7, so it might seem superfluous to present a review of the testing that led to its being chosen as the site for the major excavation in this three-year program. It seems to me, however, that it may be of interest and value for the reader to understand why we chose this site as the major focus of a three-year program that cost the American taxpayers, in the final analysis in the neighborhood of $300,000 and the Hawaiian and New Zealand taxpayers many tens of thousands of dollars to pay for various portions of the analysis and preparation for publication of the data recovered as a result of the excavation (Frontispiece).

The test excavations, as for NP 6 and NP 8, were conducted by Green and Verapong from January 18 to 27, 1965. I start this review for the testing with a quote from the first entry in Green’s field notes: “The 10 workmen, I and the entire village of Ban NA Di began work at NP 7 this morning, There were at least 300 people here at one time; how many total, I’m not sure.” This is an indication of the sort of interest we usually had of our work in the field. We hope that in some way this final report will repay the support and assistance we had at all levels from the people of Thailand in the pursuance of this program.

The site and its physical setting will be described in detail in later chapters, so this information is not duplicated here (P1.1a). A very brief description of the site and surface finds there from was presented in the final report of the first year of our program (Solheim and Gorman 1966:176-177).

The test pits were originally of two sizes; wither 1.5 by 1 m or 2 by 1 m. Three pits were extended when a burial was found in each; this was in order to recover the total burial so as to have a better idea of the contents and context of the burials. As with NP 6 and NP 8, the test pits were excavated in 10 cm levels, as natural levels could not be ascertained. The location of the seven pits, scattered on the mound, is presented in Figure 1-4.

8

The most exciting result of the testing of NP 7 was the finding and depths of the metal fragments and artifacts. “Metal” was reported from level 1 of Square 4, level 2 of Squares 2 and 4, and level4 of Square 6. These finds were probably iron, as starting with level 5, in Squares 1 and 4, bronze was reported and the term metal was not used. If the metal found in the top four levels had been bronze, it would most likely have been reported as such for bronze finds had been very rare up to this point in our work. More bronze was reported from level 6 in Squares 2, 3, and 4 and from level 7 in Squares 4 and 7. This indicated that bronze-—and no other metal-—was widely scattered in the site from levels 5 through 7. “Metal” was again reported from Square 4, levels 9 through 11, but in this case it probably meant bronze. In Green’s field notes for 21 January, clarifying some sketches concerned with level 9 of Square 4, just below where she had reported “metal” for that level, she wrote, “So far this site appears to be a bronze producing cremation mound.”Fig. 1-4

Many cremations had been reported from all squares, often in jars (now usually badly crushed), but at times apparently not in jars. In the same squares and levels, human bone concentrations were often reported. Some or many of these concentrations may have been badly disturbed extended burials; five such burials were reported, and two of these when first discovered were called bone concentrations until further portions of the skeletons were found. A presumed secondary burial (called “Burial X” in the overall analysis; see Chapter 8) was found in levels 12, 13, and 14 of the extensions of Square 2, which were made to uncover the total length of Burial 5 (“Burial Y” in level 14. Considerable numbers of whole and broken but restorable earthenware vessels were found associated with burials and bone concentrations.

Miscellaneous finds included small fired-clay balls and a few spindle whorls, as found at NP 6. A large painted potsherd with a

yellow and red pattern on a black body was found in level 12 of Square 3, was well as thin, incised black potsherds. Several pieces of polished stone were found associated with burials of bone concentrations, including a portion of a black stone bracelet from level 11 of

9

Square 7. No metal of any sort was found below level 11. Square 1 was sterile from level 9, Squares 6 and 7 from level 13, Squares 2, 3, and 5 from level 14, Square 5 from level 15 and Square 4 from level 18.

Nam Phong 7 was obviously rich in burials of several different kinds. Green had remarked that the pottery from the lowest three or four levels of most of the squares was different from the pottery of the upper levels, though cord-marked pottery had been found at all levels. The single painted sherd was the only one that had been recovered from archaeological testing in northeastern Thailand up to that time. It also appeared that iron had been in use during the time the four levels were accumulating, that bronze may have been in use without iron while levels 11 through 5 were being deposited, and that the previous level 11 no metal was locally in evidence. If this appearance held true over the excavation, this would be the first known site in Southeast Asia to have clear and possibly lengthy use of bronze previous to and not in association with iron, This was an obvious site for careful excavation.

Nam Phong 8 (NP 8)This site is on a large mound called Don Po Daeng (Red Kenaf Rise), which in turn is on a large knoll of decomposed laterite, about 2.5 km NNW of Ban Nong Waeng. The area of the mound is about 300 m east west by 500 m or more north south (see sketch map, Fig 5). Five test pits, each 2 by 1.5 m were put in and excavated by 10 cm levels. Surface collections were similar to those from NP 6 (Solheim and Gorman 1966:177-178). Excavation was done from February 2 to 4 and 12 through 16: the site, sitting directly onFig. 1-5

laterite, is quite shallow compared to the other sites and probably relatively recent. Square 1 came to sterile laterite in level 6. At the base of this square, in a pit dug into the laterite, was a burial that included glass beads. From a bone concentration immediately above this burial came an iron axe or hoe. Another iron axe was recovered from Square 3 in level 5; sterile laterite was encountered in level 8, while level 7 was a mixture of soil and laterite without artifacts. The sterile laterite was hit in Square 4 in level 6 and in Square 5 in level 7. Only Square 3 extended as deep as level 9, with level 10 sterile. In this square, heavy bone concentrations cut down into the laterite from level 5.

10

Third YearThree excavations were planned for the third season’s work in 1965-1966. The first excavation at Nam Phong 7 (Ban NA Di) was to be from the middle of November until the end of January; the second, on Ban Sao Lao (Lam Pao 3), was to be in February and March; and the third, in Phimai in April until the rains started sometime in late May or June.

My family and I returned from a short vacation on September 1 and we started assembling equipment and supplies. The Fine Arts Department built a small screened-in laboratory on the ground floor of our house, which was in the Fine Arts Department compound at Phimai. The laboratory included ample storage space with shelves and worktables with good lighting. We could work late into the evening on days when it did not rain. The rain brought out swarms of termites in the evening and-—even with screens—-they would somehow get inside, in large numbers, to the light.

Donn Bayard, at that time a graduate student at the University of Hawai`i arrived late in September. With the assistance of Jack Golson, I was able to add Hamilton (“Ham”) Parker from New Zealand to our crew. With the reputation he had in New Zealand for being a first-class excavator, I brought him to take charge of the excavations. Not only did Parker turn out to be an excellent excavator, he was also a first-rate teacher. In spite of speaking no Thai at that time — and our workers and most of the Fine Arts University archaeology students understood and spoke little or no English — Parker was able to communicate his methods of excavation quickly, so that in a few days all of those who approached their tasks with a willing and open mind became competent excavators, and few-—among both the locally hired workers and the students-—became almost as good as Parker. Sadly, Parker died in 1994 after a long and productive life in Archaeology (Prikett 1994, Cooper and Sutton 1994); Bayard and I are sorry this report could not appear while he was still alive (P1.1b Solheim, Bayard and Parker in front of the field lab at Phimai).

With the arrival of Parker in late October we started to go over the collections from the Nam Phong6 and 7 test pits to acquaint ourselves with the materials we could be excavating and to develop some idea of the possible strafgraphy. As the condition of the road for the last 6 km into Nam Phong 6, 7, and 8 sited was extremely bad, we delayed our departure to the field while waiting for missing parts for our winch. We finally gave up on the winch and left Phimai on December 9, arriving in Ban Na Di the morning of December 10 and starting to work on NP 7 the same day. Parker’s account of the site and its excavation comprises Chapter 3.

I returned to Phimai after the beginning of the excavation and during that season’s excavations spent most of my time in the lab, working on the Lam Phra Phloeng collections. In November and December 1965 and first several months of 1966, I had to make at least one trip every month to Bangkok for visa extensions, some supplies, and cash for the payroll. Banditry of a traditional nature was still common. Every hamlet reportedly had two or three resident bandits. These men never robbed in their own hamlet but supposedly passed word on to their associates at some distance when any unusual amount of cash was expected to be on their hamlet. Unknown assailants on at least two different occasions relieved residents of hamlets where we were working (during our three-year program) of a considerable amount of cash that had been acquired the same day. We were never bothered, though we strongly believe that on at least one occasion we were looked over carefully by bandits-—visitors who were completely unknown to the local population. In anticipation of such a possible action, we never kept more than about $20

11

worth of Thai baht in our field camps. I had a secret compartment built into our vehicle for our payroll. I went to the site at least twice a month an as soon as possible after my arrival, we paid all the workers. There was no market at Ban NA Di, or at several other sites where we worked, so food was not easy to buy locally. I always brought in a considerable quantity of food and enough fresh met and vegetables to last for several days.

When it cane time to move to Ban Sao Lao, we had not reached sterile soil in any of our squares because the site had been so rich-—and therefore slow in excavation. Our crew had been working seven days a week from about 9:00 in the morning straight through to about 2:00 in the afternoon. In the Philippines, Sarawak, and west Malaysia I had always started to a site where we were working around 6:00 in the morning so that we were at work at 7:00, taking advantage of the relative cool in the morning. We tried in Thailand to start early in the morning but we were never successful. The Thai in the country get up at sunrise or before, like other farming people, but then they sit around and talk, have breakfast, and don’t start making preparations to move out until around 8:00. We’d usually get to the excavation site about 8:30 of so and it was usually 9:00 before everything was moving – and it was already hot. The Thai workmen would work straight through; with about a half-hour break sometime after 11:00 for a small snack, and by 2:00 they were exhausted-—as were we. The workmen were willing to continue working later than this, but they were so tired that both the quantity and quality of their work dropped off rapidly, so there was no sense in trying to work longer. With the seven-day-a-week schedule, everyone needed a break. On January 30 we closed down, to return to work again in February 11.

The site continued to be rich, and by the end of February the bottom still was not in sight. I decided that we could continue the excavation until the end of March and reduce our other excavations to one month each. By the end of March we knew where the bottom of the site was, but we had reached it in only one or two squares. The bottom levels were so interesting-—and so much richer than the later levels-—that we could not stop at that point. I postponed our closing of the site again, this time until April 15. On April 13 when I arrived to help with the packing up and moving out, they had been able to complete only a few more squares, bring most of the rest of the squares down to the most interesting bottom levels, and remove some of the baulks. We could not stop excavation in that situation. I made an ultimate postponement. The rainy season would probably be starting sometime in May, so we had to be started at Bao Sao Lao by May 1 regardless of what we had to leave unexcavated in the site. We would close down excavation on April 27 and move out on April 28. This we managed, though we left ten of our earliest-—and richest-—burials unexcavated.

After the first two months, several of our local laborers had become expert excavators. Only Parker and Bayard were able to photograph and record the features and determine the stratigraphic position of these features. The excavation kept getting farther and farther ahead of the recording, even with several Silapakon students pressed into service as draftspersons, and as a result more and more human burials were left on slabs awaiting recording and then removal. While in Bangkok on one trip I mentioned this to Dr. Sood Sangvichien, the anatomist who had worked with the human skeletal material of the Thai-Danish expedition. He offered to come up to the site for a few days to remove and pack the skeletons for us. We had arranged earlier for him to do the analysis of any human skeletal material we might find. He came to Ban Na Di with three students for three days, all in his own funds, and they took care of our backlog of recorded but unremoved skeletal

12

material. As it developed later, Dr. Sood was so busy that he would be unable to get at the description of the skeletal material for a long time. I was able to make arrangements with Michael Pietrusewsky, out physical anthropologist at the University of Hawai`i Anthropology Department who had specialized in working with prehistoric skeletal material in Bangkok at Dr. Sood’s laboratory. We were greatly indebted to Dr. Sood for his assistance and interest in our program. We thank him very much.

Two activities outside of normal excavations took place at Non Nok Tha during the excavation. (First referred to by its number as Nam Phong 7, we changed this to Ban Na Di when we started the excavation. Only later did we discover that there was a local name for the mound itself and thereafter we called it by that name, Non Nok Tha, or “Partridge Mound”) We were visited by two geologists so that they could look at the soils of the site, and I did some experimentation in sampling the unexcavated portions of the site with a core soil sampler.

The two geologists were H. Sawata, on ECAFE staff with the Mekong Valley Project, and Michael N. Alekseev, a visiting Russian geologist with an interest in tropical soils. They were able to be Way from Bangkok for only one weekend. Because of the bad roads (the Friendship Highway was not totally completed and the road from Khon Kaen was not well graded) and a Bangkok driver who did not know how to cope with washboard roads, they only had two hours at the site. We had excavated a special trench for them so that the soil in the wall would not be sunbaked before they examined it. I quote their brief report sent in a letter dated February 2, 1966: As the time of our stay at your excavation site a Bang Nodi [sic] was very short, we could not examine in detail the geologic conditions of the excavated profile. However, our observation at that time was that there are two layers of soil (upper is recent and lower is buried), which are separated by thin (10 cm or less thick) bed of slightly rewashed material. This bed, apparently, would be corresponding to some interruption in disposition and formation of soil [see P1. 1a]. The soils are considered to be related with the Swamp area in this origin as shown by their change in color form red to gray, and probably the rainy and dry seasons interchanged as the filled desiccation fissures suggest.

The excavation, when the geologists were at the site, was only well down into the third soil so they did not see the total soil profile. While they did not mention it near in their report, Alekseev, while at the site, remarked that the main (lower) soil looked like a tropical podzol and that more research was needed on this type of soil in tropical areas. We are indebted to Sawata and Alekseev for their observations and thank them very much.

Late in the first season’s field survey (mid-1964), Gorman and I began to feel that a tool for bringing an undisturbed core would be very useful in locating open sites and in working out the horizontal and vertical extent of a site. Late in 1964 I received a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research for purchase and shipment of such a kit to Bangkok. I thank the Wenner-Gran Foundation for this assistance. The kit, from the Acker Drill Company, arrived in Bangkok in April 1965, but I was unable to remove it from the customs warehouse underway Christmas Eve, 1965. Excavation of Non Nok Tha was well underway when I brought the kit to the field in January 1966.

The first two cores extracted brought to light several problems in the use of the tools. But they also demonstrated that undisturbed cores could be used to extend the stratigraphy known from excavation to some distance beyond that are being excavated.

13

The major problem with the corer was its propensity for making a slight compaction of the soil so that it became almost impossible to extract the core from the sleeve into which it had been forced without breaking the core into little pieces. The soil in Non Nok Tha is clayey, and during the dry season it becomes extremely hard. If you drive the corer in too far so that the soil starts to push against the end of the tube, it compacts the already very hard soil and the core is most difficult to remove from the liner. A split liner probably would have solved this problem, but we did not have one of these.

With these tools and the hard Non Nok Tha soil, I was able to extract in three days of work only five reasonably undisturbed cores that extended into sterile soil. Examination of these cores enabled Parker to extend a generalized stratigraphy well beyond the limit of the excavation in two directions. We took no further cores.

We now had only the month of May, depending on when the rains started (we already had two or three rather heavy rains at Non Nok Tha that had done some damage), to make two excavations for which we had planned to use two months each. I decided that we should split up with Bayard in charge of the excavation at Ban Sao Lao (Pen Post Village) and Parker the excavation at Phimai. We therefore first moved directly to Ban Sao Lao (Lam Pao 3; Solheim and Gorman 1966:132-158) and helped Bayard get started on April 29 after which Parker and I returned to Phimai. I include here Bayard’s preliminary report on the Ban Sao Lao excavation (Solheim. Parker, and Bayard 1966); the materials recovered from this site have been published (Bayard 1977:93-96).

Excavation at Ban Sao Lao, Satsakhan, KalasinDuring the 1965-1966 field season, the Program excavated a small site on the edge of the Lam Pao Reservoir, which is currently in the process of being filled. The site, designated Lam Pao 3, was tested in the spring of 1964 by Solheim and Chester F. Gorman. Results seemed productive enough to warrant further excavation, and it was decided to devote two weeks to a further testing of the site with an aim to: (a) obtain a wider picture of the stratigraphy encountered in the 1964 testing, and (b) procure a sufficient sample of the pottery from the middle and lower levels to make analysis possible.

Lam Pao 3 was excavated in the period from April 29 to May 14 by Donn T. Bayard, with the assistance of Thawee Uthaiwee, three students from Silapakon University, and four workmen brought from the excavation at Nam Phong 7 (Ban Na Di). The site itself is located about 300 m. northeast of the village schoolhouse (Rongrian Soem Sao Lao Witthaya); it is a low, oval-shaped mound about 300 m east-west by 100 m north-south. The edges of the mound are not clearly defined because the sides of the mound have been cut by rice terraces. An area between the two test squares excavated in 1964 was selected for excavation. Four 4 x 1 m trenches were laid out to form an “L”; the longer of the two sides was oriented to the north, the shorter to the west. Later a fifth 4 x 1 m trench was dug, extending the east-west section 5 m farther to the east in order to investigate further a low mound about 10 m in diameter located at the junction of the side of the original “L” (Fig. 1-6). All five trenches were excavated to the natural.

14

Fig. 1-6The 11 x 14 m sections thus obtained indicated that the area excavated was formerly on the edge of the large mound; some ten of the twenty-one layers distinguished were water-deposited bands of brownish to pinkish sand containing water worn potsherds, separated by thin, dark brown lines of weathered sandy soil. Some six of the layers (including the modern

ground surface) showed evidence of occupation in the form of eleven pits and postholes, as well as relatively extensive concentrations of sherds and charcoal. These layers, together with the sandy layers eroded from them, appear to define six occupational levels. An older seventh level is inferred from the presence of a few sherds and flecks of charcoal in several of the lower water-deposited sandy layers.

Although it is difficult to draw firm conclusions from the limited area excavated (24 m2), this portion of the large mound seems to have been located on the edge of any settlement in the area and was apparently used primarily as a work area during most of its history. A brief summary of the evidence encountered for each of the occupation levels follows:

I: No structural features were found, and only a limited number of water-deposited sherds were obtained from the lower sandy layers.

II: An occupation surface was present only in the southeastern corner of the site; this contained a fairly high concentration of potsherds and one pit. The sandy layers eroded from this layer also yielded a considerable quantity of pottery.

III: Occupation extended over a wider area of the southern and eastern portions of the site. The most striking structural feature encountered was a large bell-shaped pit some 130 cm wide at its bottom, narrowing to 110 cm near its top. The pit’s bottom was filled with charcoal, and pits of this type are still used in the area for making charcoal. Following its use for charcoal burning, this pit was used to deposit refuse on two separate occasions; large quantities of cow and/or buffalo bone were found. The upper part of this level yielded a sizeable amount of pottery, including a distinctive wide-mouthed jar some 40 cm in diameter.

IV: This level is separated by a thin brown weathering band from the levels above and below it, but it has similar pottery. Little structural evidence was encountered.

V: The dominant feature of this level was a dense layer of irregular lumps of baked clay extending over the southeastern and south-central portions of the site; the small mound at the junction of the two lines of trenches is largely the result of this clay deposit. The clay may be refuse from kiln located in the vicinity. In addition, this layer yielded much

15

charcoal, potsherds, and a cluster of badly rusted iron objects, some of which appear to be knife blades.

VI: (“premier”): Little pottery of structural evidence was encountered. The area was apparently cultivated in rice following this period and then abandoned some decades ago; the dikes of the rice field that cross the mound are still present and in fairly good order.

VII: (modern): Several pits and postholes were found, but very little pottery. The area is now in pasture and scrub brush.

A brief preliminary analysis of the sherds from the occupation layers and the layers eroded from them seems to indicate that levels I-V essentially represent a continuous occupation by a single culture. In levels I and II a reddish gray sand-and-fiber-tempered ware is the most common domestic pottery; in levels III, IV, and V this gradually gives way to a thicker black pottery tempered with fiber only and often coated with a whitish or pinkish slip. Both of these types are rare and almost certainly intrusive in the upper two levels, the pottery that seems essentially modern. A similar progression of types in the lower levels and replacement by modern wares in the upper levels seems to occur in the frequency of several varieties of imported earthenware and stoneware.

Two carbon samples, from levels II and III, have been submitted for dating this far. While it is hard to give an estimate for the age of the lower levels of the site, pieces of celadon and crudely made celadon imitations were found in level II, and it thus seems unlikely that the lowest levels in the site predate the Sukhothai period (see Bayard 1977a:96 for full discussion of the chronology). The two 14C dates from this site are: from E4, lower layer 10, 440±120 BP (Gak-990); and from E3, layer 7 pit bottom, 1600±80 BP (Gak-989). The few water deposited sherds found in the bottom level indicate that there is an earlier occupation elsewhere in the mound, probably toward the southeast as suggested by the distribution of artifacts in the second and third levels. The 14C date from level II, A.D. 1404 (1450) 1635, seems reasonable for that level considering the celadon sherds recovered. The date of A.D. 396 (440) 554 is unexpected for the bottom of the pit dug from level III. It may be that the charcoal was from heartwood of a large old tree, or it is possible that the sample was actually from the level of the bottom of the pit. In any case, while there may be prehistoric levels elsewhere on this site, none were located in the 1966 excavation.

Phimai ExcavationsPhimai is noted for having the largest Khmer ruins outside of Cambodia. With our headquarters in the Phimai Fine Arts Department compound and our laboratory there, we were in close contact with the people working on the restoration program of a portion of the Khmer ruins, underway at that time. In 1862 we realized that there was a distinctive black pottery that extended to a considerable depth underneath the Khmer (Solheim 1965). In 1965 the Fine Arts Department told us about a site in the northeast corner of Phimai where a quantity of this black pottery was being uncovered and expressed their interest in our making a small excavation there. We had visited the site several times before we started out excavation and made surface collections from an area where the town people were removing soil.

Parker started the excavation on May 9, 1966 and continued until May 30, by which time heavy rains were becoming fairly common. All collections from the excavation were

16

brought back to the University of Hawai`i. A preliminary report in the Phimai black pottery from this site appeared in 1979 (Solheim and Ayres 1979).

The month of June 1966 was spent in organizing the collections, rebagging, and packing for shipment to Hawai`i. There had already been some major damage to collections made during the 1964-1965 excavation season. Level and artifact collections we had first put into heavy plastic bags with paper labels. The plastic bags were in turn placed in paper bags made from heavy cement bag paper. Until the lab was completed, a number of boxes of these bags had been stored on a cement floor on our kitchen. When we unpacked these bags to put them in boxes, we found that termites had started in one corner of the temporary storage pile and invaded about six boxes. They had gone right through the paper sacks, riddled the heavy plastic bags, and in many cases eaten up the labels. Our salvage from these boxes amounted to 10 to 25% of the bags in each box. We completed the packing, shipped the bags down to a bonded warehouse in Bangkok, and made all arrangements for shipping the collections to Honolulu by the end of July 1966. This completed our three-year salvage field program in northeastern Thailand.

Progress of Research, September 1966 to June 1987The two large crates and one small crate of our collections were to have left Bangkok early in August 1966 directly to Hong Kong. There they were to be off-loaded and transferred to another freighter bound for Honolulu. I expected the shipment to arrive in Honolulu around the middle of September. I had a new grant from NSF (GS-956) to cover expenses for a year and half of research on the collections. I had positions for two half-time graduate research assistants and a photographer for this length of time and enough money left from the field grant to continue Bayard half time for two terms. With the term beginning around September 26 and the shipment expected about the 15th, it seemed logical to fill these positions starting the fall term of 1966, which I did with Madge L. Schwede and Wei-Lan Wu. In spite of several urgent letters of inquiry to the shippers in Bangkok, I received no word about the shipment until the end of January 1967-—about a week before it arrived. Without artifacts to work on, I had the two students putting in their twenty hours a week assembling a bibliography of Southeast Asian prehistory. I don’t know why I didn’t develop an ulcer.

The University if Hawai`i had turned over about half a temporary transit building for our lab. While there was a reasonable amount of space here for tables for washing, repairing, cataloging, measuring, and photographing, including a corner for a well-equipped, small darkroom, there was rather a little space for storage. The three crates were unloaded behind our lab, and one end of each was opened. Everything inside appeared to be in good condition. We quickly discovered that we didn’t have nearly enough storage room to unload even half of the smaller of the two large crates, so the crates themselves would have to serve as storage space. Rain and variable winds up to 50 km per hour are common in Manoa Valley where the university is situated. While the crates were solid, they were not waterproof. We covered the open ends with sheet plastic but these were quickly torn apart by the wind, and we discovered that the crates were leaking in other places. We then completely covered both of the large crates with a heavy sheet of plastic, and this appeared to keep out the rain.

By the time I left for Europe on sabbatical leave in August 1967, we had completed work on about two-thirds of the largest crate. The slightly smaller of the two large crates was removed to a university warehouse, and work continued after I left on the remaining

17

material in the largest crate. Unhappily, we found that there was some damage from water to a few of the boxes nest to the end we had opened, which had happened during the first few days before we put on the heavy plastic sheeting. This amounted to less than 10% of about six boxes; we were able to salvage most of the collections from destroyed bags through partial information that we could make out on the labels and our bag lists.

The great majority of our materials from Non Nok Tha were of two different sorts: either from burials or more rarely other kinds of features, or the non-feature contents of a layer. By far the most common item from the burials and other features was pottery, as was the case with the layer contents. The burial and feature pottery, however, was either whole or from considerably restorable vessels, while the layer pottery was sherds with relatively few that fit together. Many of the burial and feature vessels were packed in the field with their soil contents and brought to Hawai`i in this condition. While at Phimai we had tried to pack in such a way that when we unpacked in Hawai`i, everything would come out in order. Naturally enough, in packing the crates in Bangkok the boxes were all mixed up. Without a great amount of storage space in our lab to sort the boxes, we had to deal with each box as it came from the crates. We did do a bit of sorting so that we worked with the burial and feature pottery first, saving the layer bags for last.

Our order of procedure was to unpack a box, sort out any layer bags, and then work with a pot at a time. The person working with the pot would remove the soil carefully to save any sherds, bones, or artifacts in the pot, wash the potsherds, after drying glue them together with a water soluble glue (so that we could later take them apart for returning to the National Museum in Thailand), catalog it, measure, and describe it. The vessel was then drawn and photographed. My first photographer was Bruce Erickson, followed later by Peter Gilpin. All the data on the vessel were then put on a 5” x 8” McBee card. The source of the vessel, measurements, and elements of form and surface treatment were punched in around the edge of the card, a description put on the face of the card, and a contact print of the vessel glued in one corner. While the McBee cards have been useful, this method of data storage was discontinued after about seven hundred cards had been completed because it was taking so much time. Smaller source and descriptive data were also put on IBM cards for each vessel, and later for each layer bag. (This was obviously before small computers came into use.)

Bayard received an NSF grant (GS-1877) in support of his Ph.D. thesis research. In January 1968, he returned to Thailand to make a second excavation at Non Nok Tha to concentrate on the earlier levels of the site that we had been unable to treat adequately in our 1966 rush to close down. After the 1965-1966 season with us, Parker had returned to New Zealand and joined the staff of the Anthropology Department of Otago University. Charles Higham became the Foundation Professor of that department and a made a decision that the department would include Southeast Asian prehistory as one of its special interests. Parker returned to Thailand in 1967 and 1968 with the British Commonwealth Expedition, led by William Watson, which was working primarily in central Thailand. They did include a brief further test of NP 6 but decided not to excavate there.

I returned to Hawai`i from my sabbatical year in August 1968 to find an improvement in our lab situation. In the spring of 1968 Tom Maretzki, the Chairman of the Department of Anthropology, had been able to get a second half-Quonset building for archaeology and all of the Thailand materials from our first lab had been moved, making the first lab available for Hawaiian archaeology (and also mixing up what had been organized in our first lab).

18

We could not move in the rest of the 1964-1966 collections still stored in the university warehouse, however, as the collections made by Bayard were on their way to Honolulu and we had to keep the space available so that they could all be unpacked and brought in as soon as they arrived. His collections, also greatly delayed, arrived in March 1969. During the university teaching year, we had a number of volunteers from the Anthropology 210 (Beginning Archaeology) and Anthropology 460 (Regional Archaeology: East Asia and the Pacific) courses, plus graduate seminar students, who worked with us on the Thai materials. With the return of Bayard’s collection, all of these resources were brought to bear on his materials, and the processing of the earlier collections slowed down to a trickle.

The intention to collaborate on Thai prehistoric research between the Anthropology Departments of the University if Hawai`i and Otago continued to develop. In October 1968 I went to New Zealand as a guest of the department in Otago University, where we made specific plans to start a joint program in the fall of 1969. I submitted a proposal the National Science Foundation for a continuation of the Mekong salvage program in areas of Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia that we had not yet surveyed. For this project we also applied to the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Breezewood Foundation for moderate funds. The NSF indicated firmly that they would no longer support salvage archaeology projects, and that proposal was turned down. I had included in that proposal, however, a request for further funds to support work in the Non Nok Tha collections at Honolulu that were not yet processed, and this portion of the proposal was approved (GS-2659).

The Anthropology Department of Otago University, to further strengthen its program in Southeast Asian prehistory, invited Bayard to join their staff, and they wanted him there to start the first term in February 1970. This did not give him nearly enough time to process his complete collection. As we had concentrated on processing the burials from our 1965-1966 excavations, he decided to analyze the layer bag materials first and then do what he could with the burial pottery in the time left. While he did a good start on the burials, he had to leave most of the burial vessels unfinished when he left for Otago University. He completed his Ph.D. thesis on Non Nok Tha, using the materials he had been able to process and his excavation data, in 1971 (Bayard 1971a). A report on this work was published in the same year (Bayard 1971b). The final report on his 1968 excavation and its stratigraphy, revised from his thesis and the published report, is presented in this volume as Chapter 4.

The Otago team went to Thailand in November 1969, even though lacking the major portion of the funds that had been requested in the NSF proposal. The primary reservoir survey they had intended to make became impossible immediately after their arrival in Thailand: Terrorist activity was prevalent in this area for the first time. They changed their plans and made surveys and excavations in the Roi Et area and inside the outer ring wall of Phu Wiang (Hingham and Parker 1970). One of our undergraduate students who graduated in December 1969, Mei Mei Burke, joined this project in January 1970.

Phu Wiang is a large saucer-shaped sandstone monadnock that lies to the west and south of Non Nok Tha. Fig. 1-2, Plate 1c The 1970 survey confirmed our suspicions that sites inside this formation are closely related to and probably completely overlap Non Nok Tha in time. One or two of the sites may fill in the long gap that we have at Non Nok Tha from the late first millennium B.C. to A.D. 1000-1200. Non Nok Tha, as well as NP 6 and NP 8, are physically dominated by the abrupt rise of the outer side of Phu Wiang and are clearly

19

part of what can be called the Phu Wiang region. We decided to try to organize a long-term program inside Phu Wiang to develop a detailed local sequence of cultures in a relatively small and sharply bounded area that included all of the ecological zoned of which we were aware on the Khorat Plateau.

It is an ideal situation in all ways. Unfortunately, Phu Wiang was included in the development plans for the Pa Mong Reservoir, a large reservoir resulting from a dam of the main course of the Mekong. Because of its saucer shape and the narrow gap through which it is drained, it would be easy to dam this gap and make the whole formation into an auxiliary reservoir for the Pa Mong Reservoir. In my proposal to the NSF for our Phu Wiang program, I made the mistake of mentioning the salvage nature of the project. As it turned out, neither the Pa Mong Dam nor most other planned subsidiary dams have yet been built. (The formation would not have been turned into a reservoir until at least ten years after the Pa Mong dam was completed.) This project was rejected, at least partly because it was considered a salvage project. It is obviously important, however, to present Non Nok Tha in regional context; therefore, Chapter 2 of this volume presents a description of the Phu Wiang region as a whole.

In August 1969 we moved into new quarters where we had much more room than before. (Unfortunately I was again not present when this move was made, so further mix-up of the collections resulted.) Most if the materials on which we had completed work had been returned to the National Museum in Thailand. After the remaining unworked collections had been moved from our Quonset lab to our new quarters, we still had plenty of room left. Thus we were finally able to unpack the smaller of the two large crates that had been sitting in the warehouse for the previous two years. Many of the boxes in this circle were in poor condition. Apparently this crate had also taken in some rain before we had completely covered it with the heavy plastic. Fortunately there was very little in this crate from Non Nok Tha. In fact, quite a bit of it was material on which we had completed work in Thailand that was supposed to have been left in Phimai but had mistakenly been packed with the unanalyzed materials and sent to Hawai`i.

With the new grant from NSF in 1970, I was again able to hire two half-time graduate assistants. For shorter or longer periods for the nest three and a half years, Jean Kennedy, Ned Ewert, Bertel Davis, and Takeshi Ueki held these positions. In addition, Ragnar Schousboe carried out the assembly and computer coding of a large number of 1968 burial vessels, and Earl Neller voluntarily did considerable photographic work for me. Davis continued doing photography and the work he was doing as a graduate assistant long after the grant funds were used up.

It was not until late 1973 that I realized how much burial material from the 1968 excavation was left to do. I could see that if we completed our analysis of the 1965-1966 collections, we would not even be able to start work on this other material for several years. In correspondence with Bayard, Parker and Higham at Otago University, we tried to locate funds to send this material to them, but we were unsuccessful. We reluctantly decided that, rather than delay the final report for another several years while I completer the work on the 1068 material with only what voluntary labor I could find, we could send it back to Thailand unprocessed and not include it in our final report. We had complete coverage of the burial materials from the 1965-1966 excavations and would have had complete coverage of the layer bags for both excavations (if our plans had been carried out), plus a

20

scattering of the burial data from 1968, so we felt that we would not be doing major damage to the final site report.

During the spring term of 1974 I had students in one class completely process one vessel each of the 1968 burial pottery to acquaint them with earthenware pottery. They didn’t all complete their pots, so in the summer my wife and I completed them. Previously the soil inside the jars had been removed and examined quickly for micro-remains. After completing the pots started by the class, my wife Ludy decided that she wanted to do a few more. She has had no archaeological training, but after hearing some of us talking about screening and flotation of soil to find seeds and other botanical remains, she decided to examine the soil of a pot by putting it through a very fine screen in water and then carefully going over the material that was too coarse to pass through the screen. In the first pot she examined, she found what appeared to be a rice grain and several other possible seeds, as well as some very small bones, probably from fish. Nothing like this had been recovered from any of the other several hundred vessels from which the soil had been examined, except for one pepper seed and one rice grain from a much later pot. This first pot she water-screened was from a burial dug from the bottom layer of the 1968 excavation, and thus, it was the oldest rice grain we had.

She then went ahead and did some ten more jars finding more possible seeds and bones. In one jar, also from a bottom (Early Period or EP 1) 1968 layer burial, she found two small nodules that appeared to be bronze. If these were bronze, this would mean that bronze was present-—and probably being cast-—from the beginning of the site instead of the third level from the bottom (EP 3). The nodules and a sherd from the jar were, for safety, hand carried to a mainland laboratory for examination and thermo-luminescence (TL) dating. Unfortunately, the two nodules and the sherd disappeared (see Chapter 7 for a full discussion). The twenty or so vessels that we had gone over that spring and summer included variant forms that I had not seen before. The new data that we had recovered from these few vessels forced me to reconsider my decision made earlier. We would have to delay our final report for several more years to that we could include the full data from the 1968 burials.

During the spring of 1975, I was close to completing a first draft of this volume of the final report. Instead of using my sabbatical year of 1975-1976 to work on the final report, I gave in to my twenty years intention of making an archaeological survey of coastal Irian Jaya. As a result, not only was this first volume not completed, but also work on the undescribed portions of the Thailand collections came to a halt. During my absence a major portion of the completed collections were packed and shipped back to the National Museum in Thailand by Bert Davis, and the rest of the collection was reorganized in the process of redistributing our departmental laboratory space (considerably more mix-up of the collection predictably resulted).

With several moderate-sized grants from the University of Hawai`i Research Council, work was resumed and continued, primarily on the 1968 burial pottery. During the summer of 1980, Bayard, on sabbatical leave from the university of Otago, spent five months in Hawai`i completing the measurements and description of the burial pottery and some of the miscellaneous finds that had been put aside until the last. During the spring 1981 term, two graduate students, Somsuda Rutnin and Diane Trembley, made detailed descriptions of some of the remaining miscellaneous finds and wrote reports on this material for a research seminar, and with two other much appreciated and needed University of Hawai`i

21

research grants, Gilpin completed much of the photographic work while Judy McNeil, with the assistance of Jack Morin, two more or my graduate students, made drawings and attended to the other loose ends.

Further grants from the University of Hawai`i have resulted in more drawings and photographs for the final report, while Bayard and drafting staff at the University of Otago have put in many hours of analysis, illustration, and writing on pottery and burials since the late 1960s. In Hawai`i, Virgil Meeker has been doing volunteer work for close to twenty years, first on reconstruction of pottery vessels and then from 1985 on the organization of the non-pottery materials for final description. Lately he has worked with us on its analysis. Bayard again came to Hawai`i for eleven weeks during the northern summer of 1987 to work with me. From May to August 1982 he had written the ceramics and bronze chapters. While in Hawai`i, from September 1987 to January 1988, he wrote the burials, chronology, and conclusions sections. Although not all of the 1966 excavation level bags have been analyzed, we reluctantly decided to go ahead with the write-up and publication of the final report without delaying further. With the 1968 level bags totally covered and many of the 1966 level bags completed (together comprising over 90% of the site total), we felt that we could move ahead without great damage to our conclusions.

A former undergraduate anthropology major at the University of Hawai`i and then graduate student at the University of Michigan, William K. Macdonald, used our pottery data for his Ph.D. thesis at Michigan. Macdonald, Bayard, and (to a lesser degree) I were in correspondence for several years on this matter with enrichment resulting for all concerned. Macdonald’s results are discussed in Chapter 6; see also Macdonald 1980.

The early bronze at Non Nok Tha has been a subject of great interest to many, and numerous papers specifically on the bronze have been published. This is discussed in detail in Chapter 7 so I will not go into it here.

The early dates for bronze use and manufacture suggested for Non Nok Tha have naturally led to controversy, particularly because the dates do not present a clear chronology for the site or for the bronze recovered from the site (Loofs-Wissowa 1983; Bayard and Charoenwongsa 1983; Solheim 1983; Higham 1984a-b; Bayard 1984a-b, 1987). A full discussion of the site chronology and the development of the controversy are presented in Chapter 5.

Final Report on Non Nok Tha — 1987-1993There have been several changes in our planned organization of the final report on Non Nok Tha. While more and more archaeological research is being done in the world today, I have the impression that, with the outstanding exception of Higham’s commendable final reports on Thailand sites that have been excavated under his cooperative direction with Thai archaeologists, fewer and fewer final reports are being published and many of these reports include much summarization. Because of the cost of publication it has become impossible to publish the data fully without either a very large subsidy or an extremely expensive publication, or both. With expensive publications, only a few libraries and a very few individuals can afford the reports; they should be available to a considerably wider, though still rather small audience. With this in mind, and in consultation with the University of Hawai`i Press Editorial staff, we decided that we wanted our final report to include all the data available, with a large number of illustrations. When accepted for publication, we

22

would seek subsidation so that those people and libraries that should have these data available would be able to afford to buy the report.

When Bayard returned to Otago in 1987, we hoped to have the report completed and ready to submit to the University of Hawai`i Press in early 1988 for possible publication. Bayard had his part competed in January 1988, but I was far from completing my small part.

I had intended to retire at the end of the spring term in 1990 so that I could put full time into completing the report, but in negotiating my retirement plans with the Chairman of the Anthropology Department and the Dean of Social Sciences, I found they were willing to let me have one more sabbatical leave and retire at the end of the year following my return from sabbatical. As a result, I didn’t get back to completing my portion of Chapter 7 until my return from sabbatical in January 1991. The completed text was turned over to the University of Hawai`i Press in June 1991 for review. Most of what remained to be done at this point was to complete any missing illustrations, of which there were several. I would like to thank Jo Singer and Conrad Iger for their help with the photography, Hemantha Jayatilake from Sri Lanka and my stepson Ed Solheim for their drawings and Ed for his final computer preparation of the illustrations, and Virgil Meeker for all the help he has given in getting not only the illustrations but the entire final report ready for publication.

Because very few people are acquainted with northeastern Thailand, it took quite some time to find reviewers, but it was finally approved for publication late in 1991 and a Memorandum of Agreement for publication was signed on February 27, 1992. Everything was ready to go.

It is extremely embarrassing to again have to explain why this did not come out in late 1992. After having spent close to $1,500,000.00 in various grants from many different sources to undertake the fieldwork, description and analysis of the collections and complete the text and illustrations we felt it would not be a problem to find the needed smalls subsidy to start publication of the final report. It turned out that this was not so. All sources we could think of were approached, but no funds were forthcoming.

At the end of the millennium, we explained to the Editor of the University of Hawaii Press that we had not been able to find a subsidy to publish the final report. On January 9th, 2001 William H. Hamilton, the Director of the Press, sent the following document stating: The University of Hawai`i Press hereby returns to you all the fights granted to the Press through the Publishing Agreement dated February 27, 1992, for the unpublished work entitled Archaeological Excavations at Non Nok Tha, Northeastern Thailand, 1966-1968… Bill has indicated that you would now like to pursue publication opportunities with a Thai publisher who has expressed interest. We agree that it would be in the best of interests of the project for us to withdraw our interest at this time.” We here express out profound appreciation to the University of Hawaii Press for their understanding support of this project, its Director and Pam Kelley the editor in charge of seeing this volume through to publication, contributing hundreds of hours of time and major funding to produce the copyedited manuscript which was turned over to Bill Solheim in June 2001.

I picked up the two heavy boxes containing the manuscript and illustrations in early September 2001 to hand carry back to the Philippines, where I am now living. I am making a final proofreading before sending the manuscript on to Pisit Charoenwongsa, Director of SPAFA (SEAMEO Project in Archaeology and Fine Arts) and a close and valued friend.

23

With this help we hope to get a grant in Thailand to finally have this published at a reasonable price. Our intention is to publish a second volume that will present more detailed data. This will include the burials and their contents; the levels and their contents; the human skeletal remains as analyzed by Michael Pietrusewsky and Sheilagh T. Brooks; the funeral remains, both associated with burials and from the levels, by Charles Higham; and chemical soil analysis by Mary Nelson.

I would like to thank the Fine Arts Department of Thailand and its several Director Generals since we started our program for their great patience in waiting for out completion of the work on the collections, Bayard’s subsequent excavation at Non Nok Tha and the ultimate return of the artifacts to the National Museum of Thailand. I hope when the final report has appeared that they will feel that their patience has been rewarded. Our particular appreciation is due to Achan Chin You-di without whose support and continuing assistance over many years it is likely this work would never have been done, at least by us.

We are very sorry that this could not have come out in time for him to have had the chance to read it. We thank those people named above for the illustrations, research and reports on this research which we have used and many officials of the Fine Arts Department of Thailand, Thai Government officials, Thai students and students of the Universities of Hawaii and Otago who have helped us in many ways. We are indebted to the hospitality of the Thai in whose homes and villages we have stayed, to our Thai workmen at the many different sites and areas where we have worked, and we are very much in debt to Thawee Uthaiwee who became our foreman during the first year’s excavation at Non Nok Tha. His good humor, ready smile, and constant assistance have been memorable (P1. 1c).