THAILAND
TIMELINE
1. Early flexed burials: 1750-1050 BC
Probably a community of hunter-gatherers.
2. Neolithic 1:
3. Neolithic 2:
4. Bronze Age 1:
5. Bronze Age 2:
6. Bronze Age 3:
7. Bronze Age 4:
8. Bronze Age 5:
9. Iron Age 1:
10. Iron Age 2:
1650-1250 BC The first rice farmers who settled Ban Non Wat.
1250-1050 BC A second Neolithic community with distinct ceramic styles and mortuary rituals.
1050-1000 BC Five rich deep burials each with a socketed bronze axe.
1000-900 BC
The elite superburials.
900-800 BC
A second group of immensely wealthy individuals.
800-700 BC
The burials now become distinctly poorer.
700-420 BC
The last Bronze Age period saw one burial of a bronze caster, many people buried with spindle whorls.
420-100 BC
The first use of iron, glass, carnelian and agate ornaments.
200 BC- AD 200 Wealthy Iron Age individuals, some gold jewellery,
carnelian and agate.
All dates calibrated
BELOW LEFT The team realised that they had found something special when burial 20 was uncovered, fully 5m long and filled with superb pottery vessels.
BELOW One year after finding burial 20, the archaeologists uncovered the complete grave, which covered an area of 5 by 3.5m, and contained the partially exhumed remains of an older man. He was immensely rich in terms of grave offerings, including thousands of shell beads, bangles and a bronze axe. Mineralised wood allowed the coffin to be traced a Neolithic cemetery. I thought then that we were virtually finished, as we were uncovering the yellow sandy natural substrate. But then we traced round the complete, red rim of a large ceramic vessel. A red rim in this region means Bronze Age. Then there was another, and a third. We meticulously scraped the surface of the natural, and there emerged the faint line of disturbed fill. It was the silhouette of a grave. We traced its line, uncovering yet more vessels, until we reached the southern edge of our square. Already the burial was over 2m long. Then came another surprise. We found human long bones not articulated, but in a neat stack, supporting, half in and half out of the square, a human skull with its eyes facing the rising sun. It was now decision time: should we stop for the season, or take out another square to excavate the complete burial. I decided to extend, and a fortnight later, we had before us a grave 5m long, containing at least 20 unusually large and fine pots, and just part of a human skeleton in proper anatomical position beside the elevated skull and replaced limb bones. Yet there was more concealed to the east, for we had not yet completed the circuit of the grave cut. We had to wait then for a year before returning for the second season. When we finally uncovered the complete superburial, as we had come to call this grave, we found that it measured 5m by 3.5m, with a second skeleton occupying the central position. This man had been interred in a wooden coffin surrounded by rows of ceramic vessels. But he, too, had been partially exhumed after burial: we could see the axe marks above his knees and at his neck where his body had been uplifted, leaving in place only his head and lower legs. The bones had then been replaced, interspersed with thousands of shell beads, many fragments of broken shell bangles and a fine marble bangle. A bronze socketed axe lay between his ankles.
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