ABOVE Burials 105 and 106 were found within one large grave. One of the women had been partially exhumed, before the bones were carefully replaced. She was accompanied by a bronze axe. The other woman lay intact.
BELOW The woman in burial 105 wore 24 exotic marine shell earrings.
Rich revelations This is the sort of discovery that encouraged my team to return for six more seasons, and in due course, to open a uniquely large area of such a settlement. Our second superburial soon came. This time, it contained the remains of two women, one of whom had been partially exhumed and replaced. She too was accompanied by a socketed bronze axe, and in a bizarre twist, a rat had been buried beside her left ankle, under a clay pellet bow of the sort still used to hunt small birds and animals. The second woman lay undisturbed, so we could uncover her belts of shell beads, and many strands of shell bead necklaces. We prised away the soil from 12 shell earrings before afternoon tea, and then a matching set on the other side of her skull after. Her lower arms were covered in massive tridacna shell bangles.
During our last three seasons, the superburials came thick and fast. One row contained infants, each in graves far too large for the tiny body, but filled with offerings. A red painted design on one vessel turned out to be a stylised human face. Even infants were buried with bronze axes. One man in this group had three bronze axes, one of which was a miniature. A second man had a set of what look like carpenters’ tools in bronze, including an awl and chisels to complement his two axes. In this part of the world, bells were thought to belong to the Iron Age, but we came across the grave of an infant who wore 30 bronze bells attached to its anklets.
Further to the east came another row of graves. Mineralised wood and a straight line of clay revealed that these men, women and children had lain in coffins, beside which their pots had been placed in straight lines, while clusters of pots were found beyond the head and feet. Some infants were found in this group within pots embellished with sophisticated curvilinear painted patterns. Two giant graves lay to the north. One man had again been partially disinterred and replaced. When I closely examined his ceramic vessels, I saw faint red painted lines. My Thai colleague Dr Warrachai Wiriyaromp reconstructed these patterns and painted reconstructions of each vessel. Over a thousand years earlier than the widely publicised Iron Age painted pots found at the site of Ban Chiang, these are remarkable examples of early Southeast Asian art. Again we sought the tell-tale signs of a grave cut seen in changes in soil colour and texture and, in February 2007, came across the longest grave of all, so long that I couldn’t photograph it all in one image without a wide angle lens.
The drama of the Bronze Age By assessing the positioning of these early Bronze Age aristocrats, I was able to identify three distinct phases of burial, which I have termed Bronze Age 1, 2 and 3. There are five graves in the earliest, all contain a distinctive form of socketed bronze axe, and pots that are slightly evolved from the local latest Neolithic. Dramatically, with the Bronze Age came much more elaborate burial rituals. One of our early five was interred in a very deep grave, within a
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C U R R E N TW O R L DA R C H A E O L O G Y . Issue 35