A Preliminary Analysis of Ban Chiang Painted Pottery, Northeast Thailand
Penelope van Esterik · ScholarSpace (University of Hawaii at Manoa) · 1974
HE DISCOVERY of a new ceramic complex can upset conventional ideas about the culture history of an area.The red-on-buff painted pottery of northeastern Thailand provides an opportunity to reevaluate assumptions of cultural development in Southeast Asia.This striking pottery is characteristic of the early bronze-using cultures of Northeast Thailand, and is represented at the sites of Non Nok Tha, Ban Chiang, and Non Ban Kho (Bayard 1971: 36), as well as at other sites in the area that have not yet been reported.The excavated sample in the hands of professional archaeologists is not large, nor has much detailed analysis of this pottery been published.Although the red-on-buff ware is not the only ware at Non Nok Tha, it is associated with the layers containing the early bronze, stratigraphic layers 20 and 21 (according to Bayard's excavation, cultural level 3).Several vessels and assorted sherds are similar to the ware from Ban Chiang, a cemetery site northeast of Non Nok Tha.This site, first excavated by Vidya Intakosai in 1967, and then by other archaeologists from the Thai Fine Arts Department whose work is still in progress, is the richest source of this painted ware.The Applied Science Center for Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania Museum recently ran a series of thermoluminescence tests on sherds from Ban Chiang; the following results were reported (Bronson and Han 1972: 323): sample 104 sample 271 sample 273 surface?70-80 cm 130 em