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12  d  Vulcan Skilled Village Craftsman of Ban Chiang, Thailand Michele Toomay Douglas and Michael Pietrusewsky Individual Profile Site: Ban Chiang Location: Udon Thani Province, northeast Thailand Cultural Affiliation: Ban Chiang Cultural Tradition Date: Upper Early Period Burial Phase V, ca. 1700–900 B.C. (14C on rice temper) Feature: BC Burial 23 Location of Grave: Square C5, south quadrants, layer 11, Distance Below Datum Point 1.73 m (skull), orientation northwest 322° Burial and Grave Type: Supine, extended primary inhumation Associated Materials: Ceramic pot; four bronze bangles around the left forearm; cache of 30 small clay pellets; socketed bronze adze head Preservation and Completeness: Good to excellent preservation, but only one limb bone is complete; portions of the face and the right temporal bone missing, as are most of the right femur, most of both fibulae, and parts of both feet; left ulna and radius exhibit a greenish stain from the copper-base bangles; slight green-blue staining on the labial enamel of the maxillary canines and incisors Age at Death and Basis of Estimate: 45–50 years, based on auricular surface morphology, dental wear, cranial suture fusion Sex and Basis of Determination: Male, based on cranial and os coxae morphologies Conditions Observed: Healed coarse porosity of the superior cranial vault; dental wear to the pulp on molars and maxillary incisors, dentin exposure in remaining teeth; enamel hypoplasias; slight to moderate calculus; reactive bone growth on internal borders of left lower ribs; osseous lesions in right glenoid fossa, right first proximal hand phalanx, and right fourth metatarsal Specialized Analysis: Carbon and nitrogen isotopes from bone apatite and collagen; oxygen, carbon, and strontium isotopes from tooth dentin; radiographs of cranium, left ribs, left scapula, and humeral head, right first proximal hand phalanx, left tibia Excavated: 1974 by the University of Pennsylvania Museum and the Thai Fine Arts Department, under the direction of Chester Gorman and Pisit Charoenwongsa Archaeological Report: Gorman and Charoenwongsa 1976 (original chronology); White 1982, 1986 (revised chronology) Current Disposition: On loan to and curated by the Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai’i–Mānoa 177 178 · Michele Toomay Douglas and Michael Pietrusewsky The history of the Ban Chiang project and the story of this collaborative archaeological excavation, one of the first in Southeast Asia, are vital to understanding the site, each of the individuals buried there, and their contributions to the prehistory of the region. The osteobiography of Vulcan documents a talented member of an ancient society and reflects a culture in transition. The predominant issues in archaeological research in Southeast Asia include the historical and biological relationships of the inhabitants, origins of intensified wet-rice agriculture, and origins of complex societies. All of these issues center around two models—the agricultural expansion theory, which proposes that colonizing immigrants brought agriculture to the indigenous people (e.g., Bayard 1996; Higham 1996; Bellwood 2005), and the continuity model, which posits that the ideas for agriculture originated or were adopted in situ (e.g., Bulbeck 1982; Hanihara 1993; Pietrusewsky 2006). These issues and models evolved from early archaeological excavations in Thailand, including Ban Kao, Non Nok Tha, and Ban Chiang (Higham 1989). Ban Chiang is a modern village on the Khorat Plateau in Udon Thani Province , northeastern Thailand, which came to international attention in the early 1970s when looting revealed a heretofore unknown rich cultural prehistory beneath the village (White 1982). The joint program of the University of Pennsylvania and the Thai Fine Arts Department first excavated in 1974 in the yard of a private home, a locale named “BC” (figure 12.1), which had minimal disturbance from looters (Gorman and Charoengwasa 1976). The second excavation, in 1975, was conducted in the middle of a road (soi in Thai). The prehistoric deposits at this site, designated Ban Chiang Eastern Soi, or BCES, were relatively undisturbed by looting. The beautiful red-on-buff pottery found at Ban Chiang and evidence of early metallurgy moved the region from a “cultural backwater” to the frontline of investigations on the origins and dissemination of rice agriculture and metallurgy. However, the untimely and unfortunate death of Chester Gorman in 1981 temporarily stopped the project. Physical anthropologist Michael Pietrusewsky (1980) was the only participant to complete his analysis. Subsequently, Joyce White took up the enormous task of analysis, reporting, and fund-raising for this important archaeological site (White 1986, 1988, 1990, 2008). The Ban Chiang Project has led to much valuable research on topics such as biological distance relationships in skeletal populations from Southeast...

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