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Established chronologies indicate a long-term ‘Hoabinhian’ hunter-gatherer occupation of Mainland Southeast Asia during the Terminal Pleistocene to Mid-Holocene (45 000–3000 years ago). Here, the authors re-examine the ‘Hoabinhian’ sequence from north-west Thailand using new radiocarbon and luminescence data from Spirit Cave, Steep Cliff Cave and Banyan Valley Cave. The results indicate that hunter-gatherers exploited this ecologically diverse region throughout the Terminal Pleistocene and the Pleistocene–Holocene transition, and into the period during which agricultural lifeways emerged in the Holocene. Hunter-gatherers did not abandon this highland region of Thailand during periods of environmental and socioeconomic change.

Creating a facial appearance for individuals from the distant past is often highly problematic, even when verified methods are used. This is especially so in the case of non-European individuals, as the reference populations used to estimate the face tend to be heavily biased towards the average facial variation of recent people of European descent. To evaluate the problem, a facial approximation of a young woman from the Late Pleistocene rockshelter of Tham Lod in north-western Thailand was compared against the average facial variation of datasets from recent populations. The analysis indicated that the Tham Lod facial approximation was neither overtly recent in facial morphology, nor overtly European. The case is of particular interest as the Tham Lod individual probably belonged to a population ancestral to extant Australo-Melanesian peoples.