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In prehistoric coastal and western-central Thailand, rice was the dominant cultivar. In eastern-central Thailand, however, the first known farmers cultivated millet. Using one of the largest collections of archaeobotanical material in Southeast Asia, this article examines how cropping systems were adapted as domesticates were introduced into eastern-central Thailand. The authors argue that millet reached the region first, to be progressively replaced by rice, possibly due to climatic pressures. But despite the increasing importance of rice, dryland, rain-fed cultivation persisted throughout ancient central Thailand, a result that contributes to refining understanding of the development of farming in Southeast Asia. Keywords: Thailand, Southeast Asia, prehistory, millet, rice, spread of agriculture, Introduction The 'Two Layer Hypothesis' in Southeast Asia describes the expansion of farming communities southward from East Asian centres of rice and millet domestication into a region occupied for millennia [...] more...

The Khao Wong Pinchan Valley of central Thailand is one of four known prehistoric loci of copper mining, smelting and casting in Southeast Asia. Many radiocarbon determinations from bronze-consumption sites in north-east Thailand date the earliest copper-base metallurgy there in the late second millennium BC. By applying kernel density estimation analysis to approximately 100 new AMS radiocarbon dates, the authors conclude that the valley's first Neolithic millet farmers had settled there by c. 2000 BC, and initial copper mining and rudimentary smelting began in the late second millennium BC. This overlaps with the established dates for Southeast Asian metal-consumption sites, and provides an important new insight into the development of metallurgy in central Thailand and beyond. Keywords: Southeast Asia, Thailand, Neolithic, Bronze Age, copper-base metallurgy, kernel density estimate modelling, Introduction Current evidence from across much of prehistoric Eurasia suggests that copper-base metallurgy was in place by the fourth millennium BC, prior to the eastward transmission of tin-bronze technology during [...] more...

The authors reconsider the origins of metallurgy in the Old World and offer us a new model in which metallurgy began in c. eleventh/ninth millennium BC in Southwest Asia due to a desire to adorn the human body in life and death using colourful ores and naturally-occurring metals. In the early sixth millennium BC the techniques of smelting were developed to produce lead, copper, copper alloys and eventually silver. The authors come down firmly on the side of single invention, seeing the subsequent cultural transmission of the technology as led by groups of metalworkers following in the wake of exotic objects in metal. Keywords: Eurasia, copper, gold, silver, transmission, mobility, craftspeople, Introduction Modern debates regarding the spread of metal use in Eurasia can be traced to the work of Theodore Wertime (1964, 1973), who argued that the expertise required to smelt [...] more...

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