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2007-1024 - Science Daily - Filling In The Blanks Of Southeast
Asian Prehistory

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071024152622.htm

Science Daily

Filling In The Blanks Of Southeast Asian Prehistory

Top: The test excavation at Phou Phaa Khao rockshelter near
Luang Prabang, Laos conducted by the University of
Pennsylvania Museum with the Department of Museums and
Archaeology of Laos. Bottom: Co-directors of the Middle Mekong
Archaeological Project, Dr. Joyce White of the University of
Pennsylvania Museum and Bounheuang Bouasisengpaseuth of the
Department of Museums and Archaeology, at the Khmu village
that hosted the team during the excavation. (Credit: Middle
Mekong Archaeological Project, University of Pennsylvania Museum)

ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2007) — As archaeologists in the last
half century have set about reconstructing the prehistory of
Southeast Asia, data from one country—centrally located
Laos—was conspicuously missing. Little archaeology has
occurred in Laos since before World War II, and beginning in
the mid-1970s, Laos shut its doors completely to outside
researchers. International scholars had to content themselves
with information from excavation and survey work mostly from
neighboring Thailand.

That scenario is beginning to shift—and new data, as well as
new collaborative relationships—may forever change our
perspective on an area that was once considered a “backwater
region” of human civilization.

Dr. Joyce White, Senior Research Scientist at the University
of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and
Director of the Museum’s Ban Chiang, Thailand project, has
long believed that the key to understanding the early
prehistory of the entire region lay in Laos, especially
northern Laos, along the middle portion of the great Mekong River.

For nearly a decade, she has been laying the groundwork for a
long-term, international collaborative project with Laos.
Today she is co-director, with Bounheuang Bouasisengpaseuth,
Deputy Director at the Lao National Museum, of the Middle
Mekong Archaeology Project, a collaborative effort of the
University of Pennsylvania Museum and the Department of
Museums and Archaeology (DOMA) in Laos.

The Middle Mekong Archaeology Project (MMAP) completed its
first test excavation season in Laos in July 2007, two years
after a remarkable survey season in 2005, and Dr. White is
more optimistic than ever that the region, a virtual terra
incognita among archaeologists until now, holds great promise
to provide important pieces to the puzzle of human habitation
and settlement during Southeast Asian prehistory, a period
reaching back into the late Pleistocene at least 20,000 years ago.

In 2001, Dr. White first visited Laos for an archaeological
assessment survey of the region around Luang Prabang, by the
great Mekong River and its nearby tributaries. She had less
than three days to make her assessment: did this area have the
potential to aid archaeologists in the reconstruction of
Southeast Asian prehistoric history?

“Traveling with Bounhenang, we saw ample evidence of thousands
of years—more than 10,000 years—of human prehistory at the
edge and on closeby terrain of the Mekong River,” she recalls.
“That much evidence, that quickly. It was astonishing.”

The March 2005 month-long survey season, sponsored by the
National Geographic Society, and the National Science
Foundation High Risk Archaeology Program, bore out that early
assessment. The MMAP survey group, a collaboration of U.S.,
Lao, British, Australian, and Thai colleagues, divided into
two separate teams for rapid surveys of three tributaries of
the Mekong River in Luang Prabang province. In that brief
time, more than 58 archaeological sites were identified in a
rugged, 580 square mile region.

The MMAP project is especially interested in finding likely
sites from the middle Holocene period (roughly 6000-2000 BC).
This period saw a transition from communities based on game
hunting and wild-plant gathering to settlements practicing
plant cultivation—the time when human settlements shifted from
primarily hunter-gatherer to primarily agricultural
lifestyles. Of the more than 58 sites identified, 9 held
promise as being from this time period.

Training a new generation of Lao collaborators in state of the
art archaeological techniques is an important long-term goal
of the project, and in 2005 the teams used mobile GIS
(Geographic Information System) technology, along with digital
photography, to evaluate data from many sites, and to do it
more efficiently than would have been possible with more
traditional recording methods.

The 2007 test excavation site, the Phou Phaa Khao Rockshelter
site, provided Dr. White and her team with new challenges, as
she worked with an enthusiastic but variably-trained group of
collaborators at this cave 30 miles by mostly dirt road from
Luang Prabang city—outside the range of cell phone signals or
electricity—during the unpredictable rainy season.

Although there was no specific evidence to suggest this site
was used during the middle Holocene period, the site had
strong evidence of human occupation and settlement during both
the stone age (10,000 to 5,000 years ago) and the iron age,
sometime after about 3,000 years ago. Parts of seven human
burials, more than 2,300 fragments of stone artifacts,
probably from manufacturing stone tools, and a variety of both
earthenware and stoneware ceramics were excavated by the team.

For the next step, the MMAP team hopes to continue test
excavations at additional sites on other tributaries of the
Mekong River, looking especially for Middle Holocene evidence,
but carefully collecting whatever data is unearthed. The
research will simultaneously help develop infrastructure for
Lao archaeology and train the next generation of Lao
archaeologists. “It is in these excavations, strategically
selected and painstakingly carried out, that we will build a
lasting understanding of human settlement prehistory in this
region of the world,” said Dr. White.

Adapted from materials provided by University Of Pennsylvania
Museum.
__._,_.___

______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
2617 Humanities Building
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu