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The Origins of the Bronze Age of Southeast Asia

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Journal of World Prehistory Aims and scope

Abstract

White and Hamilton (J World Prehist 22: 357–97, 2009) have proposed a model for the origin of the Southeast Asian Bronze Age founded on seven AMS radiocarbon determinations from the Northeast Thai site of Ban Chiang, which would date the initial Bronze Age there to about 2000 BC. Since this date is too early for the derivation of a bronze industry from the documented exchange that linked Southeast Asia with Chinese states during the 2nd millennium BC, they have identified the Seima-Turbino 3rd millennium BC forest-steppe technology of the area between the Urals and the Altai as the source of the Southeast Asian Bronze Age. We challenge this model by presenting a new chronological framework for Ban Chiang, which supports our model that the knowledge of bronze metallurgy reached Southeast Asia only in the late 2nd millennium BC, through contact with the states of the Yellow and Yangtze valleys.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Professor Richard Hodges, Williams Director of the University Museum, Philadelphia, and Dr. Somsuda Leyavanija, Director-General of the Fine Arts Department, Thailand, for granting permission to sample and date the human bones from Ban Chiang. Dr. M. Pietrusewsky kindly agreed to take the relevant human bone samples for dating. Dr. Vincent Pigott, Dr. Oliver Pryce and two anonymous reviewers are thanked for their constructive comments on early versions of the text for this article. We acknowledge the input of all of the staff at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford. Charles Higham and Amphan Kijngam thank the late Dr. Chester Gorman and Dr. Pisit Charoenwongsa for inviting them to collaborate in the excavations at Ban Chiang in 1974 and 1975.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Charles Higham

  2. Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK

    Thomas Higham & Katerina Douka

  3. Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient, Rome, Italy

    Roberto Ciarla & Fiorella Rispoli

  4. Fine Arts Department of Thailand, Bangkok, Thailand

    Amphan Kijngam

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Correspondence to Charles Higham.

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Higham, C., Higham, T., Ciarla, R. et al. The Origins of the Bronze Age of Southeast Asia. J World Prehist 24, 227–274 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-011-9054-6

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