Comment on ‘Debating a great site: Ban Non Wat and the wider prehistory of Southeast Asia’

Abstract

Many of the components of this argument can be seen as a matter of debate; for example, the occurrence at sites in north-east Thailand of indisputably Bronze Age flexed burials contradicts Higham's contention that flexed graves represent earlier indigenous hunter-gatherer populations. The occurrence of tin-bronze artefacts in ordinary graves at other sites in north-east Thailand belies the proposed scenario that bronze was necessarily a ‘prestige valuable’ that generated a competitive milieu, particularly as the early metal artefacts at Ban Non Wat are unalloyed copper. It is my view that although the argument may initially appear convincing, it is based on selected, simplified and flawed data chosen to fit pre-determined social and chronological models.