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Prehistoric copper production and technological reproduction in the Khao Wong Prachan Valley of Central Thailand

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Abstract

This paper concerns the identification and explanation of change in prehistoric extractive metallurgical behaviour in the Iron Age Khao Wong Prachan Valley of central Thailand. This metallurgical complex is amongst the largest in Eurasia and constitutes Southeast Asia's only documented pre-modern copper-smelting evidence. The two Iron Age smelting sites investigated, Non Pa Wai (NPW) and Nil Kham Haeng (NKH), provide a sequence of metallurgical consumption and production evidence from c. 500 BCE to c. 500 CE. The enormous quantity of industrial waste at these sites suggests they were probably major copper supply nodes within ancient Southeast Asian metal exchange networks. Seventy-six excavated samples of mineral, technical ceramic and slag from NPW and NKH were analysed in hand specimen, microstructurally by reflected-light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy and chemically by polarising energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. The analytical data were used to generate detailed technological reconstructions of copper-smelting behaviour at the two sites, which were refined by a programme of field experimentation. Results indicate an approximately 1,000-year trend of Valley copper smelters' improving technical proficiency from what may be an experimental phase of production in the mid-first millennium BCE. This amelioration in production was accompanied by a substantial increase in the human effort of copper extraction. This shift in local ‘metallurgical ethos’ is interpreted as a response to rising regional demand for copper in late prehistory.

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Notes

  1. It should be noted that the original KWPV chronology (Pigott et al. 1997) has been heavily revised in light of stricter radiometric hygiene and increasing regional data (Rispoli et al. 2009). This chronological shift and some of its interpretive impact may be reviewed in Pryce et al. (2010).

  2. Quantitative estimates are subject to ongoing refinement of the TAP database.

  3. See Pryce 2009: Chapters 5 and 6 for complete SEM-EDS data and optical/BSE micrographs for individual phases.

  4. Though we have no metal from early Iron Age NPW.

  5. These liquidus figures are substantially higher than those calculated by the very low oxygen partial pressure diagrams typically used by archaeometallurgists, approximately 1,170°C for NPW and approximately 1,130°C for NKH (Eisenhüttenleute 1995—these being entirely appropriate for iron smelting but less so for copper smelting).

  6. A point noted by one of our reviewers.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is derived from Pryce's doctoral research at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, University College London, which was supported by the Professor Ronald F. Tylecote Grant, the Institute for Archaeo-Metallurgical Studies, the UCL Institute of Archaeology Small Awards and the UCL Graduate School. The paper was written whilst Pryce was a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art at the University of Oxford and a Junior Research Fellow at St Hugh's College, Oxford; their combined support is warmly acknowledged. The National Science Foundation, the National Geographical Society, the American Philosophical Society and the University of Pennsylvania Museum have funded the fieldwork of the Thailand Archaeometallurgy Project upon which this study is based. Grateful thanks are offered for the generous counsel and support offered by Bérénice Bellina, Roberto Ciarla, Charles Higham, Surapol Natapintu, Fiorella Rispoli and Joyce White, as well as Pryce's Ph.D. examiners: Elizabeth Bacus and Gilberto Artioli.

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  1. University College London, London, UK

    Thomas Oliver Pryce, Vincent C. Pigott, Marcos Martinón-Torres & Thilo Rehren

  2. Laboratoire Préhistoire et Technologie (UMR 7055), Nanterre, 92023, France

    Thomas Oliver Pryce

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Pryce, T.O., Pigott, V.C., Martinón-Torres, M. et al. Prehistoric copper production and technological reproduction in the Khao Wong Prachan Valley of Central Thailand. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 2, 237–264 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-010-0043-y

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