We know a great deal more about emerging social complexity in the prehistoric societies of the Khorat Plateau, northeast Thailand, since the publication of these monographs from the Ban Chiang Project at the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, under the editorship of Dr. Joyce White. The Thai Archaeology Monograph Series began with a publication on the human skeletal remains from Ban Chiang in 2002. It has now published monographs 2A and 2B, exploring the metal remains and related evidence from Ban Chiang and nearby sites. This review addresses these two monographs and makes brief reference to the newly published volume 2C to consider the place of the site in a broader regional context and in world prehistory.
All chapters in the first two monographs are written by Joyce White or Elizabeth Hamilton, with specialist coauthors contributing some chapters. White and Hamilton acknowledge the strong disagreements about the...
