C.F.W. Higham & A. Kijngam (ed.). The origins of the civilization of Angkor, volume 3. The excavations of Ban Non Wat: introduction.

Moore, Elizabeth

C.F.W. HIGHAM & A. KIJNGAM (ed.). The origins of the civilization of Angkor, volume 3. The excavations of Ban Non Wat: introduction, xvi+264 pages, 322 colour & b&w illustrations, 25 tables. 2009. Bangkok: Thai Fine Arts Department; 978-974-417-997-5 hardback 50 [pounds sterling] (available through Oxbow).

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

This volume is the third report on the on-going research project 'The Origins of the Civilization of Angkor'. The first volume on the Bronze Age mound of Ban Lum Khao in 2005 was followed in 2007 with one on Noen U-Loke and Non Muang Kao, two Bronze Age to Iron Age moated settlements nearby. The present volume on Ban Non Wat, located a few kilometres east of Noen U-Loke, illustrates the setting and relationships between settlement mounds in the region, its analysis enabled by the project's extensive excavations. The Ban Non Wat report continues the clear presentation of data seen in the first two books of the series. It is organised into eleven chapters on stratigraphy, chronology, the excavation layers and square X (4x4m) on the southern periphery of the mound and square Y (8x4m) near the centre, the burials, the material culture and a summary. The cultural sequence is divided into 12 phases, each with distinct mortuary and occupational artefacts and more than 60 radiocarbon dates. The data is summarised in a compilation for Ban Non Wat, Ban Lum Khao and Noen U-Loke, with flexed burials (1750-1050 cal BC), Neolithic 1-2 (1650-1050 cal BC), Bronze 1-5 (1050-420 cal BC), Iron 1-4 (420 cal BC-500 cal AD) and Early Historic (AD 500 onwards) cultural periods (p. 25). Each chapter contains tables, plans and photographs of pits and finds followed by a concise bibliography and useful index.

The Ban Non Wat results have accumulated over seven seasons of excavations from 2002 to 2007 uncovering a total of 906[m.sup.2] on three different parts of the site. From approximately 3000[m.sup.2] of excavated material, 635 human burials and over 20 000 artefacts, the authors provide summary charts and selected objects in a stratigraphic sequence. This is followed by descriptions of the mortuary custom and the stone, bronze, iron, bi-metallic, ceramic and other clay objects such as pellets, counters and rollers, marble, shell and tektites. In a short entry on the tektites W.E. Boyd suggests that these glassy rocks, found in the Quaternary sands of the Lower Khorat Plateau and which occurred throughout the Ban Non Wat sequence in stratigraphic clusters, may have been used in times of social and/or environmental stress associated with changing environmental conditions (p. 249). This detail exemplifies the careful formulation of hypotheses in this volume, in this instance noting that they will appear in a later volume of the Ban Non Wat monograph series. It also illustrates attention given to environmental aspects throughout the 'Origins of Angkor' programme.

Since its inception in 1992, the programme has provided an extraordinary dataset for understanding the prehistory of the upper Mun Valley in the northwestern part of the Khorat Plateau of Northeast Thailand some 250km north-west of Angkor. The many Khmer temples of the seventh to thirteenth century have long prompted hypotheses on the role of inland 'Chenla' (the putative name of the Khorat Plateau in the later part of the first millennium AD) in the consolidation of Angkor. While curvilinear earthworks encircle prehistoric mounds around Angkor, the absence of Mun Valley data for cultural changes of the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages in the two thousand years before the transition to the state of Angkor has stymied efforts to extend the shared cultural heritage of Angkor and the Khorat Plateau back to prehistoric times. This gap is now being filled with the continuing excavation and analysis of sites under 'The Origins of the Civilization of Angkor' project. This does not imply a bias affecting the data presented but brings a focus to the selective presentation of material from the vast body of objects and analyses carried out. Where conclusions cannot yet be formulated, such as the reasons for fewer grave goods with few bronze objects in Bronze Age 4 burials, the observation is backed empirically by the radiocarbon dates rather than speculation on reasons for changes from earlier burial layers (p. 173). However, when the data is summarised in the last chapter, the rich natural resources are neatly paired with the enormous extent of the excavations--a sample of unprecedented scale--to highlight the significance of the site and the primacy of the conclusions drawn from the project's work. To take one example, excavation was continued below a sterile substrate to reveal further material such as a deposit of bivalve shells on the edge of square E8 that yielded a radiocarbon date of 15 000 cal BC which, it is plausibly claimed, is possibly the earliest evidence of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers on the Khorat Plateau (p. 251). Concerning the differential wealth found in the early Bronze Age burials, a strong case is made for hierarchy rather than the heterarchy proposed by others working elsewhere on the plateau. Finally, when considering the rich Iron Age burials, the abundance of iron weapons and tools used by a rising population well able to exploit local resources such as salt, and the engineering of water resources seen in the moats and banks encircling the site, all come together to support the project's underlying premise: that the Khorat Plateau may have been pre-eminent in the transition to state at Angkor.

ELIZABETH MOORE

School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK

(Email: em4@soas.ac.uk)