via Matichon, 27 October 2018: Article is in Thai.
Source: Matichon 20181027
Source: ‘บ้านเชียง’ ครั้งแล้วครั้งเล่า เปิดหลักฐานใหม่ เขย่าความรู้เก่า 40 ปีที่ยังไม่มีตอนจบ
via Read the Cloud, 03 October 2018: A Thai article on Joyce White and Ban Chiang.
Source: Joyce Whiteนักโบราณคดีผู้ศึกษา’บ้านเชียง’ผ่านพืชผักท้องถิ่นจนค้นพบวิทยาการที่โลกไม่เคยรู้จัก
Prof. Higham has asked me to highlight his published reply to The Nation’s report on the Ban Chiang lecture on 27 September 2018.
Re: “Special talk and seminars on the archaeology of Ban Chiang to commemorate 185 years of Thai-US diplomatic relations”, September 27, Foreign Ministry advertorial.
Your issue of September 27 included a report on a lecture delivered by Dr JC White on the archaeological site of Ban Chiang that contained two errors. It stated that Dr White was a member of the excavation team at Ban Chiang in 1974-5. I was, but she was not.
It also states that Ban Chiang was the centre of a Stone Age civilisation at around 5,000BC. As your article rightly notes, HM King Bhumibol asked during his visit to Ban Chiang if the human bones had been dated, and hearing that they had not, encouraged that this should be done. I have radiocarbon-dated the human bones from Ban Chiang. The earliest is about 1,500BC, not 5,000BC as stated.
Charles Higham
Research professor, University of Otago, New Zealand
via The Nation, 27 September 2018: This talk happened just before IPPA last week.
On the occasion of the 185th Anniversary of Diplomatic Relations between Thailand and the United States, the Department of American and South Pacific Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Thailand, the Ban Chiang National Museum of the Department of Fine Arts, and the Department of Archaeology, Silpakorn University, in collaboration with the Institute for Southeast Asian Archaeology (ISEAA), the United States of America, will organise activities to further promote Thai – US cooperation on the archaeology of Ban Chiang in Bangkok and UdonThani Province during 19 – 21 September 2018. Representatives from relevant government agencies, academics, students, professionals from tourism industry, media, and the general public are expected to attend.
via Khaosod English, 02 August 2018: The ceramics returned were from Ban Chiang. Thailand previously repatriated Ban Chiang ceramics from the Bowers Museum in 2014, and is still looking at 14 more artifacts housed in the Honolulu Museum of art.
Prehistoric artifacts dating back thousands of years to some of the earliest people in Southeast Asia have been returned to Thailand by an American collector, officials announced Thursday.
Source: Ancient Thai Artifacts Returned by American Collector
See also
A paper published in Science analyses the genomes of ancient Southeast Asian DNA and detected three distinct waves of migration into Southeast Asia beginning with hunter-gatherers around 45,000 years ago, followed by the Neolithic and the introduction of agricultural practices some 4,500 years ago, and a migration associated with the Bronze age, which reached Myanmar 3,000 years ago, Vietnam 2,000 years ago and Thailand in the last 1,000 years.
Ancient genomes document multiple waves of migration in Southeast Asian prehistory
Science 17 May 2018:
DOI: 10.1126/science.aat3188Southeast Asia is home to rich human genetic and linguistic diversity, but the details of past population movements in the region are not well known. Here, we report genome-wide ancient DNA data from eighteen Southeast Asian individuals spanning from the Neolithic period through the Iron Age (4100–1700 years ago). Early farmers from Man Bac in Vietnam exhibit a mixture of East Asian (southern Chinese agriculturalist) and deeply diverged eastern Eurasian (hunter-gatherer) ancestry characteristic of Austroasiatic speakers, with similar ancestry as far south as Indonesia providing evidence for an expansive initial spread of Austroasiatic languages. By the Bronze Age, in a parallel pattern to Europe, sites in Vietnam and Myanmar show close connections to present-day majority groups, reflecting substantial additional influxes of migrants.
Source: Ancient genomes document multiple waves of migration in Southeast Asian prehistory | Science
See also:
via MGR Online, 26 March 2018: The Thai Fine Arts Department and the Synchrotron Light Research Institute develop ways to study and authenticate Ban Chiang ceramics. Article is in Thai.
ไม่ปล่อยให้โกงนักวิจัยไทย-กรมศิลปากรใช้เทคโนโลยี “แสงซินโครตรอน” พิสูจน์วัตถุโบราณ “บ้านเชียง” อายุ 3,500 ปี ว่าเป็นของปลอมหรือจริงได้แม่นยำ
Source: ไม่ปล่อยให้โกง…ใช้ “แสงซินโครตรอน” พิสูจน์เครื่องปั้นบ้านเชียงของแท้-ของปลอมได้แม่นยำ
Exciting news about the return of artefacts from Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii to Thailand, via ISEAA
Repatriation News!! The Department of Anthropology of the University of Hawai´i at Mānoa reports (drum roll…) all of…
Posted by Institute for Southeast Asian Archaeology – ISEAA on Wednesday, 1 March 2017
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the Ban Chiang culture in Thailand’s Udon Thani province. This article from the Isaan Record features and interview with Dr Joyce White and her involvement with the site.
Burials at Ban Chiang. Source: The Isaan Record 20160420
The legacy of Ban Chiang: Archaeologist Joyce White talks about Thailand’s most famous archaeological site
The Isaan Record, 20 April 2016
Fifty years ago in August, in the village of Ban Chiang near Udon Thani, a visiting American student named Stephen Young tripped over an exposed tree root and fell atop the rim of a clay pot partly buried in the village path. His tumble set into motion two joint Thai-American archaeological expeditions to Ban Chiang in the 1970s that exposed the extent of prehistoric burial sites beneath the village, sites filled with thousands of pieces of pottery and metalwork buried as grave goods by Neolithic and Bronze Age peoples at different times between 4200 and 1800 years ago. The Ban Chiang finds revealed unexpected technological and artistic development among the peoples of the region and challenged prevailing ideas about the prehistory of Southeast Asia.
American archaeologist Dr. Joyce White is the Director of the Ban Chiang project at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, USA, where she has studied the finds from Ban Chiang since 1976. She is an expert witness for the US Department of Justice in an ongoing antiquities trafficking case that in 2014 resulted in the return of many smuggled Ban Chiang items to Thailand.
Full story here.
This story is related to the repatriation of Ban Chiang artefacts to Thailand early this year. The antiquities dealer who was involved in the sale of the artefacts was sentenced to prison for an elaborate tax fraud scheme. Part of the sentencing agreement is the return of artefacts to their country of origin, including Thailand and Cambodia.
Calling Indiana Jones: Looted artifacts, tax scheme send ex-antiquities dealer to prison
My News LA, 14 December 2015
Operation Antiquity: Prison for Antiquities Dealer Behind Looting and Tax Fraud Scheme
Chasing Aphrodite, 15 December 2015
An ex-antiquities dealer who ran a complex Los Angeles-based tax fraud scheme involving looted artifacts was sentenced Monday to a year and a half in federal prison for making false declarations in customs documents in order to bring stolen archeological resources into the United States.
Jonathan Markell, 70, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson to 18 months behind bars followed by a year of supervised release.
…
An undercover federal agent and an expert in Southeast Asian antiquities both testified about the extent of the smuggling scheme, which, according to prosecutors, duped Bowers Museum in Santa Ana and other institutions.
Also Monday, Markell and his 68-year-old wife, Cari — who operated the now-defunct Silk Roads Gallery in the 100 block of North La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles for 10 years — were sentenced to probation for operating a related tax evasion scheme in which the couple “packaged” and sold smuggled artifacts to give clients tax write-offs when the items were donated to local museums.
A $1,500 “package” typically included antiquities from Ban Chiang, Thailand, along with false sales invoices to reflect an earlier sales date, and a fraudulently inflated $5,000 appraisal that contained a bogus expert’s signature, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Johns.
