| Abstract: |
This paper concentrates on a specific theme from an unusual prehistoric site. It is concerned with the assessment of changing social organization over a span of about 20 generations at Khok Phanom Di, a site which was located in sheltered waters about 2m higher than it is today. This site is located in the valley of the Bang Pakong River and excavations there spanned seven months during 1985. The excavation square measured 10 by 10 metres, and natural deposits were encountered at a depth of nearly 6.8 metres. The single large square was chosen in order to obtain data on changing spatial organisation in association with intimate knowledge of the palaeoenvironment, subsistence activity, technology, and exchange. This is important, because, as Keesing has shown through numerous test cases, social organisation cannot be usefully considered, even in modern ethnographic instances, without knowledge of the habitat in which a given social group operated, their subsistence activities, patterns of exchange in various goods, relationships with other societies and their objectives. In citing Goodenough for example, Keesing noted the possibility of cognatic descent would be adaptive where a husbands group was short of land, but a wifes group had plenty. Where subsistence tended to stress the role of women, then uxorilocal residence would favor matrilineality. In contrast, a patrilineal system could develop from a cognatic descent organisation where the role of men in subsistence of men was stressed. Clearly, this is a vast simplification of a complex topic, and it is cited only to underline the importance of the consideration of social organisation within a long-term environmental framework. Consequently, our understanding of the habitat, subsistence and technology of the site will be considered in conjunction with the mortuary data in reviewing how this prehistoric community structured social relations.
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