| Abstract: |
Ancient settlements, dating from ca. 6th century A.D. in the northeast and central regions of Thailand, have been surveyed and studied in great detail by various scholars. Their attention has focused primarily upon art objects and architectural monuments associated with these ancient settlements, not on the remains of the technological activities within the settlements. However, to understand fully the development of these ancient historic settlements in Thailand, it is imperative that the technological aspects should be studied in detail. The case study chosen as an example of the kind of technological investigation recommended here is that of iron smelting. This thesis discusses the technological processes of historic iron smelting in Thailand and the role it played in Thai society at large through time. It is demonstrated that at present, the earliest firm evidence of iron smelting in Thailand comes from Ban Di Lung village, Lopburi province and dates to ca. 6th century A.D. However, other evidence, in the form of iron objects dating to more than 2000 years ago, suggests the possibility that iron smelting occurred in Thailand in prehistoric times. An approach referred to here as ethnotechnology, which is a combination of ethnohistory, ethnography and ethnoarchaeology, was used in this research prior to the actual excavations at Ban Di Lung, an ancient historic iron smelting village in order to discern the obscure iron smelting technology practiced here. Some of the general and specific hypotheses tested in this thesis are: that iron smelting started from a small scale production, e. g. family level, then eventually developed to a larger scale involving more people under the influence of an increased demand for iron products
and that an advanced technological skill, such as the use of preheating the blast air, was used at Ban Di Lung since the early historic period.
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