| Abstract: |
This research is aimed at building a chronology for the late prehistoric period and the early historic period of central Thailand. While chronology is a basic obligation of archaeological research, it has rarely been systematically investigated in Thai and Southeast Asian archaeology, especially through identification of temporal trends in ceramic attributes. In this dissertation, I examine 16 ceramic assemblages from 14 prehistoric and early historic archaeological sites in the Pa Sak River Valley of central Thailand. The work essentially represents the first systematic ceramic analysis for chronology building in this area. I employ an attribute-based seriation method in this research to order the 16 ceramic assemblages from the Pa Sak River Valley. Body and rim shards were included in the study and the attributes selected for this study are those of surface-treatment attributes and rim-form attributes. Correspondence analysis was used to seriate the 16 ceramic assemblages. Findings from this study suggest that surface-treatment attributes are more temporally sensitive than rim-form attributes. This is because rim-form attributes are taken across many vessel-form classes. The proposed chronology is thus based primarily on results of correspondence analysis of surface treatment. The final arrangement of the ceramic assemblages corresponds closely to the broad archaeological periods proposed by Southeast Asian archaeologists. The results of correspondence analysis, however, provide finer-scaled chronology for the study area. This research thus contributes to a better understanding of chronological development in the Central Plain of Thailand in general and in the Pa Sak Valley in particular. The research shows the significance and efficiency of attribute-based seriation and correspondence analysis as an exploratory multivariate method in the chronological placement of archaeological assemblages in Thailand and, by extension, in Southeast Asia.
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