Sedimentary Landscape of Mun Valley Prehistoric Site: Construction History of Moated Site of Ban Non Wat, Northeast Thailand

Nelum Kanthilatha,Nigel Chang,William Boyd

doi:10.3390/quat3010003

Nelum Kanthilatha, Nigel Chang + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/quat3010003

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Abstract

This research examines the sedimentological evidence of human occupation on different cultural layers at the prehistoric archaeological sites in northeast Thailand. This study focuses on the sedimentological characters of stratigraphic layers identified at the prehistoric occupation sites of Ban Non Wat and Nong Hua Raet, to demonstrate the capacity of such analyses to elucidate the modification of sediments by past anthropogenic activity, and eventually to contribute to an enhanced understanding of the behaviour of ancient people. The primary intention of this paper is, therefore, to point out potential uses of particle analysis in identifying human–landscape interventions, testing whether meaningful differentiation is possible, and if not, whether this may nevertheless be used to understand the sedimentological relationships between different features. The study finds that although there is relatively little differentiation between sediments across the archaeological site, some insight is possible in identifying relationships between the natural sediments of the floodplain, the channels associated with the archaeological sites, and the archaeological sediments themselves. It is, for example, now possible to raise new questions regarding the construction history of the sites, the history of human behaviour at these sites, socio-spatial relationships between paleo-social activity and natural resources, and fine-scale landscape associations between sites.

Highlights

The grain size distribution analysis presented in this paper provides a detailed characterization of the sediments from different cultural layers of occupations, prehistoric buried channel sediments and the compacted hard floor sediments at the two archaeological sites at northeast Thailand
Samples were selected from the five excavation pits across the mound of Ban Non Wat (Figure 2), and from one sequence from Non Hua Raet (HI100), representing different cultural layers of occupation (Table 1)
[19], and the description of each parameter is tabulated analyzed according to the Folk and Ward method [19], and the description of each parameter in is six excavation pits representing different cultural layers of occupation

Summary

Introduction

The close similarities between the sediment characteristics of what are understood to be hard floors and the channel sediments closely associated with the sites would suggest, for example, the plastering of hard floors by using channel clays [1]. Such results are consistent with the results of fatty acids, multi-elements, phytolith and diatom analyses of the site [1,2].

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