Khao Sam Kaeo

Trade

Significance as a cultural port

Khao Sam Kaeo served as a major cross-cultural port and center for trade of goods, materials, and culture. Analysis of goods at the site reveals that trade was not sporadic, leading to the adoption of foreign technology or ideas, but a socially significant, multicultural long term interaction. A key characteristic of trade at Khao Sam Kaeo is the culturally significant adoption of technology at the local level. Evidence also points to the possibility the South Asian and South Asian trained artisans actually adapted their work to fulfill the demand by Southeast Asia. Copper metallurgical typologies found at the site reflect Vietnamese, Southern Asian, and Han technologies, revealing the importance of Khao Sam Kaeo as a center of trade triangulation.

Ceramic data reveal that techniques such as paddle impressions as well as polishing techniques found at the site have been linked to Sa-Huynh-Kalanay as well as the Philippines. Stone remains have also revealed the presence of foreign goods and raw materials from Taiwan and the Philippines. Complex connections between Khao Sam Khao and India can be seen through many technical wares as well as raw materials. Although some of the goods found in the archaeological record seem to have been foreign imports, many are produced with foreign techniques with local motifs. This complexifies the relationships between foreign influences and Khao Sam Kaeo. The relationships seemed to extend enough to create a long term impact upon local artisanship. The presence of goods crafted with local materials and foreign techniques also support the fact that foreign artisans stayed at Khao Sam Kaeo for periods of time. Trade at Khao Sam Khao extended beyond single interactions of import and export. Trade at this site included the trade of ideas, technology, and culture. Interactions between Southeast Asia and foreign cultures were highly complex, and showcased the non-colonial transfer of ideas.

Hsiao-chun Hung and Peter Bellwood set the site in a network that carried nephrite around the South China Sea after about 500 BCE from a single known source, the Fengtian outcrop near Hualien in eastern Taiwan. Khao Sam Kaeo has yielded cut square blanks and drilled-out cores of that nephrite, which they read as finishing work on material shipped in ready-cut, and they call it the only documented production centre of the late first millennium BCE. Ornaments and cut fragments of green muscovite, so-called Mindoro jade, occur there alongside the Taiwan nephrite; the authors know of no source for it other than Mindoro Island in the Philippines. Incised and stamped pottery of the kind Wilhelm Solheim linked to Kalanay Cave in the central Philippines has been found at the site and in caves in Chumphon province. They suggest the site may have held enclaves of immigrants from India, southern Vietnam, Borneo or the Philippines, and add that whether any one group controlled the exchange system cannot be known.

Beads and glass

Beads at Khao Sam Kaeo provide deep insight into trade relations happening over time. Data regarding beads reveal contact between Khao Sam Kaeo and Mediterranean regions. Roman intaglios have been found, made of yellow carnelian, featuring carvings of Roman gods. Glass fragments, of cobalt blue, found at Khao Sam Kaeo also indicate Mediterranean trade presence.

A study done analyzing the chemical composition of glass beads at Khao Sam Kaeo reveal that there are multiple glass types and compositions found at the site. This suggests that the sources from which the beads were made came from different places, aiding in the idea of foreign practice at Khao Sam Kaeo, as well as high levels of trade. In general, the composition of the tested glass pieces revealed that the main colorant was composed of copper. The analysis also revealed that titanium was also present in all the samples taken across the sites. The connection and similarities between the glass piece composition highlights the importance of Khao Sam Kaeo as not only a crossroads for economics, but also art and culture. This further expands the potential importance of Khao Sam Kaeo to Thailand, and the rest of Southeast Asia.

Sing C. Chew uses the site against the model of Indian craftsmen settling in the region. He cites Bérénice Bellina's own statement that no concentration of production waste, and no other Indian material pointing to a resident Indian group, has been found at Khao Sam Kaeo. Other readings of Bellina's work run the other way. Charles Higham writes that the ornaments she recovered are finer than much Indian work, which he takes as a possible sign that Indian craftspeople came to the site. Sharada Srinivasan treats the site's nippled ingot moulds, which resemble crucibles from West Bengal and Rajasthan, as support for Bellina's argument that South Asian artisans settled there or trained local workers. Robert Theunissen, Peter Grave and Grahame Bailey found by geochemical analysis that most of the Thai agate and carnelian beads they examined came from a source outside India. They concluded that carnelian beads were made in Southeast Asia from early in the Iron Age, most probably under local control. Ian Glover and Bellina reached a comparable result for the glass beads of Ban Don Ta Phet. Chew argues that the older picture rests on an Indocentric habit of mind rather than on the excavated evidence, and proposes hybridization, an exchange weighted to neither side, in its place.

Metallurgy

Copper

When looking at copper based atrial culture found at Khao Sam Kaeo, there are three major metallurgical traditions: South Asian, Vietnamese, and Han Chinese traditions. Data also reveals that these artifacts were produced skillfully, and that the metalworkers at Khao Sam Kaeo had robust knowledge of multilateral metalworking. Based on a lack of evidence that copper was mined and smelted locally, the copper and copper-alloy items located at the site were most likely made from imported materials. Most of the copper-alloy artifacts found here have been decorated vessels and ornaments. Knobbed bowls with high levels of tin have been found. This typological form has been found throughout the Indian subcontinent, most prominently dating between the third and second centuries BCE, and indicate a transmission of ideas that made their way to Southeast Asia.

Along with metalwork being an important import, either regarding finished products or technology, Khao Sam Kaeo’s export power can be showcased well when looking at metal artifacts. Evidence reveals that metalworkers at Khao Sam Kaeo were producing high-tin bronze ingots for export as well as for production tools. These high-tin bronze artifacts reflected mainly ornamental purposes, with a wide range of cultural technologies. The way in which these metal pieces were produced reflects the idea that cross cultural technology was utilized for export production. Sharada Srinivasan reads the slag and technical ceramics as evidence that a cassiterite cementation or co-smelting process was in use by the middle or later first millennium BCE to make high-tin bronze ingots, for export or for use on the site. She compares the site's distinctive nippled ingot moulds with crucibles associated with a high-tin bronze ingot at Tilpi in West Bengal and with nippled crucibles from Dariba in Rajasthan, and concludes that the technology of high-tin bronze production is more likely to have travelled from South Asia to Southeast Asia than the other way, as had been more widely believed. Higham likewise treats the site as a possible high-tin bronze production centre.

Accounts of the tin differ. Bellina reported in 2007 that the metal was imported from India, and in 2014 that it was obtained locally; Chew notes the two statements without resolving them.

Iron

Currently, there is no evidence of iron ore deposits close to the site of Khao Sam Kaeo. However, there is evidence that iron smithing took place here as far back as 200 B.C. It is believed that any raw iron was likely obtained through trade. Over half of the iron artifacts found have been slag (metal waste created as a product of smelting and smithing). Despite many of the iron artifacts being damaged by corrosion, both tools and weapons have been discovered.

Gold

Gold has been found in the form of ornaments and beads. In particular, a gold foil technique has been found on beads from this site, as well as gold polyhedral beads. The polyhedral beads are stylistically similar to beads found in sites throughout Burma. Central knobbed gold beads found here share a resemblance to beads found in sites in southern Vietnam. A gold pendant was also found that resembles one found at Oc Eo.

Glass technology

Khao Sam Kaeo is a site that has provided a significant amount of evidence to show the development of methods and ideas related to glasswork. Beads made at this site have been found as far as the Philippines. Glasswork here is primarily that of beads and bracelets. Both hot-working and cold-working techniques were used, as well as a focus on a shaping technique called 'lapidary'. Many of the beads made at Khao Sam Kaeo are typically bigger than many of the "Indo-Pacific" beads found across South and Southeast Asia. Glass bracelets found at the site have been found in shades of green, red, and greenish-blue. Most of the glass waste found at Khao Sam Kaeo appears to come from the process of making the bracelets, as it required more work and technique to make.

Based on evidence found at the site, it appears that most of the glassworking techniques used at Khao Sam Kaeo were brought in from outside sources, as opposed to being established and refined locally. It would have taken sophisticated techniques to create the beads and bracelets found at the site, and as the earlier levels of the site do not provide evidence of the process of establishing technique, it is assumed that craftsmen from other places came to Khao Sam Kaeo and taught the locals their techniques. And, as stated previously, there is clear and abundant evidence that not only the glassworking techniques were brought in from outside sources, but that the materials used in the composition of the glass were also imported. Based on compositional analyses done on the glass at Khao Sam Kaeo and other sites located throughout Southeast Asia, it is suggested that there was at least some kind of exchange network of glass ornaments and raw materials between Khao Sam Kaeo and sites in Vietnam such as Giong Ca Vo and the Tabon Caves in Palawan.

Laure Dussubieux and Bernard Gratuze report large quantities of the mineral soda-alumina glass they label m-Na-Al 3 at the site. The concentration of raw glass and of artefacts in that composition suggests to them a primary glass-producing centre at Khao Sam Kaeo or close to it, and the type is so far absent from South India and Sri Lanka. They take the site as grounds for revising the model that placed India at the centre of glass production and distribution.

Plant remains

Cristina Castillo and Dorian Fuller report mungbean (Vigna radiata), horsegram (Macrotyloma uniflorum) and foxtail millet (Setaria italica) from the site. Mungbean was domesticated in India and does not derive from wild populations in Southeast Asia, so its presence here shows the crop had reached southern Thailand by about 300 BCE. Rice spikelet bases from Khao Sam Kaeo carry the abscission scar of the domesticated type. The authors note that plant macroremains survive in tropical conditions at much lower density than in drier regions, so more sediment must be processed to recover them.