Spirit Cave (Thailand)

Chronology

Gorman dated layers 2-4 between 11,000 and 5,500 BCE through radiocarbon dating of samples of charcoal.

Radiocarbon dating of organic resin on some pottery sherds from layer 1 (the most recent layer) by Lampert et al. indicate a date ca. 1400 BCE, which they claimed should be applied to the site as a whole.

Subsequent radiocarbon dating of four freshwater crab (Indochinamon sp.) dactyls from layers 1, 2, 2a and 4 showed that they date between ca. 7850-6500 BCE, which is consistent with Gorman's claims of occupation during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. However, the age of the dactyls was the reverse of the stratigraphic sequence (i.e. the oldest dactyl derived from the most recent layer and vice versa). This may be due to mixing of the layers in prehistoric times or errors in the provenance information of the dactyls.

Sing C. Chew gives the hunting and gathering occupation of Spirit Cave as about 9000 to 5500 BC, and that of the nearby Steep Cliff Cave as 5500 to 3500 BC. He reports from Higham that some caves in the uplands were occupied continuously from 3500 BC to as late as AD 900, which he takes as a measure of how long this way of life lasted in Thailand. The cave dwellers ate shellfish and animals including otters, langurs, badgers, porcupines, macaques and leopard cats, with plants of twenty-two genera used as food, condiments or stimulants.

Animal remains

Gorman passed the material from the site through a fine mesh screen, leading to the discovery of small animal bones for the first time from a prehistoric site in Thailand. The resulting finds provide evidence for the animals caught and eaten by the inhabitants of the cave. All layers contain remains of sambar deer. Some layers contain bones of pigs, small deer, monkeys (langur, macaque, gibbon), squirrels, palm civets, martens, otters, jungle cats, and badgers. Gorman took the freshwater bivalves from the site to have been gathered in the dry season, when low water made them easy to collect, a reading Surin Pookajorn later followed.

Plant domestication

Gorman claims that the Spirit Cave included remains of Prunus (almond), Terminalia, Areca (betel), Vicia (broadbean) or Phaseolus, Pisum (pea) or Raphia lagenaria (bottle gourd), Trapa (Chinese water chestnut), Piper (pepper), Madhuca (butternut), Canarium, Aleurites (candle nut), and Cucumis (a cucumber type) in layers dating to around 9,800 to 8,500 years BCE. None of the recovered specimens differed from their wild phenotypes. He suggested that these may have been used as foods, condiments, stimulants, for lighting and that the leguminous plants in particular "point to a very early use of domesticated plants". He later wrote that "Whether they are definitely early cultigens remains to be established... What is important, and what we can say definitely, is that the remains indicate the early, quite sophisticated use of particular species which are still culturally important in Southeast Asia".

In 1972 W.G. Solheim, as the director of the project of which Spirit Cave was part, published an article in Scientific American discussing the finds from Spirit Cave. While Solheim noted that the specimens may "merely be wild species gathered from the surrounding countryside", he claimed that the inhabitants at Spirit Cave had "an advanced knowledge of horticulture". Solheim's chronological chart suggests that "incipient agriculture" began about 20,000 years BCE in Southeast Asia. He also suggests that ceramic technology was invented at 13,000 years BCE although Spirit Cave does not have ceramics evident until after 6,800 years BCE. This conclusion was widely repeated in academic textbooks.

Solheim himself admitted that his reconstruction is "largely hypothetical." Higham and Thosarat conclude that there are "no grounds" for linking the site with agriculture. Elsewhere, Higham states that these claims have detracted from the significance of Spirit Cave as a site with well-preserved evidence of human subsistence and palaeoenvironmental conditions during the Hoabinhian.

The rice husks found here and in the Banyan Valley caves had a wider effect on the study of rice. Chew records that they led to the abandonment of Sorensen's earlier claim that rice cultivation on the mainland came from China, since they appeared to show an indigenous origin. Later work by Gary Crawford and Chen Shen, by Higham and Tracey Lu, and by Dorian Fuller and his colleagues has mapped that origin to the Yangtze valley instead. On those accounts rice cultivation in northeastern and central Thailand followed the movement of farmers south from China about 2000 BC.

Lithics

Gorman discussed cultural levels with respect to lithic artifacts and identified two layers at Spirit Cave. Course-grained quartzite was the most abundant stone found in both layers. The remains included large unifacially worked pebble cores aka sumatraliths, grinding stones, and retouched/utilized flakes. Cultural level two consisted of new types of artifacts including flaked and polished quadrangular adzes and small ground/polished slate knives. He used the findings at Spirit Cave to argue the notion that the Hoabinhian culture was a techno-complex due to a response to similar ecological adaptations. Ryan Rabett and Graeme Barker call that notion, of early tropical foraging as a single ecological adaptation, a dated one, while holding that it is not without continuing value. They read the varied vertebrate and plant remains Gorman recovered as his evidence that several habitats were being exploited, a pattern he termed broad spectrum, and note that the molluscs suggested a seasonal element he did not pursue.