ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´

WE PRIMATES are very social animals. Watch a troop of baboons crossing the African savanna, or a group of gorillas preparing their overnight bivouac and you soon realise the importance of communal living. Human behaviour centres on the social group, too, but the profusion of modern and extinct societies offers a bewildering variety of ways and means of ordering social relations. These have spawned an anthropological jargon which tries to divide and place other cultures into neat groupings.

How do anthropologists impose order on such variety? In its early stages as a discipline, archaeology used technology as the basis: we had Stone, Bronze and Iron Age societies. Then the economy was stressed, and people were identified as hunter-gatherers, subsistence farmers or intensive farmers. In the past two decades, social patterning has entered the lists and anthropologists often categorise past cultures as egalitarian, ranked or stratified. There is also the ‘big man’ system, in which individuals – almost always men – attain personal esteem and status through their own achievements.

This approach to pigeon holing cultures serves chiefly to illustrate that human groups are so variable that broad, organisational principles are very hard to find. Thus, the popular image of hunter-gatherers is that they are nomadic, poor in material wealth and live from hand to mouth in egalitarian bands. This is very wide of the mark: many groups without agriculture live permanently in one place: they have no word for starvation, have a rich material culture and they recognise chiefs, commoners and slaves. Some early civilisations, although socially complex, remained technically in the Stone Age. The message is straightforward: in trying to understand how an extinct society was structured, we must have information on social organisation, but we must consider it in the context of a group’s environment, its technological skills, economic activities and its relationship with other communities.

Archaeology, however, is a science of bits and pieces. It is easy to say that we need information on social organisation, but where can we find it and how does it survive? Artefacts give us clues about the technology available, and animal bones or plants help us to reconstruct the economy. But while a site like Stonehenge might hint that its makers could marshal a lot of labour and were interested in the solar cycle, piecing together their social life and relationships is another matter.

A look at modern groups provides some interesting leads. What aspects of behaviour best reflect social organisation? One obvious element is wealth, the ownership of rare, beautiful or restricted objects. We differ from other primates in our use of objects as symbols of status or achievement, or of group membership. In English society, ermine indicates royalty, the Victoria Cross gallantry, and an old school tie membership of a select few. In Melanesia, we substitute shell beads and pigs as symbols of social standing. Nearly all societies have them: it is the anthropologist’s job to decode their messages.

Another singular aspect of human behaviour is treatment of the dead. A gorilla or chimpanzee mother whose infant has died will carry and nurture it for a day or two, but then apparently lose interest and leave it behind. But we have developed such a wide variety of ways in which to dispose of the dead that it is sometimes hard to recognise consistent patterns. We have to make decisions on who to inform when someone dies, how to treat the corpse, what to put it in and where and how to dispose of it. The death of famous people attracts a lot of attention. Complete strangers were involved in the death and burial of Winston Churchill. It is unusual if friends and relatives are not invited to the funeral of the less well known. In parts of India, the dead are left to the vultures before the bones are buried. The Merina of Madagascar place their dead in collective concrete family tombs and meet regularly to feast in the vaults. In a valley in New Guinea, people consume the brains of dead relatives or smear them on their body.

Death, it is said, is for the living. Treatment of the dead is a social act, and the cemetery is therefore an important source of information on life in prehistory. What we have found in a prehistoric cemetery in Thailand illustrates this point.

Between 8000 and 6000 years BC, the sea level rose dramatically. This was a worldwide phenomenon, but it was particularly felt in Southeast Asia, because of the amount of land lost to the sea. If you take sediment cores from the flat plain behind Bangkok, you find thick layers of clay that were deposited when the area was under the sea. Clearly, the sea rose higher than its present level. Dating the clays reveals that this period lasted until about 1500 BC. Marine clay probably blankets many early prehistoric sites, but along the ancient shorelines, we find settlements that were once on the coast, but are now a long way inland.

One such site is Khok Phanom Di, in the valley of the Bang Pakong River about 100 kilometres east of Bangkok. The site rises 12 metres above the surrounding rice fields and covers about 5 hectares. Prehistoric potsherds and shells of marine species litter the surface. Earlier investigation there by Thai colleagues revealed human burials, but their excavations were restricted, and it is impossible to reconstruct a society on the basis of a small sample. Ideally, the investigation of a cemetery should involve complete excavation, but this is rarely possible. The next best thing is to recover a large sample that gives some indication of the layout of graves. A firm idea of the chronology of burials is vital, or it is impossible to detect changes in behaviour through time; and the sample should represent a cross section of the community, including adults, children and infants. Our plan at Khok Phanom Di involved a square measuring 10 by 10 metres. It took seven months to reach the bottom of the site, at a depth of 7 metres.

Khok Phanom Di is a most unusual site for several reasons. Foremost is the speed at which it built up. As we uncovered layer after layer of deposits, we felt that what we were seeing must have accumulated over millennia, but we were wrong. Our 18 radiocarbon dates indicate that 6 metres of deposit accumulated in about 500 years. There is a simple explanation: many of the layers are of ash or accumulations of shellfish. A spate of burning, to clear a patch in the forest, or a feast of cockles, could form a thick new layer in a matter of hours. This rapid accumulation has led to a very rare occurrence in prehistoric archaeology – a cemetery in which the burials lie in a well-defined vertical sequence.

Everybody in their proper place

The cemetery occupies the lowest 6 metres of the site. We uncovered 155 burials. The graves were grouped in tight clusters, set out in a neat pattern like a draughtboard, separated by open spaces. There are many prehistoric cemeteries with similar patterns but in each case, new clusters of graves lie alongside earlier ones, producing what is known as ‘horizontal stratigraphy’. At Khok Phanom Di, however, the pace of accumulation was such that bodies were placed above each other. This means that it is easy to place each burial in its sequence. It also sets us intriguing social questions which need careful consideration.

First, what happened when someone died? There was an underlying tradition but also a series of subtle changes through the 500 years of the sequence. The corpse was covered in red ochre, clothed and laid out usually with some artefacts. Pottery vessels were often placed with the dead along with shell ornaments, occasionally a stone adze or the clay anvils or burnishing stones used in the shaping and decoration of pots. The body was wrapped in a shroud made of a beaten, not woven, fabric and then placed on a wooden bier. We think that burial followed soon after death, for in two cases we found the partially digested last meal still in the area of the stomach. A place was then prepared for the interment. This was a serious issue. In no case was an earlier corpse disturbed. Rather, a wooden collective tomb was opened and the dead were placed alongside and over other graves. In nearly all cases, the head pointed towards the rising Sun. This ritual applied to people of all ages from newly born to adults. Indeed, on occasions we find females buried with infants, or adults placed in the same grave as teenagers. It seems, though, that infants who did not survive the first few weeks of life were buried without ornaments or pots.

When we turn to the areas between these wooden structures, we find middens and circular pits containing food remains. There are often discrete deposits of ash as well. It is almost inconceivable that people lived over tombs in pole houses and tipped refuse onto the ground, for the presumed houses would not have been big enough to live in. Nor does it seem likely that the middens were just a convenient place for dumping food, for this fails to explain the carefully dug circular pits found nearby. The best explanation is that the middens and ash represent feasting for the dead.

With time, the basic rites of death showed modifications; from these we recognise seven mortuary phases. The first half dozen graves were not clustered at all, and they could muster only one shell bead between them. The lowest layers also provide clear evidence for the tasks which faced the founding settlers who buried these dead. They burned much of the local vegetation to clear a place to live in. Two caches each contained a group of blunt stone adzeheads, perhaps set aside for sharpening, and the anvils and burnishing stones used in making pottery. There are also thick layers of ash at this level, which we interpret as the remains of firing pots on a raft of timbers.

The cemetery took on a more formal arrangement during the second phase, perhaps during the second or third generation. We found six clusters of graves (clusters A to F), in which successive burials were interred in a southerly direction. By this time, pits were cut alongside each cluster. During the third mortuary phase, a shell midden a metre thick accumulated and its layout exactly complements the burials. The edges of the midden even form straight lines and follow right angled turns. It could only have built up in this way if the shells accumulated against structures of some sort. Mortuary phase 4 saw a preference for digging separate graves, although in the clusters A and E there were double graves each containing an adult and child. Cluster B ceased to be represented.

A major change took place with phase 5. We found only four burials from this sequence, representing an adult woman, a man and two infants. The woman occupied a very large grave. She was so rich that we nicknamed her ‘The Princess’. Her body had been liberally covered with red ochre, and her garments were embroidered with about 121,000 shell disc beads. Another 950 large, translucent I-shaped beads lay in the chest area, together with two horned shell discs, one placed on each shoulder. The Princess wore a shell bracelet and a headdress of which the shell discs at the base survive. Ten smashed pots, some of great beauty, were heaped over her legs, and a shell container for her burnishing pebbles, together with a clay anvil, lay beside the right ankle. Before the grave was filled in, a heap of clay cylinders representing stored clay was placed over the body, and two further pottery vessels balanced on top of it.

The man remains enigmatic: only his toes extended into our square, but the two infants were also richly endowed with grave goods and ritual. The first contained the remains of a 15-month-old, interred in a grave large enough for an adult. The infant received an almost identical set of grave goods as the Princess: 12,247 shell disc beads, 200 of the rare I-shaped beads, four superb pots and a shell bracelet placed over the left wrist. Beside the right ankle we found a miniature clay anvil. In the chest area of the Princess, we found two blobs of a purplish substance interpreted as a nipple ornament: we found exactly the same with the infant, hinting that it might have been a baby girl. Finally, the body was covered by another pile of clay cylinders. The second infant was buried within two large, expertly crafted and ornamented pots, along with two smaller vessels and 250 shell beads in a unique circular grave.

With mortuary phase 6, we find two distinct groups of graves. The first consists of a linear arrangement of eight individuals, two women, two men and four infants, including twins. The bodies were buried in a sequence from north to south. One of the women was buried just north of the Princess’s grave, but the whole group had only 15 beads between them. In contrast, three contemporary graves lay under a raised building with clay walls just east of this poor group. Here, we found the remains of two women and a child who shared 21,000 beads. The 9-year-old child had a large shell disc beside its head. The final mortuary phase is represented by a handful of graves, only partially within the excavated area.

Family resemblance?

What was the relationship between those buried in each cluster? Perhaps each represents successive generations of the same family. Phrapid Choosiri, one of our Thai colleagues, has tested this by examining the presence of skeletal abnormalities that are determined genetically. She found that people buried close together were more likely to share unusual features of the skull, teeth and limb bones. We also considered women and infants interred near each other. Examination of stress marks on the female pelvis shows that the women could have carried at least the number of infants interred with them. Pots buried in adjacent graves sometimes have similar form and decoration, some infants even having miniature versions of the larger vessels found with adults. Finally, the people of Khok Phanom Di underwent a ritual of tooth removal. We find that individuals in one cluster had a different set of teeth removed from those in another.

With our hypothesis intact, we then built up genealogical sequences, prehistoric family trees, for two of the clusters, C and F. These two endured throughout mortuary phases 2 to 6, whereas the others fizzled out. This allowed a further test: did each genealogy show a similar number of generations over the same sequence? One has 16, the other 15. If we add one or two generations each for mortuary phases 1 and 7, for which it is hard to link any graves specifically with either cluster, we have about 20 generations, adding up to perhaps 400 to 500 years. This figure matches the radiocarbon chronology perfectly.

Accepting that these clusters contain people from the same family down the generations offers a rare, possibly unique, possibility of tracking the development of social order and change alongside a crystal clear chronology and of linking these with our knowledge of the technological skills, economic customs and prevailing environmental conditions. The people of Khok Phanom Di lived in a commanding strategic location on a large, sheltered estuary. The tropical estuary is one of the world’s richest habitats, a nutrient trap with a food chain based on the productivity of the mangroves. The chain begins with leaves, proceeds through shrimps, crabs and fish and ends with human beings. People lived on a marine diet, supplemented from freshwater marshes by rice, which they may have cultivated or harvested from wild plants. The human bones were robustly built, reflecting a good diet. But all was not well. The bones also reveal endemic diseases that would have at best lessened vitality and at worst proved lethal. This helps to explain why so many infants died during all phases, but particularly during the earlier part of the sequence. It could also be the reason why some families failed to endure.

Life in prehistory was fragile. The average life expectancy at Khok Phanom Di was 28 years and few survived beyond 35. Leadership and status in this community were in the hands of people whom we would now regard as very young. There was little time or chance to make your mark. Despite this, we have convincing evidence that status was very important, through the relative wealth of individual graves. The two family trees reveal an intriguing pattern. Neither achieved a monopoly on wealth, if wealth is measured in terms of shell jewellery, pottery vessels and other grave goods. Some individuals, however, stand out. But such richly-endowed adults, often interred with wealthy infants, were succeeded by poorer descendants. Even the Princess was followed, if our genealogy is correct, by a poor adult daughter and granddaughter. As in most family trees, some ancestors were successful and others were not. In the case of the people of Khok Phanom Di, status was attained through achievement. It seems that those who attained high esteem displayed it by giving their dead children a rich burial, but status and wealth were not inherited by adults from their parents as of right.

A society of ‘Big Women’

This, in essence, is the ‘Big Man’ system. But at Khok Phanom Di, we find that the later generations were dominated numerically, and in terms of wealth, by women. We believe that a closer examination of the environment and the graves holds the key to understanding this most unusual situation. Khok Phanom Di is located near clay that is ideally suited to making pots. Only some women and infants were buried with the clay anvils used in shaping vessels, however, but men and women were found with the burnishing stones used to give the clay a glossy, metallic finish. If, indeed, the women alone commanded the skills to make masterpieces from clay, then they would have been highly valued members of the group. We know that these people contributed to a far-reaching exchange system through which they acquired high-quality stone, exotic shell and even the red ochre used in mortuary rituals. Women who could make and feed superb pottery vessels into this system could have accumulated other goods and esteem through their own ability. Just such a system has been observed in Melanesia during the past 50 years. Individual women of Sabarl Island can achieve high status through their initiative in organising successful trading expeditions.

Such a community would be unwise to lose specialist potters to other groups through marriage. Therefore, we feel that there was an increasing trend for daughters to stay in the home village, and for these girls to assume the critical roles of mothers for the next generation and specialists in fashioning pots destined to be used in rituals and for trade. This trend towards what we might call ‘matrilocality’, or a matrilineal system, rests on the survival of girls to adulthood. Might this help us to appreciate the attention given to the burial, for example, of the ‘Princess’s daughter’? So, our shaft of light has illuminated a community that prospered against a background of ill health, and survived for 500 years in its estuarine setting. It knew no shortage of food, and despite its size and complexity, most food was gathered, netted or collected. Only when we consider many intertwined strands of evidence can we begin to appreciate the pace and nature of social change.

The founding ancestors struggled with the clearance of mangrove forest and established a pottery-making centre. By degrees, they established exchange networks. Some families survived, others failed. Men and women started out equal – we found men and women of similar wealth and esteem until about the twelfth generation, when the ‘Big Women’ began to grow more prominent. After about 20 generations, however, something happened that brought a tradition built up over half a millennium to an end. The sea fell away from their village, the estuary silted up, the 21st generation moved elsewhere and with it, the light which flickered briefly over this episode fails.

Charles Higham is professor of anthropology at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. Rachanie Bannanurag is on the research staff of the Thai Fine Arts Department, Bangkok.