section_path: Asia/Southeast Asia/Thailand
section_name: Thailand
paragraph_text: Thailand
  
  In Ban Chiang, Thailand, (Southeast Asia) bronze artefacts have been discovered dating to 2100 BC. However, according to the radiocarbon dating on the human and pig bones in Ban Chiang, some scholars propose that the initial Bronze Age in Ban Chiang was in the late 2nd millennium. In Nyaunggan, Burma, bronze tools have been excavated along with ceramics and stone artefacts. Dating is still currently broad (3500–500 BC). Ban Non Wat, excavated by Charles Higham, was a rich site with over 640 graves excavated that gleaned many complex bronze items that may have had social value connected to them.
  
  Ban Chiang, however, is the most thoroughly documented site and has the clearest evidence of metallurgy when in Southeast Asia. With a rough date range from the late 3rd millennium BC to the first millennium AD, this site alone has artefacts such as burial pottery (dating from 2100 to 1700 BC) and fragments of bronze and copper-base bangles. This technology suggested on-site casting from the very beginning. The on-site casting supports the theory that bronze was first introduced in Southeast Asia from a different country. Some scholars believe that copper-based metallurgy was disseminated from northwest and central China south and southwest via areas such as Guangdong province and Yunnan province and finally into southeast Asia around 1000 BC. Archaeology also suggests that Bronze Age metallurgy may not have been as significant a catalyst in social stratification and warfare in Southeast Asia as in other regions, and that social distribution shifted away from chiefdom-states to a heterarchical network. Data analyses of sites such as Ban Lum Khao, Ban Na Di, Non-Nok Tha, Khok Phanom Di, and Nong Nor have consistently led researchers to conclude that there was no entrenched hierarchy.