The Identity at Death of the Old and Young from the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages on the Southeast Asian Mainland

Abstract

The aim of this research was to undertake a mortuary analysis to explore the identity-at death of the young and old from four prehistoric Thai populations. The mortuary analysis sought to understand if each age group was exposed to normative or atypical funerary treatment over time as a predicate of differential, or shared, social views towards each age group. While studies, focussed on the young, have begun to emerge from prehistoric Southeast Asia the elderly remain under-researched. Research objectives sought to understand the significance and socially prescribed attitudes and behaviours towards each cohort, as expressed through the mortuary process. Indicators of potential transitional age barriers related to the young and the elderly were also explored.

The four cemetery populations comprised over 800 burials and provided the funerary data for this research. The sites spanned the archaeologically defined periods from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. One site, Khok Phanom Di (2000-1500BCE, Neolithic), was found in Prachanburi Province, Central Thailand, and the remaining three sites, Ban Lum Khao (1400-500BCE, Bronze Age), Ban Non Wat (1750BCE-CE500, Neolithic to Iron Age) and Noen U-Loke (400BCE-CE400, Iron Age) being found in Nakhon Ratchasima Province of Northeast Thailand. It was hypothesised that biosocial age was an important structuring element of social organisation in each community. It was further hypothesised that mortuary data for elderly subjects would demonstrate that the experience of ageing was unlikely to be expressed similarly over time following the attainment of an adult personhood status.

Biosocial analysis was based on a series of mortuary evidence commonly found in archaeological studies related to human burial, including features of the grave, spatial distribution, health, fauna, and material culture. Mortuary data was explored for each site individually; at a temporal level through the application of linear modelling and, to a lesser degree, between each geographic region. A recently developed ageing technique was applied to re-evaluate the age-at-death of adult subjects from Khok Phanom Di, Ban Lum Khao and Noen U-Loke with preliminary age assessments from Ban Non Wat retained.

While variable across time, the results suggest that age, and an age-identity, was an important structuring element, as observed through the mortuary sphere, of each site’s social organisation. Evidence suggested broad differences in funerary practices between adults and subadults but also notes changing attitudes to children developing over time. Inferences of transitional age barriers related to children, but not the elderly, are seen in limited contexts. Results showed that the experience of adulthood, expressed through the funerary space, was not universal with, in many instances, evidence indicating that elderly subjects may have been afforded select, or elevated status based on their age in some contexts. Further research, either theoretical or methodological, focussed on elderly subjects is supported.