In late December 2012, the fourth and final phase of the $300,000 Penn Museum Luce Program to Strengthen Southeast Asian Archaeology begins. Its focus is Luang Prabang Province, Laos, where the Museum’s Middle Mekong Archaeological Project (MMAP) has conducted surveys, test excavations and related multi-disciplinary studies since 2005. Nattha Chuenwattana, a Thai PhD student from [...]
How many undergrads get to see current archaeological research up close—as in, under a microscope? The 15 Penn undergraduates taking Dr. Marie-Claude Boileau’s new Spring semester course “Archaeology and Science” got to view samples of ceramic and metal objects from Ban Chiang, a site excavated by Penn Museum in Northeast Thailand. One year after the [...]
Photo Caption: “If these pots could talk…” Illustration by Ardeth Anderson Abrams Penn Museum Scholars presents Joyce White, Associate Curator for Asia and Director of the Ban Chiang Project Marie-Claude Boileau, Postdoctoral Scholar in archaeological ceramics Wednesday, September 21st 12:30 pm • Classroom #2 Pottery excavated from the UNESCO World Heritage site of Ban Chiang, Thailand [...]
Chet surveying on a river in northern Thailand. A couple of months ago, I attended an evening talk at the Penn Museum where movies of the Ban Chiang Project’s first director, Chester Gorman, were part of the speaker’s PowerPoint presentation. As I watched the grainy images of Chester (a. k. a. Chet) Gorman excavating at [...]
Wednesday afternoon Every Wednesday at noon, I attend the Introduction to Archaeological Ceramics II class in the Museum’s new ceramics lab, taught by Dr. Marie-Claude Boileau. I listen and try to understand the very technical lectures about things like petrographic thin section analysis, which is how to explain what kind of mineral we saw in [...]
Survey at Ban Pone, Pen District, Udorn Thani Province, NE Thailand, 1999. Photo by Korokot Boonlop Let’s go to Pen! In 1999, three friends and I went to Udorn Thani Province in Northeast Thailand to participate in the Ban Chiang Cultural Tradition Project at Ban Pone, Pen District. We were all archaeological students from Silpakorn [...]
