Description: Digging for bones and pottery.
Location: Phimai, Thailand
Description: Out in the field taking notes.
Location: Ban Marum, Thailand
Description: The salt on the soil surface will be harvested by the salt makers.
Location: Ban Marum, Thailand
Description: Pottery from excavation
Location: Bohol, Philippines
Salt has been an important natural resource in Northeast Thailand from as early as the Iron Age up until the present. The unique geology and climate of the region ensures that salt resources are widely available during the dry season. Recent research and interviews with local salt makers have provided important information about this traditional technology and the economics of this seasonal activity. This data will help us identify and interpret archaeological features and artifacts associated with salt-making, and the salt working mound sites, which are widespread throughout the region.
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The island of Bohol has a long and rich tradition of using and producing earthenware pottery. Earthenware pottery has been recovered from archaeological sites dating from the Metal Age (500 BC - 960 AD), and earlier, in various regions of the island. Much of this pottery shows similarities in style and form with pottery recovered from neighboring islands in the Central Philippines and beyond. This suggests that there was either an active trade in pottery between the islands, or the movement of people or ideas that manifested itself archaeologically as regional pottery styles.
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Recent ethnographic research identified four towns in Bohol that still produce earthenware "market" pottery - the towns of Taliban, Calape, Alburquerque and Valencia. Most of this pottery is made using traditional methods, i.e, it is hand-made and open-air fired.
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Salt was an important commodity in many of the world's early economies. It was widely produced, traded, used and consumed. Traditionally, salt was procured from a variety of sources including salt rock, brine springs and seawater. Areas rich in these resources developed ways to exploit them, and those without the natural resources found ways to obtain it through trade.
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In August 1998 a Metal Age burial site was discovered during a construction project in District Ubujan, Tagbilaran City, Bohol, Central Philippines. The site was destroyed but many of the artifacts were recovered and donated to the provincial museum in Tagbilaran City. This included over 1800 earthenware sherds, 78 earthenware vessels, 130 glass beads, 31 fragments of iron tools, 96 human teeth, and a few glass bracelets and shell and stone artifacts.
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