(I018)10/25 years of lead isotope archaeology in Southeast Asia

摘要

The production, exchange and consumption of copper and its alloys have been a core interest of Southeast Asian archaeologists ever since the region's Bronze Age was discovered over 50 years ago. Early progress was made with the technical analysis of selected Thai copper/bronze assemblages by Robert Maddin and Tamara Stech during the 1970s, and these advances were reinforced by the long-term field and laboratory efforts of the Thailand Archaeometallurgy Project on copper production sites, co-directed by Vincent Pigott and Surapol Natapintu, in the 1980s. What did not appear at this time, to link production and consumption, was the systematic application of the already relatively well-established technique of lead isotope analysis.