Khao Sam Kaeo () is an archaeological site in Thailand's Chumphon province. It is located in Na Cha-ang subdistrict of Mueang Chumphon district, just north of the town of Chumphon, on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula, at the Kra Isthmus. Dated 400–100 BCE, Khao Sam Kaeo served as an extremely important port, as well as a crossroads for Asian connection and interaction, as it sat between the cultural regions of the South China Sea and the Bay of Bengal. There is evidence that material had come from the South China Sea, the Philippines, and Taiwan—all part of the maritime silk road of the time—proving the important technological and cultural connections between the site and these locations. This not only reveals the fact that people from across Asia ended up in Khao Sam Kaeo, but it also supports the idea that there was a transfer of ideas. When reviewing the material culture found at Khao Sam Kaeo, the transfer of ideas and trans-Asian connection becomes abundantly clear, especially when looking at ceramics, stone adzes, pendants, and jewelry. Data and research also point to the idea that foreign craftsmen stayed for long periods of time at Khao Sam Kaeo. Pottery and stone works made in an Indian technical style yet supposedly made locally support this idea. Collectively, evidence regarding material culture, raw materials, and biological data support the idea that the connections made at Khao Sam Kaeo were more than just trade and diffusion.
Settlement Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit place the site in a wider movement. By the 4th or 5th century BCE there were settlements on the middle peninsula using portage routes to join the trade systems of the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, and between the 4th and 2nd centuries BCE a large Indian-style settlement appeared at Khao Sam Kaeo on the east coast.
Khao Sam Kaeo was settled around four hills, with most of the settlement being located on the hills as the lower areas were believed to have been subjected to periodic flooding. The western side of the site contains the Tha Tapao river. The eastern side contains mostly earth embankments that archaeologists working at the site have referred to as walls. Some of these have been determined as man-made and some have been interpreted, based on their structure, to be ramparts. The overall analysis of the site has shown that the people living in Khao Sam Kaeo used the natural geography of the area as part of their creation of walls and ditches, often working around the natural environment when building their structures. Near Wall 8 located along the eastern plateau of Hill 3, there contained occupational layers associated with iron-forging and then eventually the production of stone ornaments. Glass working areas have been found around the base of Hill 2 and the top of Hill 4. Unfortunately, it has been difficult for archaeologists to determine the use of wooden structures, as any signs of their use would have been eroded away from upper levels of the site. Charles Higham gives the site as 52 hectares at its greatest extent during the last four centuries BCE, with at least 17 hectares inside the walls. Deposits under several wall sections held glass, carnelian and agate ornaments with radiocarbon dates in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE.
Within the settlement, the same problem occurs. Heavy erosion and modern disturbances have made it difficult to find things in situ—in their original place. Despite this, two communal terraces have been located. One is located at the base of Hill 1 along with remains of two structures and some footpaths. Different occupation layers have also been discovered through the use of newer floor layers being added on top of old ones, with some of these layers showing remains of hearths and postholes (locations where wooden posts were placed for structures).
Only one substantiated burial has been found in relation to Khao Sam Kaeo. Along the northern edge of Valley 3, a funerary urn containing the cremated remains of two children has been found. The ages of these remains have been determined as 11–15 years old, and 0–2 years old. No additional information about these remains has been recorded.
Trade
Significance as a cultural port
Khao Sam Kaeo served as a major cross-cultural port and center for trade of goods, materials, and culture. Analysis of goods at the site reveals that trade was not sporadic, leading to the adoption of foreign technology or ideas, but a socially significant, multicultural long term interaction. A key characteristic of trade at Khao Sam Kaeo is the culturally significant adoption of technology at the local level. Evidence also points to the possibility the South Asian and South Asian trained artisans actually adapted their work to fulfill the demand by Southeast Asia. Copper metallurgical typologies found at the site reflect Vietnamese, Southern Asian, and Han technologies, revealing the importance of Khao Sam Kaeo as a center of trade triangulation.
Ceramic data reveal that techniques such as paddle impressions as well as polishing techniques found at the site have been linked to Sa-Huynh-Kalanay as well as the Philippines. Stone remains have also revealed the presence of foreign goods and raw materials from Taiwan and the Philippines. Complex connections between Khao Sam Khao and India can be seen through many technical wares as well as raw materials. Although some of the goods found in the archaeological record seem to have been foreign imports, many are produced with foreign techniques with local motifs. This complexifies the relationships between foreign influences and Khao Sam Kaeo. The relationships seemed to extend enough to create a long term impact upon local artisanship. The presence of goods crafted with local materials and foreign techniques also support the fact that foreign artisans stayed at Khao Sam Kaeo for periods of time. Trade at Khao Sam Khao extended beyond single interactions of import and export. Trade at this site included the trade of ideas, technology, and culture. Interactions between Southeast Asia and foreign cultures were highly complex, and showcased the non-colonial transfer of ideas.
Hsiao-chun Hung and Peter Bellwood set the site in a network that carried nephrite around the South China Sea after about 500 BCE from a single known source, the Fengtian outcrop near Hualien in eastern Taiwan. Khao Sam Kaeo has yielded cut square blanks and drilled-out cores of that nephrite, which they read as finishing work on material shipped in ready-cut, and they call it the only documented production centre of the late first millennium BCE. Ornaments and cut fragments of green muscovite, so-called Mindoro jade, occur there alongside the Taiwan nephrite; the authors know of no source for it other than Mindoro Island in the Philippines. Incised and stamped pottery of the kind Wilhelm Solheim linked to Kalanay Cave in the central Philippines has been found at the site and in caves in Chumphon province. They suggest the site may have held enclaves of immigrants from India, southern Vietnam, Borneo or the Philippines, and add that whether any one group controlled the exchange system cannot be known.
Beads and glass Beads at Khao Sam Kaeo provide deep insight into trade relations happening over time. Data regarding beads reveal contact between Khao Sam Kaeo and Mediterranean regions. Roman intaglios have been found, made of yellow carnelian, featuring carvings of Roman gods. Glass fragments, of cobalt blue, found at Khao Sam Kaeo also indicate Mediterranean trade presence.
A study done analyzing the chemical composition of glass beads at Khao Sam Kaeo reveal that there are multiple glass types and compositions found at the site. This suggests that the sources from which the beads were made came from different places, aiding in the idea of foreign practice at Khao Sam Kaeo, as well as high levels of trade. In general, the composition of the tested glass pieces revealed that the main colorant was composed of copper. The analysis also revealed that titanium was also present in all the samples taken across the sites. The connection and similarities between the glass piece composition highlights the importance of Khao Sam Kaeo as not only a crossroads for economics, but also art and culture. This further expands the potential importance of Khao Sam Kaeo to Thailand, and the rest of Southeast Asia.
Sing C. Chew uses the site against the model of Indian craftsmen settling in the region. He cites Bérénice Bellina's own statement that no concentration of production waste, and no other Indian material pointing to a resident Indian group, has been found at Khao Sam Kaeo. Other readings of Bellina's work run the other way. Charles Higham writes that the ornaments she recovered are finer than much Indian work, which he takes as a possible sign that Indian craftspeople came to the site. Sharada Srinivasan treats the site's nippled ingot moulds, which resemble crucibles from West Bengal and Rajasthan, as support for Bellina's argument that South Asian artisans settled there or trained local workers. Robert Theunissen, Peter Grave and Grahame Bailey found by geochemical analysis that most of the Thai agate and carnelian beads they examined came from a source outside India. They concluded that carnelian beads were made in Southeast Asia from early in the Iron Age, most probably under local control. Ian Glover and Bellina reached a comparable result for the glass beads of Ban Don Ta Phet. Chew argues that the older picture rests on an Indocentric habit of mind rather than on the excavated evidence, and proposes hybridization, an exchange weighted to neither side, in its place.
Metallurgy
Copper When looking at copper based atrial culture found at Khao Sam Kaeo, there are three major metallurgical traditions: South Asian, Vietnamese, and Han Chinese traditions. Data also reveals that these artifacts were produced skillfully, and that the metalworkers at Khao Sam Kaeo had robust knowledge of multilateral metalworking. Based on a lack of evidence that copper was mined and smelted locally, the copper and copper-alloy items located at the site were most likely made from imported materials. Most of the copper-alloy artifacts found here have been decorated vessels and ornaments. Knobbed bowls with high levels of tin have been found. This typological form has been found throughout the Indian subcontinent, most prominently dating between the third and second centuries BCE, and indicate a transmission of ideas that made their way to Southeast Asia.
Along with metalwork being an important import, either regarding finished products or technology, Khao Sam Kaeo’s export power can be showcased well when looking at metal artifacts. Evidence reveals that metalworkers at Khao Sam Kaeo were producing high-tin bronze ingots for export as well as for production tools. These high-tin bronze artifacts reflected mainly ornamental purposes, with a wide range of cultural technologies. The way in which these metal pieces were produced reflects the idea that cross cultural technology was utilized for export production. Sharada Srinivasan reads the slag and technical ceramics as evidence that a cassiterite cementation or co-smelting process was in use by the middle or later first millennium BCE to make high-tin bronze ingots, for export or for use on the site. She compares the site's distinctive nippled ingot moulds with crucibles associated with a high-tin bronze ingot at Tilpi in West Bengal and with nippled crucibles from Dariba in Rajasthan, and concludes that the technology of high-tin bronze production is more likely to have travelled from South Asia to Southeast Asia than the other way, as had been more widely believed. Higham likewise treats the site as a possible high-tin bronze production centre.