The World Heritage site of Ban Chiang in Thailand is a quite particular case within the cultural
heritage sites registered in Thailand. It was registered in 1992, the year after both Sukhothai and its
satellite sites as well Ayutthaya were registered into the World Heritage List.
Its registration was certainly a fruit of different timing in the application process, its push toward a
WHS listing was mostly denoted by the fact of being a “first” - for iron smelting, rice cultivation - or
at least that was the major point of it. While more recent discoveries have modified such a primacy -
mostly due to erroneous dating of the Ban Chiang material - the site was also subjected to looting and
illegal digging of the renowned painted pottery coming from the site itself.
For UNESCO standards of the period, Ban Chiang was also a very particular site, as it did not have
any outstanding architecture, but simply tombs.
Its registration was therefore conceived in a different perspective than the two previous sites of
Sukhothai and Ayutthaya, which were part of the Thai Archaeological Heritage Discourse, while Ban
Chiang was reputedly to be included as a “first” only.
Fruit of repeated onsite visits at Ban Chiang, this paper will analyse the site itself, and the differences
between the management of its heritage, as well as its interaction with both local and national
stakeholders.