Human skeletal remains excavated at Ban Chiang provide physical anthropologists withexceptional opportunity for describing the prehistoric inhabitants of the Khorat Plateau ofNortheast Thailand.In this paper dental and skeletal information will be used to describesome of the major morphological,demographic and epidemiological characteristics of theseearly populations.More specifically;what did these ancient inhabitants look like?Howold were they when they died?What sort of food did they eat?What diseases did they suffer?And who, amongst the known prehistoric and more recent inhabitants of this and surroundingregions, do they resemble most?Answers to these and other important questions are onlynow beginning to emerge;answers which already allow first glimpses of who these ancientinhabitants were and, at the same time, are helping to dispel some of the'myths' which havearisen since their initial discovery by modern humans nearly a decade and a half ago.Altogether, the remains of approximately 127 individuals (including
both
sexes and allage groups) are represented in the remains from Ban Chiang.Forty-sixskeletons wereexcavated in 1974, and an additional 81 were removed during the following (1975) season offieldwork. The burials from both seasons'fieldwork have been assigned to one or more ofthe site's six prehistoric funerary phases described by Gorman and Chareowongsa (1976).In a few instances earlier (phases I-III) and later (phases IY-YI) burials are compared for investigating the possible existence of temporary trends at the site". For the most part, however,interpretations are based on samples which include remains from all six prehistoric culturalphases.The six phases date from approximately 3600 B.C.to 300 B.C., or a time period ofroughly 3000 years, which may be referred to as the Early Metal Age of Thailand.The sample from Ban Chiang represents one of the largest, best provenanced and wellpreserved samples of human skeletal remains from Northeast Thailand (and quite possiblySoutheast Asia) now available for describing the early inhabitants of the Khorat
Plateau?.
Altogether, the study of the human remains from Ban Chiang required nearly six yearsto complete.The project involved two seasons of excavation, arduous laboratory work andextensive statistical analyses requiring the use of computers.The assistance and varied talentsof a great many students and staff of the University of Hawaii, where most of the laboratoryand analytical work was completed, are gratefully acknowledged.Without their help thispaper could never have been written. More detailed accounts of the work which deal withthe human remains from this site are presented in Pietrusewsky
(1978,1981
,n.d.).A moregeneral summary is also available (pietrusewsky, 1982.