Ban Chiang Pottery

No evidence related to the establishing history.

Baked Clay

It is a pottery in the tomb found from excavations of Ban Chiang Archaeological Site. It can be classified as follows:

1.Early periods, at least between 4,300-3,000 years old.

Phase 1 There are prominent types of potteries which are black-dark gray potteries with a low base. The upper half of the container is often decorated with curved lines with pressed dots and short lines. The lower half of the container is often decorated with handprint rope which is the pattern resulting from pressing the pottery surface with a rope.

Phase 2 New type of pottery began to appear. It was a large pottery used to hold the bodies of children before being buried. There was also an ordinary-sized pottery with most of the surface outside of the container decorated with curved lines and that makes it seems like it was the container with more lines decorated than the one of the early periods.

Phrase 3 Appeared potteries with the straight side wall or almost straight resulting in having a beaker-shaped container. There was also a short, round-necked pot with a straight mouth. It was decorated with handprinted rope on the entire container.

Phase 4 Appeared round bottom pottery. The shoulder area of the pottery was decorated with curved lines mixed with red painting. While the part under the shoulder area was decorated with handprinted rope. This pottery was called “Om Kaew" because it was the main pottery type found in Ban Om Kaew, which was not far from Ban Chiang, during the prehistoric period.

2.Middle periods, at least between 3,000-2,000 years old. The outer surface area of the pottery is white with clear sharp or curve angles in most of the shoulder areas. There are both round and pointed bottoms. Some of the potteries were decorated with stripes mixed with color painted near the mouth of the container and during the end of the middle period, the mouth of this type of pottery were decorated with red paint.

3.Late periods: between 2,300-1,800 years ago

The early times of the Late periods: found potteries with red color painted on a soft color surface.

The middle time of the Late periods: started to use potteries with red color painted on a red surface.

The late times of the Late periods: started to use potteries painted with red color then wax.

The pattern that appears on the potteries can be classified as follows:

1. Geometrical motifs

2. Free symmetry pattern

3. Asymmetrical balanced pattern groups

The popular patterns in the late periods were to color on the soft clay coating with circle or oval patterns, spiral patterns, spiral towards the center patterns, spiral towards the center, then looping out, and the S and Z patterns.

The pattern of the container shows meticulousness of the potters. They created the potteries for the dead according to tradition and belief about death. The basic idea of the pattern creator in the community is culturally mutual but there were varieties of patterns appearing at the same time. In the initial stages, the patterns were simple and later, when the potters had more expertise, the patterns gradually became more and more complex.

Pottery with red lines patterns. Even though the exact meaning of the patterns are not known but it is considered a significant characteristic, unlike other places, of Ban Chiang Culture.

สุรพล นาถะพินธุ. มรดกโลกบ้านเชียง. กรุงเทพฯ : กรมศิลปากร, 2550.

อัตถสิทธิ์ สุขขำ. การศึกษาและลำดับอายุจากลวดลายบนผิวภาชนะดินเผาในหลุมฝังศพกลุ่มวัฒนธรรมบ้านเชียงสมัยปลาย : กรณีศึกษาจากการขุดค้นหลุมขุดค้นวัดโพธิ์ศรีใน ตำบลบ้านเชียง อำเภอหนองหาน จังหวัดอุดรธานี. สารนิพนธ์ปริญญาศิลปศาสตรบัณฑิต (โบราณคดี) มหาวิทยาลัยศิลปากร, 2547.