Further Evidence of Heterarchy in Bronze Age Thailand 1 Dougald J. W. OʼReilly Key words: Archaeology, Southeast Asia, Heterarchy, Hierarchy Introduction Intensive archaeological research in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam is a relatively recent development and the deinition of the socio-political organization of prehistoric Southeast Asian populations is in its infancy. As the number of excavated sites grows, it is becoming possible to form a more comprehensive picture of the prehistoric peoples of this area. This said, it must be stressed that attempts to reconstruct the socio-political milieu in prehistoric societies, based on archaeological material, are fraught with dificulties such as differential taphonomy and the interpretation of mortuary contexts. Whether or not the materials interred with the dead are an accurate relection of their position in life may be debated. The judiciousness of applying models of socio-political organization to different cultures far removed in space and time may also be called into question. Many of our conceptions of the prehistory of Southeast Asia have been formed with regard to an inlexible framework. In applying the various theories of social development to Southeast Asia it is apparent that they do not accord well with the data. However, White (1995) has proposed an alternative concept based upon the work of Crumley (1979). It is the aim of this paper to provide further evidence from a recently excavated Bronze Age (c. 1500- 500 BC) site in present-day Northeast Thailand that will attest the value of the concept proposed by White for Southeast Asia. Prior to the excavation of Ban Lum Khao in Amphoe Non Sung, Nakhon Ratchasima Province (ig. 1), our impressions of life during the Bronze Age in Northeast Thailand were drawn largely from just three sites. Non Nok Tha, located in the Chi River Basin, represents one of the irst large-scale explorations of a Bronze Age cemetery in Thailand, comprising 217 mortuary contexts (Bayard 1984). Ban Na Di, located in the Pao River Valley, contained sixty burials (Higham and Kijngam 1984). Ban Chiang, located in the upper reaches of the Songkhram Valley, has been excavated on a number of occasions revealing many burials from the Bronze and Iron Ages (Gorman and Charoenwongsa 1976; White, 1986). It is apparent that these sites harbor similarities, most notably the lack of evidence for an entrenched hierarchical order. Site surveys carried out in the Songkhram region (Kijngam, et al. 1980) found no evidence for regional