User:Gcecchi2/Ban Kao

I think that this article did a good job at giving a basic overview of the site of Ban Kao, however it is clearly not a complete article as there are only three sections and each section has less than a paragraph of content. Each claim has a citation which indicates to me that the citations are strong and accurate.

Peer review: From what I can see in the already existing article, there's not any new information being added in this draft, which is disappointing. There are no references in the references section and the geography paragraph is copy-pasted from the original article; nice for constructing an article draft that doesn't completely rewrite the existing article but again, there's no new information in this draft in it's current state.

Article Draft

Ban Kao (Thai: บ้านเก่า, pronounced [bâːn kàw]; lit: 'old village') is a tambon (sub-district) of Mueang Kanchanaburi District, in Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand. In 2017, it had a population of 16,147 people. The tambon contains 15 villages. This network of villages had its origins in northern China and this is reinforced by pottery and ceramic fragments. The pottery and ceramic fragments found at Ban Kao highlight it's archaeological significance in Southeast Asia; some of these fragments are currently being kept at the Ban Kao National Museum.

Geography

Ban Kao sub-district is in the mountainous area of the Tenasserim Hills, close to the border with Myanmar.The Khwae Noi River runs through the northern part of the Ban Kao sub-district. Phu Nam Ron, a transnational cross-border point at the western end of the sub-district, is expected to gain in importance if the planned Dawei Port Project goes ahead, along with a highway and a railway line between Bangkok and that harbor.

History

The sub-district was created effective June 1973 by splitting off 7 administrative villages from the sub-district Chorakhe Phueak of Mueang Kanchanaburi.

In the year 1961, Per Søresen, a native of Denmark, led this Thai-Danish excavation team in the Ban Kao archaeological expeditions at a site that was approximately 400m off of the southern banks of the Khwae Noi river. Søresen's excavations has led to the recognition of three different cultural phases at the Ban Kao site. These three phases were an Early Neolithic phase, a Late Neolithic phase, and an Iron Age phase. Numerous Neolithic archaeological remains have been found in a big mound at Ban Kao. The burial site yielded many human skeletons and artifacts dating between 200 and 1300 B.C.E. Some of the items are preserved in a small museum in Ban Kao village. Other findings, like those of the Thai-Danish Prehistoric Expedition who excavated Ban Kao from 1960-62, found skeletons with short ovoid skulls and medium and broad faces. Twenty-six skeletons were recovered majority of people lived an estimated age of less than 30 years and only two lived more than 40 years.  Many of these skeletons have similar characteristics of present day inhabitants of Thailand. Another example of objects found at the Ban Kao site is the remains of a rhinoceros sondaicus and a rhinoceros sumatraensis which are two animals that heavily populated this region, which leads researchers to believe the inhabitants of this site hunted this animal during the Neolithic period.

The burials found at the Bang Site Settlement of Ban Kao have revealed many animal remains, such as tortoise shells and pig skulls. The use of iron at sites like Ban Kao have been dated from the 1st century BCE onward. This is supported by carbon dating of ceramic and bowl fragments found at the site of Ban Kao and supports the theory of native traditions playing a bigger role in the development of new metals and tools rather then the dominating theory that China had introduced metals like bronze and iron to South East Asian sites like Ban Kao. This is supported by evidence of two iron tools found buried with the forty-five bodies recovered from the Ban Kao site.

There are various interpretations surrounding the origins of the pottery style found at the Ban Kao site. One current interpretation is that the Ban Kao site was taken over by many different ethnic groups over time. Due to many similarities between Ban Kao pottery and Lung-shan pottery, one interpretation is that the Lung-shan culture was one of the cultures that inhabited the Ban Kao area through invasion.

Camp Ban Khao

Camp Ban Khao was a prisoner of war work camp during World War II on the Burma Railway which was a rail that was used to support Japanese soldiers moving from Burma(Myanmar) to Bankok which is in Thailand. In January 1943, the first 700 British prisoners arrived, and were joined by 400 Dutch prisoners in 13 March 1943. The conditions in the camp were reasonable, and there was a shop selling bami, nasi and coffee. Until April 1943, there were no deaths reported from the camp.

Van Heekeren (left) receives an honorary doctorate from Leiden University (1965)

The first neolithic artifacts were discovered by Hendrik Robert van Heekeren, a Dutch prisoner at the camp and amateur archaeologist. Van Heekeren managed to hold on the stones when moved to Japan in June 1944, and hid them underneath a wooden floor. After the surrender of Japan, he passed them on to an American professor in Manila. The stones are now in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. In 1960, van Heekeren returned to Thailand as part as of a Danish expedition.

Administration

Central

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