Abstract:
On the occasion of the British Museum conference “Metals and Mines: Studies in Archaeometallurgy” in 2005, Vincent C. Pigott and Roberto Ciarla laid out a detailed argument “looking north” for the Chinese derivation of early Southeast Asian metal technologies. While the idea of a Chinese origin for copper-base metallurgy was widely accepted—typically based on trade and exchange models—Pigott and Ciarla constructed an evidential trail suggesting a mid-late 2nd millennium BC route via southeastern China.
Two decades later, an abundance of new radiocarbon and lead isotope data provides a more nuanced interpretation of long-term relations between Southeast and East Asia. In this talk, Dr. Pryce will examine recent Southeast Asian radiocarbon data, particularly from Myanmar, and compare them with the latest dates from southern China. He will discuss how these data, along with findings from the Southeast Asian Lead Isotope Project, reveal complex copper supply and demand networks that extend across the region from the late 2nd millennium BC. This research sheds new light on ancient metallurgical transmission paths and human interactions along the early Southwest Silk Roads.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Thomas Oliver Pryce is a Senior Researcher at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). He trained at University College London (BSc 2001, PhD 2009) and the University of Sheffield (MSc 2004), with a PhD on early Thai copper metallurgy. He held a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship at the University of Oxford (2009–2012) and a Senior Postdoctoral position at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (2013) before joining CNRS the same year.
Dr. Pryce has directed the Mission Archéologique Française au Myanmar since 2012 and has led the BROGLASEA/SEALIP metal provenance programmes since 2008. He has published 49 journal articles and 20 book chapters on Southeast, South, and East Asian archaeological interactions from the 3rd millennium BC onwards. He received the Shanghai Archaeology Forum Research Prize in 2019 and was awarded his Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR) from the University of Paris-Saclay in 2023.
Join us for this captivating discussion!
For more information, please contact sylvain.bauvais@cnrs.fr.
