| Abstract: |
Khao Sam Kaeo shares important characteristics with certain other Peninsular port sites involved in extra-regional exchange during the early historical era. Among these are 15th century Melaka
8th to 15th century Satingpra
14th century Beruas and Pulau Kelumpang in Perak, Malaysia
10th- to 15th-century port-city sites in South-Central Kedah, Malaysia
and, of great interest, newly researched sites at Sungai Batu Estate, Kedah, an important centre that supported an iron industry and participated in extra-regional exchange by the 1st or 2nd century AD. After discussing certain environmental advantages and the heterogeneous resource zones that contributed to Khao Sam Kaeo's development as an important centre, and evidence for environmental instability within the site, this chapter concludes by comparing environmental and archaeological evidence that suggests that each of these sites and their environments underwent certain similar changes emphasizing dramatic erosion of settlements, river changes, and coastal progradation before the sites were abandoned. Khao Sam Kaeo's hinterlands included large areas of arable soils, and forests full of birds, timbers, and other valuable products for exchange. A major river provided ample fresh water for settlers and visitors, as well as a transportation route that began far to the north. Fluvial terraces offered high, dry land for settlement. Finally, the site's location, inland today, was formerly beside or very near a marine bay or lagoon at the east shore of the Peninsula, where oceangoing ships could anchor. Soil, sedimentary, and geomorphological evidence obtained in the field in 2008 and 2009, however, suggests that soil erosion affected the site repeatedly, making erosion control critically important. Floods at some point(s) deepy buried site components formerly located on dry stream-terrace surfaces, making flood control another critical need. Stream shifts probably also inundated streamside locations. Coastal progradation, as sediments eroded inland were redeposited at the coast, eventually isolated Khao Sam Kaeo upriver, where it was no longer easily accessible to oceangoing ships. Eventually, the site was abandoned, As is summarised in the final discussion, erosion of soils and sediments, stream changes, and coastal progradation also affected every one of the other early-historical sites mentioned above, each of which was finally abandoned, after a period of great success in exchange.
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