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Introduction: The settlers at Khao Sam Kaeo included craft workers engaged in metallurgy, ceramics, hardstone ornament production and, not least, the production of glass bracelets and beads by a variety of means, including both hot working and cold worked, lapidary, techniques. To date we have recovered over one thousand glass samples from the excavated areas, with good archaeological evidence for at least two glass craft production areas. While a full description and interpretation of these finds is beyond the scope of this article, we propose to summarize glass craftwork at Khao Sam Kaeo in the context of early South and Southeast Asia, and then to focus more closely on how the glass evidence can help us learn about the external contacts of the site, as well as provide clues to the possible origins for Khao Sam Kaeo glass technology. For this, we will rely heavily on the chemical compositions of the excavated glass, comparing these to analyses of glass from other, contemporaneous, areas. These comparisons require some knowledge of glass composition in general, as well as familiarity with the statistical techniques used for comparing compositional data, and we will attempt to include sufficient background to make these methods understandable. In the discussion and conclusion section of the paper, we will emphasize the archaeological implications of our findings for both the existence and range of early exchange networks, and for possible precursors to the Khao Sam Kaeo glassworking tradition.
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