| Abstract: |
It has been twenty years since the joint Thai-Australian work, The Thai Ceramics Archaeology Project (TCAP), which began in 1981 at the kiln site Ban Ko Noi, or Sawankhalok as it is generically known, in central northern Thailand. The project was formed as a direct result of Don Heins 1980 discovery of a kiln, KN 36, of a type known to exist in the north but not previously found at Ko Noi, where only later brick built kilns had been documented. The kiln was an in-ground kiln slab built one with transitional modification, including a brick chimney (Figure 1). The find suggested that contrary to the prevailing opinion at the time, the production here was of much longer term with beginnings before the Sukothai era, and that rather than based on imported knowledge and technology the stoneware ceramics production was mostly of localised Thai based development. Although Hein and the team were to make many significant pioneering discoveries, little apart from scientific papers on progress results or reports have been published. There has been no overview of the work of Hain and TCAP members, or acknowledgment of the joint nature of the project. This interview, with the on-site director of TCAP, seeks to explore the personal side of often quite exciting finds in which the painstaking work of a dig, a sense of serendipity, intuition and adventure mixed with forensic deduction are revealed: Following only a crude, outdated map, Don Hein journeyed to the ancient Thai City of Sisatchanali, covering the final stages along the Yom River by canoe when tracks ran out. The balding archaeologist was searching for buried treasure. A treasury of ancient pottery. He found it too. Yes, grinned the 47-year-old Mr Hein back in his cozy Adelaide office. It all seems like something from Raiders of the Lost Ark. (interview in The South Australian Magazine, Mann 1984: 4-5).
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