| Abstract: |
Ban Non Wat is a well-stratified mounded site in northeastern Thailand. Excavations there have yielded thousands of artifacts and hundreds of burials dating throughout the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages. Among the most regularly-occurring artifacts are earthenware objects which have been informally referred to as ‘conical rollers’. These artifacts have not been reported from any other site, even those closest to Ban Non Wat. A formal analysis of their physical characteristics describes and defines conical rollers, explores their function, and analyzes their distribution across the site and stratigraphically, to identify patterns of association between conical rollers and other artifacts and features. They were also compared with potentially similar artifacts from other sites. Despite the analysis of distribution data and the construction of an initial typology characterizing their attributes, the function of conical rollers remains unknown.
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