November 2010 - National Museum Volunteers

Hongsa confronted at vase sipping elixir
of life, Thai Lue textile
The theme of this year’s bi-annual
conference was “Crossing Borders in
Southeast Asian Archaeology”, and I
felt that my journey of “crossing borders”
truly began when I crossed
into the gigantic lobby and saw the
sea of faces of famous SEA archaeologists
from around the globe at the
registration morning. After shaking
off our umbrellas and shaking hands
of friends and acquaintances, we all
spotted and mixed with the crème de
la crème of the world of SEA archaeology.
Manning the registration
table were the Chair of the conference,
tall and beaming German Prof.
Dr. Dominik Bonatz and his charming,
petite and radiantly ever-cheerful
wife Dr. Mai Loin Tjoa-Bonatz, both
of whom conducted ground-breaking
work on the 3400-year-old pottery
traditions of the highlands of Jambi,
Sumatra. One’s eyes were also
naturally drawn to England’s John
Guy of the NY Metropolitan Museum
(formerly from London’s V&A) who
has written on almost everything in
the fields of art and archaeology,
and to New Zealand’s Charles F.W.
Higham (aka “Mr. Southeast Asian
Archaeology”), who in a few days
would deliver a 20-minute presentation
that would completely realign the
dating of Ban Chiang. I spotted
Louis Allison Cort, being familiar with
her vast work on Japanese tea ceramics,
chatting with Leedom Lefferts
whose work on SEA textiles is well
known to many NMV members, both
curators at the Sackler-Freer of
the Smithsonian Institute, who would
jointly give a talk on the women
potters of SouthYunnan and Northern
Thailand and their paddle and anvil
methods. Faces more familiar to the
NMV were Thammasat University’s
Nicolas Revire who would trace the
spread of the iconography of the
buddhas seated in “European fashion”
and SOAS’s Stephen Murphy
and Thailand’s Pimchanok Pongkasetkan
who together would discuss
the transition from late prehistoric to
Buddhist funerary practices at Dong
Mae Nang Muang as they had
recently at one of he NMV’s monthly
lectures, and, of course, Glasgow’s
Louis Allison Cort (R) joins other
archaeologists in the guided tour of the
Egyptian Correction at the Neues
Museum
. November 2010 . Newsletter National Museum Volunteers . 17