An archaeology of thought

One of the great rewards of writing this column is that it allows my imagination the freedom to explore aspects of the past that interest me. One example concerns a sad set of circumstances: about 1,600 years ago at Non Ban Jak, an Iron Age community in North-east Thailand, a woman suffered a miscarriage after carrying her baby for about 28 weeks. The tiny corpse, which measured about 15cm, was interred in a small pottery vessel and placed in a cemetery where the infant was not alone. A staggering 75% of all graves contained infants, including three others that either miscarried or were still-born. That was clearly a hard time for the community. Part of our excavation routine was to subje