Author(s)

Elise Patole-Edoumba¹, Philippe Duringer², Pascale Richardin³, Laura Shackelford⁴, Anne-Marie Bacon⁵, Thongsa Sayavongkhamdy⁶, Jean-Luc Ponche⁷, Fabrice Demeter⁸

¹Museum d'Histoire Naturelle de La Rochelle, La Rochelle, France.
²Université de Strasbourg (UDS), Ecole et Observatoire des Sciences de la Terre (EOST), Institut de Physique du Globe de Strasbourg (IPGS), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) Unité mixte de recherche (UMR), Strasbourg, France.
³Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France (C2RMF), Palais du Louvre, Porte des Lions, Paris, France.
⁴Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, USA.
⁵Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Unité Propre de Recherche (UPR2147), Paris, France.
⁶Department of National Heritage, Ministry of Information and Culture, Vientiane, Laos.
⁷LMSPC, UMR7515 CNRS, Strasbourg, France.
⁸Départment Homme Nature Société (HNS), National Museum of Natural History, Unité Mixte de Recherche (UMR7206), Paris, France.

Tam Hang rock shelter was excavated in 1934 by the French geologist Jacques Fromaget who discovered 13 skeletons and a lot of stone tools. But after the second War World, the lithic assemblages were lost. Then the site was forgotten since 2003, when the department of archaeology of the Lao Ministry of Culture relocated it and made with a French team a new prospection. In 2007 and after seven campaigns of excavations, a lot of archaeological materials had been found in two new areas opened at Tam Hang South and Tam Hang Central. More than 9000 specimens of stone have been found. This article proposes to give a new approach of the whole stratigraphy with C14 dating. It also makes a characterization of the lithic assemblage which belongs to the Hoabinhian techno-complex.

Hoabinhian, Prehistory, Laos, Lithic Industry

Patole-Edoumba, E. , Duringer, P. , Richardin, P. , Shackelford, L. , Bacon, A. , Sayavongkhamdy, T. , Ponche, J. and Demeter, F. (2015) Evolution of the Hoabinhian Techno-Complex of Tam Hang Rock Shelter in Northeastern Laos. Archaeological Discovery, 3, 140-157. doi: 10.4236/ad.2015.34013.