page_title: Joyce White
section_title: Middle Mekong Archaeological Project (MMAP)
hierarchical_section_title: Joyce White / Middle Mekong Archaeological Project (MMAP)
caption_attribution_description: English: In 2008, MMAP undertook a test excavation at the Tham Vang Ta Leow rockshelter in northern Laos. During the field season, evidence for Stone Age occupation dating back to 11,000 years ago was found in the rockshelter.
context_page_description: Joyce C. White is an American archaeologist, an adjunct professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, and executive director of the new Institute for Southeast Asian Archaeology. Her research primarily concerns decades-long multidisciplinary archaeological investigations in Thailand and Laos covering the prehistoric human occupation of the middle reaches of the Mekong River Basin. She is considered the world's leading expert on the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Ban Chiang, Thailand, and directs an archaeological fieldwork program in the Luang Prabang Province of Laos. She has become a strong advocate of cultural heritage preservation and has served as an expert witness in an antiquities trafficking case for the U.S. Department of Justice.
context_section_description: In 2001, White initiated what was to become the first and so far only archaeological research program in Laos led by an American, the Middle Mekong Archaeological Project (MMAP). White has pursued larger Mekong regional questions raised by the original Ban Chiang excavations in Thailand and her work on the Thailand Palaeoenvironment Project. With seed funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society in 2005, the Middle Mekong Archaeological Project (MMAP) has excavated and surveyed numerous sites along the Mekong and its tributaries in Luang Prabang province in northern Laos, with the goal of investigating early human settlement of the Mekong Valley.
  From 2008-2013, during White’s tenure as Associate Curator for Asia at University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, she directed the Museum’s program to Strengthen Southeast Asian Archaeology, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. In addition to surveys and cave excavations, a variety of scientific and capacity-building endeavors sought to enhance knowledge and skills among Asian and western archaeologists to lay the foundation for future development of archaeological research in the Middle Mekong Basin. By early 2010, 85 historic and prehistoric sites had been recorded by MMAP in Luang Prabang and four cave sites have been excavated, including Tham An Mah. In 2013 several ancillary scientific studies were undertaken, including palaeoenvironmental research using speleothems led by a team from the University of California at Irvine, and population history research using modern human DNA led by a team from Oxford University. The Luce Program also included a year of intensive analysis of hundreds of pottery vessels excavated from Ban Chiang on loan to the Penn Museum as well as extensive development of a regional archaeological database that contains data from both the Ban Chiang and Lao research programs.
caption: In 2010, MMAP undertook a test excavation at the Tham An Mah rockshelter in northern Laos. During the field season, evidence for Iron Age burials dating to about 2000 years ago, and  Stone Age occupation dating back to about 13,000 years ago, was found in the rockshelter.
exif: {}