Following the Herd: Stable Isotopic Investigation of Prehistoric Thai Cattle and Buffalo Herding Practices

Rosalind E. Gillis1*, Felix Sadebeck2,3, Ben Gruwier4, Pernille Bangsgaard5, and Charles Higham6

The first farmers of Thailand arrived from southern China in the 4th millennium BC bringing with them domesticated cultivars and animals. Domesticated cattle (Bos taurus) and buffalo (Bubalus bubalus) together with rice farming formed the foundation of early farming practices in Thailand. However, details concerning bovine herding strategies remain scant, especially due to the methodological challenges of differentiating the remains of domestic and wild bovines, in a region with the largest diversity in large bovids. Stable isotopic analysis has provided an important window into prehistoric animal husbandry across many geographical contexts. However, in Southeast Asia, it has been used mainly to study human diets and is currently underutilized for exploring herding strategies. Here we will present stable isotopic results from analysis of sequential enamel samples from domestic and wild bovine teeth from two prehistoric Thai sites (Ban Chiang and Ban Kao) dating to the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age. Our analysis demonstrates that stable oxygen (δ18O) values can track changes in climate related to the onset of the monsoon, providing a seasonal framework to interpret stable carbon (δ13C) values, while the δ13C values indicate differences in herding strategies between buffalo and cattle. They also can distinguish between forest dwelling bovines from those living in open environments. This approach demonstrates the potential to identify temporal and spatial changes in management strategies for cattle and buffalo, elucidating important human-bovine relations during Southeast Asian prehistory.