The San Juan Basin Archaeological Society invites the public to a presentation in the Lyceum at the Center of Southwest Studies and on Zoom on Wednesday, April 10 at 7:00 pm. At 6:30 we will have social time, then after a brief business meeting, Dr. Piyawit Moonkham, FLC visiting Archaeology Professor will discuss "Anthropology of Space and Place in the Temples in Northern Thailand.". For log-in information go to SJBAS.ORG.

This research offers a spatial point of view of the religious living space within Buddhist temples in Northern Thailand. The concept of religious space often connects to notions of sacredness and a rigid, statically oriented place that people would only utilize for specific spiritual or large-scale social activities (e.g., harvesting, natural disasters, and such), reflecting ideas that any supernatural being associated with the space should not be disturbed often and is unequal to people. However, in Northern Thailand, the temples are much more than merely such rigidly sacred places. People go to the temple for personal matters, ask for blessings, exchange goods, consult about personal matters, gather for social events, and the like. These phenomena reflect a balanced, engaged, and horizontal relationship between the community and their sacred place, highlighting a hybridized version of a cosmological worldview and communal living religious space.

Piyawit is an anthropological archaeologist with broad research interests in community-based archaeology, spatial analysis, ecology, and cultural heritages. His research is focused on spatial layout of sites (particularly Southeast Asia) and interaction of local social worldview with spaces (he employed GIS analysis in this work. His research utilizes spatial analyses to understand and assess communal, social, and religious spaces, sociopolitical interactions, pre-and post-colonial ideologies, plants use and heritage management of pre-modern and historical sites. His regional focus is on Mainland Southeast Asia, mainly Northern Thailand, where he is from, and Laos. His research on indigenous spatial patterns and social and religious worldviews has significant implications for understanding the sociopolitical landscape of pre-state and historical societies in Mainland Southeast Asia. My recent publications in TRaNS: Trans Regional-and National Studies of Southeast Asia, International Journal of Historical Archaeology, and in Journal of Anthropological Archaeology elucidates how local social worldviews interact with the spatial layout of Buddhist temples in Chiang Sean, Northern Thailand, particularly how it may reflect changing concepts of social and religious spaces and shed light on the importance of heterarchy and their social worldview.