Director of the Middle Mekong Archaeological Project
University of Pennsylvania Museum, USA
Joyce is Principal Investigator for MMAP, and Co-director of MMAP in Laos. Her career has focused on multi-disciplinary investigation of the human past in Thailand and Laos, especially in the middle reaches of the Mekong basin. She is particularly interested in the Middle Holocene, that period between roughly 6000 B.C. and 2000 B.C. when agriculture and metallurgy first appeared in Southeast Asia.
Since 2001, Joyce has been pursuing larger middle Mekong regional questions raised by the original Ban Chiang excavations in Thailand and her work on the Thailand Palaeoenvironment Project. In 2001, her Rapid Assessment survey revealed first-hand evidence of over 10,000 years of rich archeological heritage in Laos. In 2005, she began the first of several seasons of MMAP fieldwork in Laos leading international cross-disciplinary teams. A grant from the Henry R. Luce Foundation is supporting four years of research (2008-2012) in northern Laos and the Ban Chiang area of northeast Thailand. MMAP seasons: 2001, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009a/b/c, 2010
Contact
University of Pennsylvania Museum
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6324
(215) 898-4028
banchang@sas.upenn.edu
