Chapter XVII: a preliminary analysis of the Iron Age human skeletal remains from Noen U-Loke archaeological site, Sung Noen District, Nakhon Ratchasima Province in the excavation season 1997-1998. As part of “The origin of the civilization of Angkor”, the joint research project between the Fine Arts Department of Thailand and the University of Otago, New Zealand.

Of the 120 individuals, less than one-third are classified as almost (>75 percent) complete skeleton. These consist of forty-six infants and children under five years of age, five children and adolescents aged between five and fifteen years, two adolescents who age estimation could be made, twenty-one adult males, twenty-seven adult females, and nineteen adults undetermined sex. The mortality rate of infants is higher in their first year, about 30.1 percent of the total remains.

The stature was estimated using Thai-Chinese equations (Sangvichien et al., 1985). The stature of females was 151.5-161.6 centimeters while the stature of males was 165.3-173.3 centimeters. The growth disruption indicators such as the prevalence of the linear enamel hypoplasia in the permanent teeth are 7.0 percent, and the localized hypoplasia of the primary deciduous canines affected two of three children.

The common oral pathology lesions like caries, antemortem tooth loss, calculus, periodontitis were presented. The pattern of wear on anterior teeth is greater than wear on posterior teeth. Including the high prevalence of the individuals with missing lateral incisors, about 79.0 percent of the total (n=30) had at least one lateral incisor missing and about six of twenty individuals had a loss both maxillary and mandibular incisors.

Skeletal lesions presented in this population both the osteoarthritis in the synovial joints, lesions of infectious diseases like leprosy in a young man (B#107) and an old man (B#42), and infection with M. tuberculosis in a young female (B#36). Moreover, the unusual cases showing interpersonal violence such as the case of an old lady (B#99) who her cranium cleaved by a very sharp and heavy instrument, and the case of a young man (B#61) who was buried prone and found with an iron projectile lodged to the bodies of the twelfth thoracic and first lumbar vertebrae.

An intra-regional comparative with the Bronze Age population from Ban Lum Khao is that there was not a clear pattern of health change with an intensification of agriculture in the Iron Age. Probably depends on the similarity of social and environmental factors, including the genetic relationships between these two populations.