Phum Snay

Phum Snay is a village in Banteay Meanchey province in northwest Cambodia and the site of an Iron Age cemetery. It lies on National Route 6 in Preah Neat Prey district, about 85 kilometers (53 miles) northwest of Angkor. The burials date from about 350 BC to AD 200, near the end of the Iron Age, before the rise of Angkor.

Heritage site details
Site type	Archaeological site
Location	Preah Neat Prey district, Banteay Meanchey province
Country	Cambodia
Period	Iron Age, about 350 BC to AD 200
Subjects	History & Remembrance; Land, Place & Environment

Discovery and looting

In 2000, road work to connect the village to National Route 6 uncovered prehistoric burials and the objects buried with them. Villagers then looted the site on a large scale, and little archaeological evidence was left. Charles Higham wrote in 2003 that looting over the two previous years had almost destroyed the site. Villagers reported finding horned bronze helmets inlaid with gold. His team at first doubted the report, until they found, near the looters' pits, a skull stained green by bronze. Other objects that villagers reported from the looting included pottery "epaulettes", iron swords, horned bronze finger rings and daggers.

Excavations

Excavations at Phum Snay ran from 2001 to 2003, led by Dougald O'Reilly, Pheng Sitha and Thuy Chanthourn. Their Banteay Meanchey Archaeological Project brought together staff and students of the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, the University of Otago in New Zealand and James Cook University in Australia. It set out to learn how an Iron Age community of northwest Cambodia was organized and to compare it with sites of the same age in northeast Thailand.

The team dug two main areas, about 350 meters (1,150 feet) apart, whose material culture was in some ways alike. Dates from the 2001 excavation fell between 348 and 307 BC, and those from the 2003 excavation between AD 75 and 209.

Burials

The two excavations uncovered 23 burials, scattered with no clear grouping and laid mostly on an east-west line. Pottery went into the graves, among it black wares of the kind called "Phimai black", and some graves were lined with a bed of rice. Both customs closely match burials of the same period in northeast Thailand.

The graves held more weapons than those of Iron Age Thailand. Three men were buried with long iron swords, some about 1 meter (3.3 feet) long, and five people, four men and one woman, with iron projectile points, perhaps for hunting or for fighting. Other objects went with women or with men only: spindle whorls and iron neck rings with women, and bronze bells, bone bangles and long swords with men. One woman was buried with more than 40 carnelian beads, mostly at her waist, along with a bronze bowl, a gold bead and the only whole "Phimai black" bowl found. Pottery "epaulettes" lay in two graves, in one of them with iron bull horns, and a bronze finger ring with bronze horns lay in another. Domett and O'Reilly wrote in 2009 that, while the sample is small, this division of grave goods suggests the community may have been ranked, with roles divided between women and men.

Domett and O'Reilly gave the age and sex of 22 of the burials, and the skeletons of 21 people showed little sign of serious disease; their few healed fractures were minor. Women outnumbered men two to one, and there were few children and no older adults. The authors judged this most likely an effect of the small sample and poor preservation, not of how the community buried its dead. Domett and O'Reilly wrote that a larger collection of bones from around the village, gathered with no record of the layers they came from, showed many head injuries, mostly depressed fractures of the skull. In their view, the injuries and the weapons reflect a troubled time, which may have been a small part of what pushed the state of Angkor to form.

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