Chan Sen

Chan Sen's history goes back some two to three thousand years. It is treated as an ancient town of the late Iron Age which continued into the early Dvaravati period, contemporary with Funan in present-day Vietnam and with Suphan Buri's U Thong. The reading rests on the discovery of human skeletons, fragments of pottery, stone axes and iron tools on Khao Chong Khae Hill, at Ban Mai Chaimongkol village and in the country around them.

The condition of the ancient town of Chan Sen was first discovered from aerial photographs in 1966 by Thai architect and national artist Nij Hincheerana.^[1]

Bennet Bronson excavated the site in 1968 and 1969 with a joint team from the National Museum of Thailand and the University of Pennsylvania Museum, and divided it into five phases on radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dates. Phases II to IV, running from the 1st to the 7th century, he treated as proto-historic, with full state development at the passage from phase IV to phase V in the 7th century. Phase III, of about 200 to 450 or 500 CE, he classified as Funan-related.^[2]: 383 Andrew Barram and Ian Glover hold that label unsatisfactory, since the material shows more similarity with Dvaravati assemblages, and Stephen A. Murphy adds that the ceramic evidence points to trade contact rather than to overlordship.^{[2]: 383, 385}

Miriam Stark summarises the excavated evidence from the site. The one faunal study published for the period in the basin, by Wetherill, records large numbers of wild animals taken until about 200 CE. The domesticated species are water buffalo, Indian cattle, pig, dog and cat, and the wild ones at least two kinds of deer, rhinoceros and tiger, a single elephant tooth and three kinds of mollusc. A fall in the number of deer bones may reflect deforestation by people.^[3]: 177 Deposits of about 200 BCE to the turn of the era yielded bronze rings, bells and bracelets and a gold ring. An ivory comb with incised decoration and Buddhist iconography is placed in a phase of about the turn of the era to 250 CE. The moats are about 20 m wide.^{[3]: 177–178} Bronson read the variability of the site's ceramics between the turn of the era and about 500 CE as part-time production at the settlement alongside imports from full-time specialists at a distance.^[3]: 178

Chureekamol Onsuwan Eyre included Chan Sen among the sites she surveyed in the eastern Chao Phraya valley. She found the sites unranked by size between 200 BCE and 300 CE, but ranked on two levels around Chan Sen by about the 5th century, which she reads as the formative stage of a state-level society.^[2]: 383

Chan Sen also lay on an important trading route in the Lop Buri–Pasak basin.^[1] Karen Mudar reports that Chan Sen and Óc Eo share earthenware stamps, filigree-spiral bronze bells and tin stamps, citing Bronson's report of 1976, and reads these as economic rather than necessarily political ties to the Mekong delta.^[4]: 21 Hsiao-chun Hung and Peter Bellwood add the stone casting moulds. Moulds for earrings from Jiuxianglan in south-eastern Taiwan are, on their comparison, identical to moulds recovered at Chan Sen, which they cite from Phasook Indrawooth, and to moulds from the Óc Eo sites of southern Vietnam. They read the group as evidence that manufacturing knowledge moved along an extensive network.^[5]: 240

Kenneth R. Hall reported an earlier comparison by Bronson of the two regions. Ceramic types in the Óc Eo area were uniform where those of contemporary central Thailand were not, which Bronson read as a higher level of economic integration in the delta.^{[6]: 89–90} He took Funan's growth to have stimulated state formation in central Thailand by supplying an outward-looking elite that emulated it, and held that the archaeological evidence would not support conquest or colonisation from outside.^[6]: 90 In Mudar's survey of the moated settlements of the central plain the site encloses 32 ha, a sub-district centre in her four-level hierarchy.^[4]: 24 Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit note that even an inland site such as Chan Sen has yielded a wide range of exotic goods from both east and west. They set it beside Phromthin Tai near Lopburi, which produced hoards of coins as well as trade goods, and Dong Mae Nang Mueang, which produced both Persian and Chinese pottery.^[7]: 19

Supitchar Jindawattanaphum reports pottery sherds from Chan Sen carrying figures she reads as warriors, one on horseback, one on an elephant and one with a shield and a short weapon. She treats decoration set inside a square frame ringed with dots as characteristic of Dvaravati pottery.^{[8]: 1517–1518}

Chan Sen lies in the south of the district, about 28 km (17.4 mi) from downtown Takhli. The topography falls into two parts, a non-irrigated upland and an irrigated lowland.

The subdistrict is bounded, from the north clockwise, by Huai Hom and Lat Thippharot in Takhli district. The circuit continues with Sai Huai Kaeo and Phai Yai in Ban Mi district of Lop Buri province, and Thong En in In Buri district of Sing Buri province. It closes with Soi Thong, Phrom Nimit and Chong Khae, also in Takhli district.

Chan Sen has a total area of 35,634 rai or approximately 64.178 km².^[9]

Chan Sen has a total population of 6,259 in 1,627 households.^[10]

• Wat Chan Sen
• Chan Sen Museum
• Chan Sen Ancient Town
• Chansen railway station