Joyce C. White is an American archaeologist, an adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, and executive director of the new Institute for Southeast Asian Archaeology. Her research primarily concerns decades-long multidisciplinary archaeological investigations in Thailand and Laos covering the prehistoric human occupation of the middle reaches of the Mekong River Basin. She is considered the world's leading expert on the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Ban Chiang, Thailand, and directs an archaeological fieldwork program in the Luang Prabang Province of Laos. She has become a strong advocate of cultural heritage preservation and has served as an expert witness in an antiquities trafficking case for the U.S. Department of Justice.
Early life
Joyce White initially settled on a career in archaeology when she observed an excavation at a medieval church and cemetery in England at the age of 15. While this initial incident inclined her towards a focus on Europe, this changed when she saw a photograph of Thailand during a professor's presentation on his excavation there in graduate school. She notes that "it was a vivid experience. I saw myself in that slide." Despite discouragement from professors, she changed her focus to Southeast Asian archaeology.
Research and career
White is a senior Southeast Asian archaeologist in the Greater Philadelphia area. She received her MA and PhD in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania and holds the position of lllConsulting lllScholar at the University's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While working on her dissertation, she lived in Thailand doing field work for 20 months from 1979 to 1981. White founded the Institute for Southeast Asian Archaeology (ISEAA) in October 2013 in order to build upon the decades-long archaeological research programs in Thailand and Laos undertaken by the University of Pennsylvania. White is the current director of the Middle Mekong Archaeological Project and of the Ban Chiang Project (since 1982) at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. In 2021, the Office of Science and Technology of the Royal Thai Embassy, Washington D.C. selected White for their Friend of Thai Science award for her contributions to Thai archaeology.
Ban Chiang Project
White’s investigation of Southeast Asian prehistory began in the mid-1970s when, as a PhD student under the supervision of the late Chester Gorman, she ran the labs conducting post-excavation analysis of artifacts from Gorman’s excavations in northern and northeast Thailand. From 1976 she focused on the analysis of the metal age site of Ban Chiang, a site subsequently named in 1992 as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 1978 she initiated an ethnoecological research program in the Ban Chiang area studying the local understanding of indigenous natural resources with a special emphasis on native plants. While there, she compiled an ethnographic collection of everyday traditional material culture items (e.g., baskets, tools, pottery, etc.) for the Penn Museum. After conducting this field project in Ban Chiang village for nearly two years in 1979-1981, she returned to Philadelphia where, following Gorman’s premature death in June 1981, she curated the Smithsonian-produced traveling exhibition “Ban Chiang: Discovery of a Lost Bronze Age” and authored its catalog. The exhibition was later installed in a branch of Thailand’s National Museum in Ban Chiang village and parts of it are still on display. In 1986, White completed her PhD thesis at Penn that revised the Gorman chronology for Ban Chiang. Since that time White’s career has centered on the multi-disciplinary investigation of the human past in Thailand and Laos. She continued with the analysis of the Ban Chiang site at Penn Museum as a senior research scientist and later as an associate curator. In 1993 she founded the Friends of Ban Chiang to facilitate fund-raising to continue the post-excavation analysis and publication program. In the mid-1990s she was co-principal investigator of the Thailand Palaeoenvironment Project, which cored sediments from lakes in northeast, north, and south Thailand that for the first time in that country retrieved vegetation evidence from the terminal Pleistocene to the Late Holocene from each area. The first Ban Chiang monograph published in 2002 was on the human remains from the site and was authored by Michael Pietrusewsky and Michele Douglas. On February 9, 2010, White was honored by Her Royal Highness of Thailand Crown Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn at the opening of the new National Museum at Ban Chiang, Thailand.
Middle Mekong Archaeological Project (MMAP)