One Penn professor is working to fill in longtime holes in Southeast Asian history.
Archeology professor Joyce White hopes to find the once-inaccessible keys to opening up the region's history through a research project in the southeast Asian state of Laos, where she will return to in March.
The Middle Mekong Archaeological Project, which focuses on the area around the Mekong River, brings together researchers from several countries and marks the first time an American has been able to do modern research in the country.
Since the Vietnam War, Laos has been in a state of political isolation, cut off from Western scholars. It opened up at the turn of the century, and White received permission to go there for the first time in 2001.
Colleagues say White, one of the nation's most prominent anthropological researchers, may fill in gaps plaguing anthropological theories about development and influence in the region over the last 6,000 years.
For example, while researchers know certain products, like rice, were domesticated in China, they are unsure whether the Chinese spread these products throughout southeast Asia or if people in nations like Laos domesticated them separately.
Such findings could answer major questions about historic influences in the region, Anthropology professor Theodore Schurr said.
During the project's initial stages in 2005, White and her team immediately uncovered nearly 60 sites at which they wanted to do research.
Two years later, White says there is still significant work to be done.
"It's not as if you find a holy grail," she said. "We need biological evidence" to prove the findings are from the correct time period.
"We've barely scratched the surface," she said.
White has applied for a grant for four more years of research and is interested in bringing Penn students along to help.
"Joyce is a first-rate scholar," University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology director Richard Hodges wrote in an e-mail. "Her work gives the Museum a unique place in the archaeology of south-east Europe."
Before zooming in on Laos, White focused her attention on neighboring Thailand, leading the acclaimed Ban Chiang project from 1978-81 and publishing a book on her findings in 1982.
Museum research scientist Kathleen Ryan called White an "inspiration" and noted the importance of her research given Laos' status as an "archaeological terra incognita."
Hodges agreed: "Her greatest achievement has been to introduce modern and scientific archaeology to Laos."
