From pebbles to necklaces. Aesthetic experiences and regimes of authority among ancient beads collectors in Thailand
Résumé
Peninsular Thailand has tenuous archaeological remains that inform us about the early periods of connectivity and long-distance exchanges along the Maritime Silk Roads that interlocked the Indian Ocean and South China Sea networks from the mid-first millennium BC. Beads, whether in glass, hard stone or metal, are among the most important. These beads were imported or produced in coastal ports of the Peninsula. From there, they were distributed along different regional networks interlocking populations ruled by various socio-political organisations. Archaeologists consider that these artefacts played a significant role in the fabrication and the display of socio-political identifications and social images at the individual and groups scales in the Peninsula as well as around the South China Sea (Bellina 2014).
Nowadays, these beads crystallize consuming passions as well as conflicting political issues. Collected, worn, exchanged, traded, they regularly make the headlines of the local and national newspapers. Based on an ethnography conducted in the Kra Isthmus within the Thai-French archaeological mission, this presentation aims to investigate how the aesthetical practices related to the possession; the use and the exhibition of these artefacts are mobilized into the conquest, the maintenance and the display of different regimes of authorities at various scales and for different purposes related to the personal agenda of their collectors. How the aesthetic experiences their collectors engage with them, their challenge and even their refusal by the collectors themselves or their detractors lead to legitimate hierarchies of knowledge and elevate some of them to the rank of figures of authority, notably in heritage matters?
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