The Middle Mekong Archaeological Project (MMAP) is an international collaborative project studying the human prehistory of the middle reaches of the great Mekong River. In order to help regional archaeological scholarship and communication, in 2009 our team developed tri-lingual word lists (English, Lao and Thai) on many topics of modern archaeological research, ranging from excavation terminology to vocabulary used in technical studies such as use-wear analysis of stone tools. Many of the translations and much of the project direction was provided by Ms. Sureeratana Bubpha, currently of Ubon University, Thailand.

We are in the process of adding Khmer translations of all these word lists. We are grateful for the help of Mr.Chhay Visoth of the National Museum in Phnom Penh for the translations into Khmer. We are adding links here to pdfs of the four-language lists as they currently exist. See below for the lists of available vocabulary modules.

The Traditional Ceramics vocabulary list is a separate project. The version on this page has English, Lao, Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese translations of vocabulary describing archaeological and ethnographic Southeast Asian pots. We hope to add other languages as well. We thank the translators mentioned above for their help, and also thank Ms. Bui Thi Thu Phuong of the Institute of Archaeology, Hanoi, for the Vietnamese translation and Naho Shimizu of the National Museum, Laos, for the Japanese translation.

This is a work in progress. If you have suggestions for new words to be added or new translations of existing words, please e-mail the SEA vocabulary editors.