This paper summarizes the evidence from Ban Don Ta Phet (henceforth BDTP) in the light of recent studies on the site itself as well as of new discoveries in Thailand, and makes special reference to the analyses of metal, glass and hard stone artefacts from the excavations at Khao Sam Kaeo (henceforth KSK) in Chumphon Province, Peninsular Thailand . The latter is the project of a joint French-Thai team with a strong focus on technological analyses of craft productions involved into Trans-Asiatic exchange.

     Over thirty years ago a series of excavations commenced at BDTP, an Iron Age burial site in Kanchanaburi Province (west-central Thailand) which yielded, what at the time, was the earliest clear and dated evidence for contacts between Southeast Asia and India. A carnelian lion pendant provisionally identified by Glover (1990a) as a representation of Buddha as Sakyasima (Lion of the Sakya Clan) in the late centuries before the Christian Era, was interpreted as a precursor to the introduction of Buddhism into Southeast Asia. New data and analyses enable us to augment and revise previous interpretations of BDTP, to compare and contrast it to KSK, and to raise new issues on the timing and nature of early exchange between South and Southeast Asia and across the South China Sea

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