Ban Non Wat: Crucial research, but is it too soon for certainty?

As Charles Higham so rightly states, chronology is a major key to unlocking the prehistoric past, perhaps even the master key. Most readers nowadays will agree that the chronologies for the inceptions of farming and bronze working in north-east Thailand, as put forward in the 1970s, were in error, for the simple reason that archaeologists at that time were prone to sending small scattered fragments of charcoal to C¹⁴ laboratories without really trying to understand exactly how and where the charcoal originated. I am sure I have been guilty of similar lapses, so apportioning blame is not on my mind and would indeed be pointless.