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About Charles
Emeritus Professor Charles Higham holds the position of Emeritus Professor in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Otago. He studied Archaeology and Anthropology at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, achieving a double first in his BA before completing his PhD in 1966. Following his doctoral studies, he took up a lectureship at the University of Otago and was appointed the first Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology in Australasia in 1968. He has served as Research Professor and continues to lead significant research initiatives as Emeritus Professor. His career spans over five decades, marked by directing major excavations in Thailand and collaborations across Southeast Asia, including projects on the origins of social inequality at Non Ban Jak, Northeast Thailand (200-600 AD), funded by the Marsden Fund, and dating human bones, shells, and plant remains from prehistoric sites in Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, and China.
Higham's research specializes in the prehistory of mainland Southeast Asia, exploring the implications of archaeogenetics, historic linguistics, rice domestication, metallurgy's impact, state origins, Bayesian radiocarbon dating, ancient DNA from human petrous bone, lead isotopes for metal exchange, and climate change integrations with cultural shifts. He is a Fellow of the British Academy (elected 2000), Fellow of the Royal Society of Te Apārangi, and Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM). Key publications include The Archaeology of Mainland Southeast Asia: From 10,000 BC to the Fall of Angkor (1989), The Bronze Age of Southeast Asia (1996), Early Cultures of Mainland Southeast Asia (2002), The Civilization of Angkor (2001), The Origins of the Civilization of Angkor (2013), and Early Mainland Southeast Asia: From First Humans to Angkor (2014). Recent works feature Aggrandisers and the first copper-base metallurgy in Southeast Asia (2024, Antiquity), Ochre use in burial practices in Thailand from the Neolithic to the Iron Age (2025, Antiquity), and Complex hunter-gatherers and first farmers in southern China (2025, Archaeological Research in Asia). His contributions have established chronologies, illuminated hunter-gatherer-farmer interactions, and traced technological and social evolutions, profoundly influencing Southeast Asian prehistoric studies.
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