Non Muang Ancient Town

Non Muang Ancient Town is a moated settlement about 1 km south of Chum Phae district town in Khon Kaen province — roughly 82 km from Khon Kaen city itself, not Ubon Ratchathani. Entry is free and the site is open daily. Archaeologists date the earliest occupation to around the 8th century BCE, with the community developing into a complex, moated town during the Dvaravati period, roughly the 7th century CE.

The layout is what makes this site distinctive: a roughly circular inner town about 420 metres across (some 170 rai), ringed by two concentric moats and two earthen ramparts, with a more elongated outer town extending to about 600 metres in diameter. It’s this double-moat, double-rampart pattern — common to several Dvaravati-era towns across the Isan plateau — that archaeologists use to date and classify the site, rather than any comparison to Cambodia’s later Khmer monuments. This is an Iron Age and early historic Mon-influenced settlement, a different culture and centuries earlier than the Angkor-period temples people often assume it must relate to.

A 1992 excavation cut through roughly 2.7 metres of occupation layers and uncovered 17 human skeletons — six male, six female, five of undetermined sex — dated to roughly 2,500–3,000 years old, among the oldest confirmed burials in this part of northeastern Thailand. Today an information centre and a display building housing five of the original excavation pits let you see burials and artifacts largely as they were found, rather than removed to a museum case.

Insider Tip: The excavation-pit building is the real draw — the moat and rampart earthworks outside are subtle and easy to miss if you don’t already know what you’re looking at, so start there before walking the perimeter.

Walking the site involves uneven, unshaded ground between the moats and the excavation building, so bring water, sun protection, and shoes you don’t mind getting dusty. Watch out: there’s minimal signage in English at the earthworks themselves — the display building has the clearest interpretive material.

Getting here means hiring a car, motorbike, or local taxi from Chum Phae town; there’s no direct public transport to the site. Early morning keeps temperatures manageable for the walk between features.

If prehistory and archaeology are your interest, follow this with the collections at the Khon Kaen National Museum, or contrast the human history here with the dinosaur fossil beds at Phu Wiang National Park elsewhere in Khon Kaen province.