Ban Phone

Ban Phone lies in the lower Mekong country near the Khorat Plateau, a broad upland divided by hills into basins drained by the Mun and Chi rivers. The plateau has thinner rainfall than central Thailand, making rice cultivation dependent on the timing of the monsoon and on local water storage. In the south, the land descends toward the Mekong and the Cambodian plain.

The region was home to early farming communities and later came under Dvaravati and Khmer influence. Temples, roads and rest houses connected the plateau with Angkor, and settled agriculture spread along rivers and tributaries. Local chiefs governed villages through kinship and control of land, while Buddhist monasteries served as centres of learning and ceremony.

During the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, Lao and Siamese expansion brought the plateau more closely into the Lao kingdoms and the Siamese tributary system. Ban Phone's small size gives it little separate political history, but its location within the lower Mekong network made it part of rice fields, river transport and upland passes. Households depended on the annual flood and monsoon, while officials and monks tied villages to larger courts.

The later city of Sekong lies here.