When the Lao People’s Democratic Republic began opening up to the wider world in the late 1980s and 1990s, possibilities slowly emerged for non–Lao archaeologists to start joint research programs under the umbrella of the Ministry of Information and Culture, as that ministry was named at that time. Since so little scientific archaeology had ever been undertaken on the Lao side of the Mekong Basin, the possibility of conducting modern archaeological research in this terra incognita was both exciting and daunting. What new cultures awaited discovery across the Mekong River from Thailand? What answers to long–standing questions on the origins of metallurgy, agriculture, and even Thai and Lao peoples might be revealed? While archaeology is not a discipline that produces answers quickly, the process of exploration in pursuit of answers is intriguing in and of itself. The Middle Mekong Archaeological Project (MMAP) emerged from a 2–week trip to Laos I undertook in 2001. A 2.5–day visit to Luang Prabang revealed evidence for more than 10,000 years of human use of that landscape. This extraordinary richness led to joint work with the Lao Heritage Department, still ongoing, constellated in part to address questions that were raised by the Ban Chiang Project and other archaeological work in Thailand. While many mysteries remain, unanticipated insights for the Plain of Jars have come to light, and surprise evidence for a middle Holocene (8,200–4,200 years ago) megadrought, and new evidence from ceramics studies for Luang Prabang’s historic connections to East Asian economic networks are some of the discoveries made so far by the MMAP research program that will be discussed during the presentation.