History
Two moated ancient towns with ramparts stand in the district, Muang Nakhon Noi and U-Ta Pao, the second of them on the edge of the Hang Nam Sakorn waterway. In October 1988 workers in a field in Village No. 5 of Hang Nam Sakhon subdistrict, 1.7 km south-west of Muang Nakhon Noi and 1.8 km north-east of U-Ta Pao, uncovered a broken stone wheel of the law and a fragment of an octagonal pillar, both carrying Pāli inscriptions. Excavation in 1990 by Charuk Wilaikaeo exposed a circular brick platform in two layers, 7 metres across and 37 centimetres high. Eng Jin Ooi and Peter Skilling read it as the base for a pillar carrying a wheel of about 180 centimetres. Spoke fragments, broken pieces of the wheel, parts of the mouth, nose and ear of a deer statue and about ten pot and basin sherds lay one to four metres from it, between 20 and 140 centimetres below the surface.: 108
Two lion sculptures in the Dvāravatī style were found among the fragments.: 136 A stone block recovered with them is thought to be part of the bracket that held the wheel upright.: 138 Ooi and Skilling reconstruct the monument as the brick base carrying the octagonal pillar, the bracket and the wheel, with the lions set below it.: 139 The objects have been in the Chainatmuni National Museum since 2018.: 110 Dvāravatī material has been recovered west, east and south of U-Ta Pao, and iron slag and kilns on the northern side of that town indicate activity from the prehistoric period.: 109
