A Discovered Trove of Bones and Teeth Yields New Clues to the Century-Old Mystery of 'Death Jars' in Laos

Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent Add as preferred source The Plain of Jars is an archaeological site with thousands of stone jars in Laos Jakub Hałun via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0 Archaeologists in Laos discovered the remains of at least 37 human skeletons packed inside a centuries-old stone jar, shedding new light on one of the most mysterious burial sites in the world. The “Plain of Jars” is home to collections of thousands of tube-shaped jars that have long intrigued archaeologists. Most of the stone artifacts stand several feet tall and were presumed to be evidence of an Iron Age civilization. Leading hypotheses about the jars’ utility all point to some sort of funerary practice. Initial Western expeditions to the jars in the 1930s uncovered tools and human bone fragments, suggesting they were urns crafted between 500 B.C.E. and 500 C.E. But further study was halted for decades, as the Vietnam War left behind dangerous unexploded ordnance and deep craters. Cleanup efforts in recent years have made accessing the plateau feasible again. In the 1990s, a carving of a human was found on the side of one jar, as were adjacent, earth-dug pits with remnants of human bones and teeth. In 2016, another expedition turned up additional burials and remains, lending further credence to the cemetery hypothesis. “The skeletons uncovered in this new work attest to the cemetery function, but the mystery still remains as to the function of the stone jars, the heaviest of which is carved from one single piece of sandstone which the British geologist Jeremy Baldock has estimated at around 32 tonnes,” Lia Genovese, a researcher at Thammasat University in Thailand, told the Christian Science Monitor’s Jason Thomson a decade ago. The new discovery, made inside one of the plateau’s largest jars, may crack the mystery wide open. Detailed in a study published this week in the journal Antiquity, archaeologists traveled to the plateau’s farthest northeastern collection of jars yet to be excavated. Inside one “exceptionally large jar,” which stretched more than six feet wide and four feet tall, they found right femurs and skulls from 19 people and teeth from 37 people, including children and adults. “This is an incredibly consequential discovery,” Nigel Chang, an archaeologist at James Cook University who wasn’t involved in the research, says to the New Scientist’s Chris Simms. “After almost 100 years of speculation, this is the first of these stone jars to be investigated with irrefutable association with mortuary behavior.” Significantly, radiocarbon dating showed that the remains were added to the jar over the course of several hundred years, between the 9th century C.E. and 12th century C.E. “It’s starting to suggest that it’s more of a medieval culture, and not an Iron Age thing,” says study co-author Nicholas Skopal, an archaeologist at James Cook University in Australia, to New Scientist. In the study, the researchers hypothesize that dead bodies were first placed in smaller jars until their flesh decomposed before being added to the bigger communal container. It is still uncertain if this proposed ritual was common practice across the entire Plain of Jars, or is unique to this location. “As [the jar] is also among the largest jars recorded and has a form that is not observed elsewhere, this could represent a distinct, locally specific tradition,” the researchers write in the study. “The volume of largely undisturbed material could also be due to the remote location of [the jar] compared with other larger and more accessible jar sites that have been extensively looted over time.” The archaeologists also discovered tools, earthenware, a copper-based bell and glass beads inside the primary jar. A chemical analysis of these artifacts revealed that some were made in India and Mesopotamia, suggesting that the community in Laos was connected via trade routes to people far away. There is still much to be gleaned from this major discovery. “Were the stone jars some way for the soul to be released and be prepared for the afterlife as part of ancestor worship?” Skopal says to New Scientist. “We are doing some DNA testing on these remains inside the jar. That will give us an idea of who these people were and how they were related to each other.” Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal. Email Powered by Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Privacy Notice / Terms & Conditions)

A Discovered Trove of Bones and Teeth Yields New Clues to the Century-Old Mystery of 'Death Jars' in Laos

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