Numerous sets of massive stone jars have been discovered in Laos. The most-famous site is at Ban Hai Hin, where the jar placements include this set (Group 2), which was arranged in a crescent shape around a cave.
Clusters of massive stone jars in Laos have inspired considerable curiosity. Little is known about the people who fashioned them, while even the date they were created has not been conclusively resolved. Louise Shewan, Dougald O’Reilly, and Thonglith Luangkhoth explain what research is revealing about these mysterious megaliths.
The breathtaking, mountainous, and forested landscape of northern Laos conceals one of South-east Asia’s most mysterious and least understood archaeological cultures, known primarily for the massive stone jars they left behind. The megalithic jar sites of Laos comprise 1m- to 3m-tall carved stone jars scattered across the landscape, appearing alone or in clusters of up to several hundred. To date, it has been thought they are related to the funerary rituals of an elusive, powerful, and expansive group that existed during the Iron Age (c.500 BC-AD 500) – a dynamic period with evidence for increasing social and political complexity. The sites were brought to the attention of Western scholars by visitors and surveyors from as early as the late 1800s
In 2016, an international Lao–Australian team conducted excavation and survey at Ban Hai Hin (Site 1), creating a detailed inventory of the stone jars, burial-marker boulders, and sandstone discs. Each megalith was accurately geolocated, while their appearance and state of preservation were carefully registered to aid ongoing conservation measures.
Radiocarbon dating of charcoal samples produced dates spanning 8200 BC to AD 1200, with the majority suggesting that activity around the Group 2 jars occurred between the 9th and 13th centuries AD, making it considerably more recent than the Iron Age dates previously reported for the site. However, only one of these dates (AD 1163-1125) was produced by material retrieved from beneath a jar, so further evidence is needed to confirm their exact date of placement, as the burial activity is not necessarily contemporary with when the jars were installed.
Another vexing issue is how such massive megaliths, some weighing in excess of 30 tonnes, were transported from their quarry across the rolling landscape. A soon-to-be-published geochronological study of jars from Site 1 has confirmed that they probably came from a quarry at Phukeng, some 8km away. This raises several, as-yet unanswered questions related to the method of megalith movement. Possibilities include the completed vessels being hauled from the quarry using a rolling pulley system or perhaps drawn by elephants or buffalo, but whatever the solution, or solutions, manoeuvring the megaliths was clearly a significant logistical and organisational undertaking.
Read More at Current World Archaeology
https://www.world-archaeology.com/features/plain-of-jars/
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