Overview
- Researchers reporting in Antiquity on Monday said an undisturbed stone jar at Site 75 held the remains of at least 37 people placed there between the 9th and 13th centuries.
- The bones were disarticulated and neatly arranged, which indicates secondary burial where bodies decomposed elsewhere and select bones were later moved into the large jar.
- Seven smaller nearby jars and the pattern of bone placement support a stepwise mortuary process that likely served ancestor rites over roughly 200 to 270 years.
- Chemical tests on dozens of glass beads trace their origin to South India and Mesopotamia, showing long-distance exchange reaching the Laotian highlands around AD 1000.
- This is the first large Plain of Jars vessel found with human remains in place, though researchers caution that practices likely varied across the thousands of jars on the Xieng Khouang Plateau.