The remains of 37 people have been found in a giant stone jug in Laos

The Valley of the Jars is one of Southeast Asia's most enigmatic archaeological landscapes. Scattered across a plateau in central Laos are thousands of stone vessels, some weighing several tonnes. Archaeologists have long assumed they were associated with funerary rituals, but exactly how they were used has remained unclear.

The new work shows: at least one such jug served as a re-burial site. It is likely that human remains were placed there after the bodies had first decomposed elsewhere. The study is published in the journal Antiquity.

Details

The researchers studied a particularly large stone jug located about 70 kilometres northeast of the city of Phongsavan. It was about 1.3 metres high and more than 2 metres wide. Inside, archaeologists found a large number of human bones tightly packed in a vessel.

According to radiocarbon analysis of bones and teeth, it turned out that the jug was used not once and not for a short period. It could have been used for burial rites for up to 270 years, roughly between the 9th and 12th centuries A.D. This indicates several phases of use and possibly a link to several generations of the same family or extended kin group.

This type of burial is called secondary burial. This means that the human body was first in another place where decomposition took place, and later the bones were transferred and placed in a common vessel. In this case, the stone jug may not have been just a "grave" but a place of ancestral remembrance to which ancestors returned for generations.

The find is also important because archaeologists previously had little direct evidence that the jars themselves could have contained significant human burials. Small fragments of bone or traces of cremation have been found in individual vessels, but such a volume of remains within a single jug is rare and very valuable. The preliminary publication on this monument already called the find the first significant evidence that jars could have been used for primary or secondary burials in the IX-XII centuries.

Glass beads were also found inside the vessel. Chemical analysis showed that some of them were produced in South India and Mesopotamia. This does not mean that the people of Laos traded directly with these regions, but it does indicate the existence of long-distance exchange networks through which things could have travelled to the mountainous regions of Southeast Asia.

Why it matters

The discovery clarifies ideas about the Valley of the Jars. Previously, these megalithic vessels were often associated with the Iron Age of Southeast Asia, roughly between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D. UNESCO also describes the complex as a landscape with more than 2,100 stone jars associated with Iron Age funerary practices.

But the new find shows that the history of jug use may have been longer and more complex. The particular vessel was used as early as the ninth to twelfth centuries, that is, centuries after the period to which the creation and early use of these monuments are usually attributed. This may indicate the reuse of ancient objects or the continuation of local funerary traditions at a later time.

It is important not to draw too broad a conclusion. One jug does not solve the whole mystery of the Valley of the Jars, nor does it explain how all the thousands of vessels were used. But it does provide rare direct evidence: some of them may indeed have been associated with collective burials and ancestor honouring rituals.

Background

The Valley of the Jars is located on the Xiangkhuang Plateau in central Laos. It is not a single site, but a whole group of archaeological sites with stone vessels, discs, burials, quarries and other objects. In 2019, the complex was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The first systematic research here was carried out by French archaeologist Madeleine Colani in the 1930s. She surmised that the jars were associated with funerary rites, rather than being used to store food or water, for example. Later excavations in different parts of the complex found burials alongside the jugs, but the question of what went on inside the vessels themselves remained open for a long time.

The work of archaeologists in the region was complicated not only by the remoteness of the monuments, but also by the legacy of the wars of the XX century: in Laos there are still unexploded ordnance. Therefore, many sites have long been difficult to access for research. New excavations at such sites could significantly change the picture of the region's past.

Source

Nicholas Skopal et al, "The death jar: a new mortuary tradition at the Plain of Jars, Lao PDR", Antiquity, 2026. DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2026.10352. The article was published online on 18 May 2026.

In the study, archaeologists excavated a large stone jug at Site 75 in Xiangkhuang Province, Laos. Inside they found the remains of at least 37 people. Radiocarbon dating of bones and teeth showed that the vessel was used between the ninth and twelfth centuries, probably in several stages and as a secondary burial site. Additional finds, including glass beads from South India and Mesopotamia, indicate the region's links to the wider exchange networks of Asia.