Located much farther (down very bad dirt roads) from Phonsavan, Site 2 receives far fewer visitors. There are only about two dozen jars split between two hilltops. The first is a small cluster of jars beneath a giant tree. It is a very picturesque spot. The second hill is much more open and has numerous smaller jars.
The jars being on the hilltops is a marked difference from Site 1 where the vast majority of the jars are on a large flat area. At site 2 the very large and heavy stone jars had to have been dragged, pushed, pulled to the top of the hill.
The shape of the jars is very consistent at Site 2. They all tend to be tall a narrow with small opening. Like Site 1 it is thought that these jars were used in some form of burial practice. Recent work by Australian archaeologists has concluded that remains were not actually put into the jars, but rather buried around the jar and that the jar would have held offerings.
1 comment:
Those same Aussie archaeologists also got new and more accurate radiocarbon dates from bone collagen in some of those burials, suggesting much more recent use c. 2,500-2,000BP if I remember right. One of them was a Lao PhD student at ANU.
Post a Comment