Stone Jars of Assam, North East India: A Comprehensive Overview (original) (raw)
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Recent research on the stone jars of Northeast India: Evidence from East Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya
Archaeological Research in Asia , 2022
The stone jar sites of Northeast India have been a subject of great interest since their first discovery in 1929 by James Philip Mills and John Henry Hutton in North Cachar Hills, Assam. In Southeast Asia, they were first reported by McCarthy (1900) in Laos and subsequently by the French archaeologist Madeleine Colani in 1935, who reported them in great numbers and speculated about their connections to Assam within a wider salt trade network. The present paper focuses on the stone jar sites from an unreported region of Northeast India along the Saipung Subdivision in East Jaintia Hills in the state of Meghalaya. The stone jars from the sites form the extreme westerly extension of the stone jar culture reported from Northeast India. The results of preliminary fieldwork undertaken in February 2020 across the Saipung reserved forest of Meghalaya led to the discovery and documentation of eight previously unreported sites. A small-scale excavation of four jars in the East Jaintia Hills have helped to provide key insights on the mortuary practices of the people who made and used these stone jars. Material evidences from the excavation clearly suggest that the stone jars are visible relics which were erected on top of a pit where the post-cremated cultural materials of the dead are buried. Such significant findings bear relevance to the further understanding of stone jar sites within the broader context of Northeast India and Southeast Asia.
Saturday Special: Historical Megalithic Jars Connecting Link of Assam with Laos and Indonesia
WordPress, 2022
The discovery of quite a few megalithic stone jars in Assam's Dima Hasao district has delivered to focus attainable hyperlinks between India's Northeast and Southeast Asia, courting again to the second millennium BC. In accordance with a research in Asian Archaeology, the jars are a "distinctive archaeological phenomenon". It requires extra analysis to grasp the "doubtless cultural relationship" between Assam and Laos and Indonesia, the one two different websites the place comparable jars have been discovered. Archaeologists have identified 65 large sandstone jars believed to be used for ritual burials across four sites in Assam, India, according to a new study published in the Journal of Asian Archaeology recently. They have yet to identify who made the vessels.
Preliminary investigation on the Stone Jar site at Dubungling, Dima Hasao District, Assam.
Puratattva- Journal of the Indian Archaeological Society, 2022
The stone jar of Northeast India is one of the most unique features of the region’s megalithic culture. Stone jars are prevalent mainly in the archaeological sites in Dima Hasao District of Assam and West Jaintia Hills District of Meghalaya. Such stone monuments are also found in Southeast Asian countries like Laos, Indonesia, Sumatra and Myanmar
The Stone-jar Sites of East Jaintia Hills District, Meghalaya: A Recent Survey Report
Heritage: Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies in Archaeology, 2021
Stone-jar sites are so far reported from sites in the Dima Hasao district of Assam, Northeast India and from Laos in Southeast Asia. These are believed to be bone repository associated with ancient secondary burial practices of the two regions. This paper reports details of recently discovered Stone-jar sites at Saipung, New Thlangmoi and Mualhoi Locality 1 of East Jaintia Hills district, Meghalaya. The paper deals with data regarding the sites, their distribution features and jar typology. It also opens up the potential of East Jaintia hills to carry out future research on Stone-jars.
The Plain of Jars in the Context of South and Southeast Asian Archaeology
This paper compares and contrasts the stone jars and standing stones of North Laos with other stone artefacts in South Asia and Island Southeast Asia. The Plain of Jars is a series of archaeological sites located in the Xieng Khouang and Luang Prabang Provinces of North Laos. To date, around 80 sites have been documented, populated with megaliths attributed to the Late Iron Age of Southeast Asia. Some of these sites were surveyed in 1931-1933 by Madeleine Colani. Her 1935 monograph Mégalithes du Haut-Laos (Megaliths of Upper Laos), remains a work of reference not only for the stone jars, but also for the standing stones of Hua Phan Province, which she surveyed in the early 1930s. Though megaliths have also been documented in India’s northeast region, as well as in Island Southeast Asia (Sumatra and Sulawesi), the Laotian jars are a unique development in terms of size and quantity. The terracotta burial urns of Sa Huynh in Vietnam are not megaliths but are discussed as part of the overall comparative analysis.
In Bengali, the signifier abhijñān denotes ‘a token of recognition.’ The term also has embedded within it the notion of abhijñā or ‘memory’ and abhijña, or the ‘expert,’ the ‘wise,’ and the ‘experienced.’ These significations, overt and covert, are mobilized in this volume to pay tribute to an ‘amateur’ archaeologist, i.e., an archeologist not trained in the discipline but one whose amour or love for archaeology has rendered him abhijña as the ‘expert,’ the ‘wise,’ and the ‘experienced.’ As a collection of eighteen research papers on South Asian archaeology and art history of artefacts, contributed by twenty-two scholars from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Italy and Germany, this volume of specially commissioned essays seeks to be a token of recognition that remembers and felicitates an expert, wise and experienced archeologist from Bangladesh, whose name is Abul Kalam Muhammad Zakariah.