Page 49 - Canadian Geographic

PLAIN OF JARS

CHINA

MY ANMARANMAR Hanoi
MY
MY AN M AR
(BURMA)
(BURMA)
(BUR M A)
Plain
of Jars
Phonsavan
Phonsavan
Phonsavan
L
V V
Vientiane
Vientianeientianeientiane
A
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V
S I
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THAILAND N
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Bangkok M
Siem
Reap Angkor Wat
CAMBODIA
Phnom
Penh

0 250 km

and a handful in remote eastern India, jars in what was then part of French neath fl at stone disks beside the jars.
thousands of kilometres away. Many Indochina. Then came civil war starting in The theory is that the jars were for
were quarried a few kilometres from the 1940s, and later the Vietnam War, dur- mortuary practice. “The people of perhaps
where they sit, further adding to the ing which the U.S. bombed Laos for a the Iron Age — 2,000 years ago — might
Stonehenge-like mystery: Weighing as decade. (It’s said Laos is the most heavily have used them to rot their dead, then
much as 10 metric tons apiece, how did bombed country per capita in history.) later transferred the bones to the smaller
PREVIOUS SPREAD: VALERY SHANIN/SHUTTERSTOCK. THIS SPREAD, TOP: NUWATPHOTO/SHUTTERSTOCK;
they even get here from the quarries? About 30 per cent of the 260 million bombs vessels for burial,” says O’Reilly.
Were they transported on log rollers, dropped never detonated, so the unex- Archeologists including Colani (whom
dragged by elephants, or somehow rolled ploded ordinance, or “UXO,” has been a O’Reilly admires so much he named his
BOTTOM: COURTESY AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY. MAP: CHRIS BRACKLEY/CAN GEO
to the sites? O’Reilly calls his search for deadly obstacle — not just for archeological now four-year-old daughter, Madeleine,
the answers “invigorating.” work, but for anything from road-building after her) and Julie Van Den Bergh, a
No major excavation has been done to farming. The British non-profi t Mines Belgian who mapped some of the jar sites
since the 1930s, when famed French arche- Advisory Group has been in Laos since the in the early 2000s, believed this. “But until
ologist Madeleine Colani fi rst studied these mid-1990s to remedy that. It’s slow, pains- we get lab results from samples we’ve
taking work, but the group has now cleared taken, that remains unproven,” says
‘O’Reilly has pioneered UXO from various locations for a total of O’Reilly. So far there aren’t really any
about 60 square kilometres, indicating other plausible theories. (A fanciful one:
fi eldwork in Laos by cleared areas by embedding the ground Some villagers believe the jars were used
with bricks engraved “MAG.” It has helped to store rice wine for a mythical giant.)
opening this Plain of Jars keep about one million people safe. Back at Site 52 (which had no UXO,
Site 1 was declared clear about 10 years only machine-gun shells), eight of
project ...’ mapping the ago. During their 2016 excavations of the O’Reilly’s team members have been
bomb-cratered plateau that’s home to using pickaxe-like tools called mattocks
sites for the fi rst time with some 300 jars, O’Reilly, Shewan and to dig the trench into the crumbly red
remote sensing and GIS. Laotian archeologists found human bones soil beside the oval disk. They want to see
in smaller ceramic vessels buried under- what’s underneath; O’Reilly suspects

CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC 49