Megalithic Stone Jars

In News

• The discovery of a number of megalithic stone jars in Assam’s Dima Hasao district has brought to focus possible links between India’s Northeast and Southeast Asia, dating back to the second millennium BC. 

About Megalithic Stone Jars

• The jars are a “unique archaeological phenomenon”.
• The jars of Assam were first sighted in 1929 by British civil servants James Philip Mills and John Henry Hutton, who recorded their presence in six sites in Dima Hasao: Derebore (now Hojai Dobongling), Kobak, Kartong, Molongpa (now Melangpeuram), Ndunglo and Bolasan (now Nuchubunglo).

• These discoveries were followed up only in 2014, when a collaborative effort by researchers from the North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU) and Nagaland University under the Archaeological Survey of India (Guwahati circle) was undertaken.

• Research: 
  • Research documented three distinct jar shapes (bulbous top with conical end; biconcial; cylindrical) on spurs, hill slopes and ridge lines. 
  • At one site, Nuchubunglo, as many as 546 jars were found. 
    • This is arguably the largest such site in the world and most jars they found were in “poor condition” because of factors such as “weather condition, forest growth and burning owing to shifting cultivation and road cutting.

• Link with Laos and Indonesia:

• The jars are yet to be scientifically dated, the researchers said links could be drawn with the stone jars found in Laos and Indonesia. 
  • There are typological and morphological similarities between the jars found at all three sites.
• There is no reported parallel anywhere else in India, apart from the northeast – this points to the fact that once upon a time a group of people having similar kind of cultural practice occupied the same geography between Laos and Northeast India.”
  • Dating done at the Laos site suggests that jars were positioned at the sites as early as the late second millennium BC.

• What’s next?
  • It calls for more research to understand the “likely cultural relationship” between Assam and Laos and Indonesia, the only two other sites where similar jars have been found.

Source:IE