S41-3

Archaeological Survey of the Stone Jars of Assam

Tilok Thakuria1, Milan Kr. Chauley2, Tiatoshi Jamir3, Uttam Bathari4, Nicholas Skopal5

1Department of History and Archaeology, North-Eastern Hill University, Tura Campus, India

2Archaeological Survey of India, India

3Department. of History and Archaeology, Nagaland University, India

4Department of History, Gauhati University, India

5Australian National University, Australia

Stone jars are unique and enigmatic archaeological evidence from South and Southeast Asia. Henri Parmentier, in 1912, first made an academic note about the stone jars in the Xieng Khouang province of Lao PDR. Later in the 1930s, Madeleine Colani extensively surveyed and documented the Stone Jars in the same province. The stone jars of Assam were reported in 1928 by J.P. Mills and J.H. Hutton. The jars are very similar to the Laotian stone Jars in many aspects and characteristics. In this presentation, we report on recent archaeological surveys conducted on the stone jars of Assam between 2014 to 2020 and discuss their potential relationships with the Lao jars to the southeast.