Guwahati: The mysterious megalithic jars that connected northeast India with South East Asia thousands of years ago will be investigated thanks to funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC).
Researchers from Australia, North-Eastern Hill University (Nehu), and Gauhati University (GU) are investigating possible ties between northeast India and Indonesia, Myanmar, and Laos as early as the late second millennium BC.
The megalithic jars in Laos and India are the subject of a study being conducted by researchers Uttam Bathari and his team, according to ARC, which has told them that it will provide financial support. Sandstone jars were discovered strewn throughout Assam's Dima Hasao district's woodlands.
Their fieldwork, entitled "An archaeological survey of the Assam stone jar sites," compiled under lead researchers Tilok Thakuria of Nehu and Uttam Bathari of GU, which was recently published in the journal "Asian Archaeology," stated that these jars have indicated their association with mortuary rituals performed in SE Asia.
Based on the paper's results, the researchers have started a brand-new global initiative called Megalithic Connections: Imperilled Cultural Heritage in Laos and India. A portion of the research team is conducting the investigation in Laos under lead Investigator Louise Shewan.
According to Bathari, "this multidisciplinary project intends to chronicle and study the cultural ties between the geographically distinct megalithic cultures of Laos and India and produce a lasting digital record of these imperiled cultural treasures."
He continued, "The initiative will expand heritage management practices, including transportable exploratory technologies, by integrating archaeological research and cutting-edge data gathering technologies.
It will support these regions' economic, social, and cultural advantages even more.
Australia will take the lead in developing ground-breaking technological solutions and new cross-country research and practitioner capability as there is a growing awareness of the need to conserve the world's cultural assets, according to Bathari, an ethnohistory expert at the GU history department.
In 2019, Unesco added the Plain of Jars in Laos' Xiangkhouang Province to its list of World Heritage Sites. However, the researchers lamented the paucity of studies in India and Myanmar. James Philip Mills and John Henry Hutton, two civil servants who discovered six jar finds in 1929, initially documented the jars near Dima Hasao.
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