Traditions of Jars as Mortuary Containers in the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago

Abstract

Earthenware and imported ceramic jars were from time to time used as mortuary containers across a large swathe of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago. As noted by Peter Bellwood, this deployment of earthenwares has Neolithic origins, and burgeoned during approximately the first millennium AD. The assemblages were frequently dominated by disposals in mortuary jars but these were one of a variety of mortuary practices at other sites. Defining a jar-burial tradition as a potentially independent development of the use of jars as mortuary containers, we may provisionally identify 14 geographically discrete jar-burial traditions within the archipelago. Show more