Photos: "Body Jars," Cliff Coffins Are Clues to Unknown Tribe

Body Jars

Photograph courtesy John Miksic

Skulls and other human bones poke from large ceramic jars at Khnorng Sroal, one of the newly dated mountainside burials in southwestern Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains.

The bones were placed in the 20-inch-tall (50-centimeter-tall) body jars only after the bodies had decomposed or had been picked clean by scavenging animals, according to the study, which is published in the latest issue of the journal Radiocarbon.

"The Cardamom highlanders may have used some form of exposure of the body to de-flesh the bones, like the 'sky burials' known in other cultures," study leader Beavan said.

Placing the sky-high burials couldn't have been easy, according to Beavan. Systems of ropes and bamboo baskets may have been used to raise or lower the urns and coffins to some of the trickier sites, she speculated.

Published May 15, 2012

Mountainside Mortuary

Photograph courtesy Nancy Beavan

Hewn from tree trunks some 700 years ago, several log coffins are pictured lined up like ramshackle piano keys beneath a rock overhang at the Phnom Pel burial site in Cambodia in 2010.

As well as being "a place apart spiritually," these "nearly inaccessible" burial locations may have been chosen to protect the dead, Beavan said.

(Interactively explore Cambodia's Greater Angkor.)

Published May 15, 2012

Jarring Discovery

Photograph courtesy Ouk Sokha

Each of the Cambodian body jars (such as the one pictured here with bones at its bottom in 2010) had a hole drilled through its base, "perhaps to the ritually 'kill' the vessel"—to render it useless for any non-spiritual purpose, according to the new study.

The drilling "is part of the ritual of transforming that container, just as is breaking off the rim to allow emplacement of larger skeletal elements," Beavan said.

(Related pictures: Cambodia's Healing Fields.)

Published May 15, 2012

Skybox

Photograph courtesy Nancy Beavan

Human bones lie inside a log coffin at Phnom Pel—one of four newly dated burial sites that mark the remnants of a vanished culture from Cambodia.

The burials date to the last days of the Khmer Empire, which controlled large swaths of Southeast Asia from its Cambodian base at Angkor, more than a hundred miles (160 kilometers) away. (See pictures of Angkor from National Geographic magazine.)

However, the empire had little cultural impact on the mountainside grave-builders, the study team believes. For one thing, the people of Angkor followed the Hindu and Buddhist practice of cremation, Beavan said.

Published May 15, 2012

Circles of Life

Photograph courtesy Nancy Beavan

For the new dating study, wood samples were taken from only the outer—and therefore youngest—rings of the Cambodian log coffins, ensuring dates closer to when the tree had been felled. These and other clues are helping researchers slowly build a better picture of the people behind the perilous burials.

"These sites may be the only remaining evidence of this highland culture, and we may never be able to say for certain who these people were," Beavan said.

"But burial sites can tell researchers many things about a people, including health, demographics, and other hints about their lifeways."

Published May 15, 2012

More Pictures: Bones Evidence of Himalaya Death Ritual?

Photograph by Cory Richards

Published May 15, 2012