MYSTERY Of The PLAIN JARS

The quest to solve one of archaeology’s greatest puzzles

- Bonnie Munday

Shafts of sunlight struggle to penetrate the mist that's hanging over the forest on a mountaintop in the northern reaches of the Annamite Range in Laos. It’s a cold day in February 2017 and a metal pot of coffee simmers on a fire. Nearby, archaeologist Dr Dougald O’Reilly, in a canvas stockman hat and army trousers, black puffer jacket and Grateful Dead T-shirt, is crouched in a precisely cut, four-by-four-meter trench. At its edge is an oval stone disk roughly one metre across. It’s lying flat near a huge stone jar.

This is Site 52 of the Plain of Jars, so named for the plateau where the best-known group of jars, Site 1, is situated, near the city of Phonsavan. From Phonsavan, Site 52 is an hour’s drive on a paved road, then another 45 minutes up a precipitous dirt track. Scattered all around this forest floor are some 400 stone vessels, one to three metres tall, some lying on their sides. A number of the jars are broken, with trees growing through them; a few disks, some of them perhaps lids, can be seen too. The jars are empty except for stagnant rainwater and spiders.

O’Reilly, 53, is an assistant professor at the Australian National University and chief investigator on this three-week field trip—part of a five-year effort to solve the mystery of the jars.

“The two most common questions I get are, ‘What were the jars for, and how old are they?’ ” says the dark-haired, blue-eyed O’Reilly. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”