Posted on 12/09/2004 3:10:21 PM PST by blam
History haunts the Plain of Jars
By Sebastien Berger in Laos
(Filed: 09/12/2004)
Deep in the mountains of northern Laos is one of the most dangerous archaeological sites ever. The last remnants of an ancient civilisation are next to 30-year-old craters and unexploded US ordnance left by the greatest aerial bombardment of all time.
Little is known of the people who carved the huge sandstone containers that give the Plain of Jars its name. The purpose of the artefacts is not known though they are believed to be connected to burial rituals.
Archaeologists are mystified by the ancient stoneware containers in the Plain of Jars
Ringed by mountains, the plateau is a magnificent place to spend eternity. The containers are gathered in seemingly haphazard clusters on promontories and levels, some upright, others fallen over. They reveal scant details of their origins.
For three decades, researchers risked their lives to investigate the stone pieces. Archaeological excavation is not normally a dangerous pursuit, but Laos is littered with hundreds of thousands of tons of unexploded ordance from the "secret war" in the country. And the jar sites are in an area particularly badly hit.
Now though, the Manchester-based Mines Advisory Group (Mag) has launched a project to make the area safe. It has hired locals, such as Bowaliean, 29, from the neighbouring village of Ban Na Kho, to find ordnance.
Locals such as Bowaliean dig for unexploded bombs "This is going to be the place to bring extra income to the village," he said, a few yards from craters 25 and 30ft across, probably left by 500lb and 1,000lb bombs.
The Mag operation has so far found nearly 150 unexploded bombs. In an unprecedented collaboration, Unesco archaeologists are working alongside the team. They have discovered 87 bags of artefacts at one site alone, including pottery, bone fragments and charcoal.
Julie van den Bergh, a Belgian consultant, said: "We were very excited about finding charcoal as it can be dated and hopefully provide us with a more precise date for the Plain of Jars."
At present the jars, some up to nine feet high, are believed to have been quarried at sites a few miles away, between 1,500 and 2,500 years ago.
They are "most likely burial associated", Miss van den Bergh said, "or used to decompose the corpse." After more research an application will be made for world heritage status for the plain to develop tourism.
The bombing of the plain followed escalation of the Vietnam War in the 1960s. US forces sought to support the government in Vientiane against the Pathet Lao insurgency, backed by North Vietnam. They also hoped to block the Viet Cong supply routes through Laos.
From 1964 to 1973, US forces flew 580,944 bombing missions over Laos, dropping more than two million tons of munitions, the equivalent of a B52-load of bombs every eight minutes for nine years.
On a per capita basis it is the most heavily bombed country on Earth, and Xieng Khouang province, where the plain lies, was the second most-targeted area, with more than 63,000 sorties.
An estimated 30 per cent of the bombs failed to explode on impact. Every week people are being killed and injured when they set them off.
"There's nowhere in Xieng Khouang that's safe to put a shovel in the ground if it hasn't been cleared," said Mick Hayes, Mag's operations manager for Laos.
Farmers are at risk, but the most dangerous occupation is scrap collecting.
Bomb metal fetches 7.5p a kilogram and explosive 50p in the communist state, so trying to dismantle a bomblet from a BLU-26 cluster effectively means putting one's life in danger for about 5p.
Vantong Chantawong, the head of the provincial department of information and culture, lost a nine-year-old son to an unexploded bomb.
"We preserve the reminders of the war so tourists can see what happened," he said. "We don't want to have a war again." About 15 tourists a day visit the jar sites and he hopes that with clearance and world heritage listing there will be more.
That's one large "pottie" the guy is sitting on.
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