The Plain Of Jars, Laos

The differing burial practices of cremation inside and secondary inhumation surrounding the jar, as noted by Colani can not easily be explained, in particular as the cremated remains were identified mainly belonging to adolescents and the associated materials do not appear to differ greatly from the surrounding burials. While the UXO clearance operations did not include emptying of jars and thus no additional evidence could be gathered, Van Den Bergh proposes that the stone jars initially may have been used to distil the dead bodies and that the cremated remains within the stone jars represent the latest phase in Plain of Jars. The stone jars with smaller aperture may reflect the diminishing need to place an entire body inside.
The suggestion that stone jars in a similar fashion as traditional Southeast Asian Royal mortuary practices functioned as 'distilling vessels' was put forward by R. Engelhardt and P. Rogers in 2001. In contemporary funerary practices connected to Thai, Cambodian and Laotian royalty the corpse of the deceased during the early stages of the funeral rites is placed into an urn, while the deceased is undergoing gradual transformation from the earthly to the spiritual world. The ritual decomposition is followed by cremation and secondary burial.
The royal burials are located across watercourses from the habitation areas in a geographically high, prominent area. Meanwhile it is interesting to note that amongst the Black Tai people who have been in the region for at least since the 11th century, the elite are cremated releasing their spirit to heaven, while commoners are buried, leaving their spirit to remain on earth.
Colani connected the location of the jars sites to ancient trade routes and in particular with the salt trade. Colani assumed salt was a commodity sought after by the Plain of Jars people, bringing the traders to the Xieng Khouang Plateau. The Xieng Khouang area is rich in metallic minerals mainly due to the granite intrusions and associated hydrothermal activity.