Welcome to the Plain of Jars Archaeological Project (PJARP) and the Department of Heritage, Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism (MoICT), Lao PDR Data Repository. The archaeological landscape of the Plain of Jars in the Laos PDR constitutes one of the great prehistoric puzzles of Southeast Asia. Located in Xieng Khouang and Luang Prabang provinces, these enigmatic archaeological sites comprise carved stone jars scattered across the landscape, appearing alone or in clusters of up to several hundred.

With funding from the Australian Research Council, researchers from the University of Melbourne, Australian National Univeristy, James Cook University, the University of Otago and the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism of Laos undertook a five-year project investigating the UNESCO World Heritage listed Plain of Jars property.

Inventories were made of megalithic sites 1, 2, 3, 12 and 52 and each jar was geolocated and morphological data collected. Excavations were undertaken at Sites 1, 2 and 52 rendering important information on the megalithic sites and chronological data. Extensive ground surveys were also conducted by project team members resulting in the confirmation of many sites and the discovery of more than 20 new sites. All the data gathered during the research from 2016-2020 is presented on this digital archive.

All data and images on this database remain the intellectural property of the Plain of Jars Archaeological Project. The information herein is not for re-use or publication without express permission of the Plain of Jars Archaeological Project.