A Roman cargo in Lake Neuchâtel, bones and bells among the jars of Laos

The morning edition, in Culture, covered London and Venice. This piece changes subject and looks at two excavation sites: one in Switzerland, one in Southeast Asia.

On the bottom of Lake Neuchâtel, the cargo of a Roman vessel has been identified, sunk, according to the reported dating, in the 1st century AD. The recoverable objects are said to number in the several hundreds and to be in excellent condition: ceramic vessels and containers intended for olive oil imported from the Iberian peninsula. The interesting point is not only the quantity, but the time spent in silence: the discovery dates back to late 2024 and has only now been announced, in order to allow planning for securing the material. This is a practice that archaeological offices adopt when an underwater deposit risks being reached by divers before archaeologists; here the recovery task falls to the cantonal archaeology office.

The presence of oil containers arriving from Spain in a pre-Alpine lake says something about the extensive reach of Roman distribution networks, which did not stop at sea ports but continued along rivers and inland bodies of water. This is an indication, not a demonstration: until the cargo is recovered and studied, the reconstruction of the route remains a working hypothesis, and the available material reports neither a timetable for the operations nor the final number of pieces.

The second site is in Xieng Khouang province, Laos, in the Plain of Jars: a landscape of large stone containers from the Iron Age, inscribed on the Unesco World Heritage list since 2019. The excavations have yielded copper-alloy bells, ceramic funerary vessels, human teeth and bone fragments in association with the jars. The connection between human remains and stone containers points the interpretation toward secondary funerary practices — that is, in two stages, with a second burial of the bones after decomposition — but here too the step from the find to the reconstruction of the ritual requires analyses that have not yet been published.

Regarding the scope of the Unesco recognition, the available material is limited to noting the inscription as of 2019: it does not indicate which and how many sites in the Plain fall within the list, and in the absence of that detail the matter remains open.

The two cases share a practical trait: in both, public communication comes after, not before, protective measures. For readers wishing to follow them, the next verifiable developments are the start of the underwater recovery by the Swiss cantonal office and the publication of the analyses on the Laotian bone fragments.

Source: Artribune — origin: statements from Swiss cantonal archaeological bodies and excavation missions.