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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2021

The funeral cave of Laang Spean

Résumé

Discovered in 1965 by Cécile and Roland Mourer in the limestone massifs of the Battambang region in Cambodia, the Lang Spean cave is a karstic cavity with three main chambers with a floor area of about 1000 m2 and a vault height of thirty metres. The archaeological sequence of Laang Spean now includes several meters thick level of ancient activity dated between 71,000 and 26,000 years ago surmounted by a Hoabinhian occupation (11,000-5,000 BP), with a third summit level characterized by Neolithic tombs. Cemeteries and funeral spaces are major sites in Southeast Asia still used to reconstruct the chrono-cultural sequence of the region. However, their studies present a failure to take into account the funerary nature of the studied sites. Archeothanatology, although partly known by colleagues working in Southeast Asian has not been developed sufficiently leading to numerous problems linked to the real nature of the sites. A burial site where individuals chosen by a community have been placed presents an altered vision of the population, whereas a study of funerary gestures and recruitment makes possible to understand these choices. Thus, the discovery of Neolithic burials at Laang Spean was the opportunity to implement an excavation protocol that follows the principles of archeothantology including to determine the positioning of the defunct at the time of burial in order to illustrate the funerary practice carried out by its original population. Despite the fragility of the bones we carried out observations and measurements useful for determining the biological characteristics, including sex, age, stature or pathologies of the individuals uncovered and, direct dating were successful. Finally, the Laang Spean cave appears to be a Neolithic funerary cave according to its dating but showing some characteristics found in the Metal age on the nearby Khorat plateau.
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hal-03814404 , version 1 (13-10-2022)

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Valéry Zeitoun, Sophady Heng, Hubert Forestier. The funeral cave of Laang Spean. SEAMEO SPAFA International Conference on Southeast Asian Archaeology and Fine Arts, 13-17 December 2021, Dec 2021, Bangkok, Thailand. ⟨10.26721/spafa.pqcnu8815a-14⟩. ⟨hal-03814404⟩
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