| Abstract: | There is rather little we can add as a summary of the presentation and discussion set out above. Disturbed jar burial sites are intractable archaeological assemblages; they are difficult to date precisely, difficult to interpret as centres of ritual behaviour, and, perhaps in consequence, have been rather neglected by archaeologists in Indonesia. Far more examples need to be described in detail, and much better methodologies need to be developed in order to extract the maxinum information from them. Whether they can be attributed to a single linguistic or cultural group is most doubtful, and it is probably the case that not all the people of the same community followed the same disposal practices. Burial sites do however offer unique possibilities for investigating important aspects of past societies such as the differentiation of wealth, status, and power; nutrition, demography, and health; exchange and value systems, and, of course, the technology reflected in those rare and valuable items that are seldom found in secular and domestic deposits. With this in mind we would believe that the presentation of the Ulu Leang 2 burial assemblage, partial and confused though it is, is a worthwhile, if small step in the right direction. |
