The Megalithic Culture of Khasi-Jaintia Hills (An Ethno-Archaeological Perspectives)

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The Hynniewtrep or the Khasi-Pnar community of Meghalaya are known for their Megalithic practice which is a living tradition. The vast array of Megalithic monuments which till recent past littered the landscape of the hills, bear testimony to the sense of memorization though stone monuments permeating on every facet of the people's lives and culture. While a number of these stone monuments have crumbled and some vandalized, there are still many which still stands in the nook and corner of the Khasi-Jaintia hills and helped carry a direct relationship with the past. The book is an effort to provide meaning to these monuments and tries to reconstruct the interaction of the Hynniewtrep with their landscape as reflected in stones. An effort is also made here to create an inventory on the Megalithic clusters found across the hills with an aim to encourage the conservation and documentation of the ones that have not been recorded in this book.

The second part of the book unveils the lesser-known prehistoric monuments known as the Stone Jars which are found in the eastern parts of Jaintia hills. Similar stone jars are found in the state of Loas which have been researched upon right from the 1950's and today the stone Jar sites have become one of UNSCO's Heritage sites. The stone Jars of eastern Jaintia hills on the other hand are still unheard of in both academic and public circles. This book provides a chapter on the Stone Jars of Jaintia hills based on the small-scale excavation conducted by the author.

The overall rendering of the book is to provide an overview understanding of the Megalithic culture of Khasi-Jaintia hills from an archaeological and ethnographical perspective.

Marco Mitri is currently serving as a Professor in the Department of History, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. His area of specialization is Prehistory and Archaeology and had excavated two Neolithic sites in Khasi hills and a Stone Jar site in Jaintia hills. He has contributed numerous papers and his published books are; The Neolithic Culture of Khasi- Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya, (Oxford, 2009), Historical-Cultural Interaction and the Tribes of North East India, (Shillong 2010), Environment-Cultural Interaction and the Tribes of North East India, (London 2015), The Living Megalithic Culture of Khasi-Jaintia Hills (Shillong, 2016), U Sohpet Bneng, the Ancestral landscape: An Archaeological Recourse (Shillong 2016) and Prehistoric Cultures through the Lens of Archaeology (Shillong, 2018).

This book is a revised edition of the Living Megalithic Culture of Khasi-Jaintia Hills Meghalaya published by Don Bosco Publication, (DON BOSCO CENTRE OF INDIGENOUS CULTURES) Shillong in 2016. Since reprint of the first edition could not continue, I deemed it my duty to bring out a revised edition of the book with new data and inputs to provide reading material for students, researchers and readers to have a glimpse on the rich Megalithic practice which is still a living tradition in Khasi-Jaintia hills.

It is well known that megalithism is one of the main themes of prehistoric research. Alongside archaeological research into the monuments of the European Neolithic period, an interest in recent megalithic complexes, those of the traditional cultures of Asia and Oceania, developed very early on, from the 19th century onwards. This led to the development of research devoted to Easter Island, the Indonesian islands of Nias and Sumba, Nagaland in North-East India, etc., with a particular focus on contexts where megaliths continue to be erected today, and others where this practice has only recently been abandoned and is still remembered. The aim, then, is to draw on living practices in an attempt to understand the megalithic phenomenon in all its dimensions.