Research & Article

In the Tai Ahom kingdom, when the king died, his body will be treated with all due ceremony and preserved in a tomb or burial pit called in Ahom language as “moi-dam” which is built up specially for him at the royal cemetery in Cheraidoi (the first capital city of Ahom kingdom). “Moi-dam” mentioned here, is the origin and main source of this research. There are three main objectives of this research work i.e. to investigate the five Ahom royal craniums excavated from moi-dam No. 2 (located in Sibsagar, Assam, India). All these skulls show the morphological features of Asian (Mongoloid) identity. The second objective is to use an educational approach or ethnographic method for a descriptive study of the Tai-Ahom burial method based on the Ahom chronicle called Ahom Buranji together with the documentary records of western nations. It was found that there are similarities of burial tradition among the Tai ethnic although they are from different groups. And it is completely different from the Hindu traditional cremation in India. The final objective is to have further development in the field of archaeological and ethnographic research in the northeastern region of India in the future through the cooperation with academics, research fellows etc. in various fields of this region. Morphological observations are focused on post-cranial elements. Morphological assessment of cranial and post-cranial bones is carried out following the Standards by Buikstra-Ubelakar (1994). Craniometric and osteometric methods used in this report follow Martin and Saller (1957). Stature estimation equations of Mahakkanukrauh et al. (2011). An ethno-archaeological approach is also applied with this research work for understanding the belief systems of Ahom people and other Tai groups.