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Bali's stone sarcophagi included global goods

Mirrors from China, glass beads from Roman Egypt, and other treasures from far-flung places accompanied ancient Balinese elites to the afterworld.

Experts from the Bali Institute of Archaeology were summoned and, over the next two years, working with the landowner they found and excavated three similar sarcophagi at the site, some of them still containing the skeletons of their owners—as well as surprising items that hinted at the global reach of the culture that fashioned them. In fact, more than 200 such sarcophagi have been recovered by archaeologists around the island over the last century—the first, standing in the temple of Pura Penataran, was initially misidentified as a pig feeding trough by Dutch scholar Pieter de Kat Angelino. These beads were most likely cast in one of the important urban centers, such as Alexandria, Memphis, or Koptos, and then carried overland nearly 300 miles through the blistering desert heat of Wadi Hammamat to the port of Berenike.

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