Ancient Cannabis Burial Shroud in a Central Eurasian Cemetery

Hongen Jiang, Long Wang, Mark D. Merlin, Robert C. Clarke, Yan Pan, 2016

An extraordinary cache of ancient, well-preserved Cannabis plant remains was recently discovered in a tomb in the Jiayi cemetery of Turpan, NW China. Radiometric dating of this tomb and the archeobotanical remains it contained indicate that they are approximately 2800–2400 years old. Research discussed in this paper describes 13 nearly whole plants of Cannabis that appear to have been locally produced and purposefully arranged and used as a burial shroud which was placed upon a male corpse. This unique discovery provides new insight into the ritualistic use of Cannabis in prehistoric Central Eurasia

Reference:
Jiang, H., Wang, L., Merlin, M. D., Clarke, R. C., Pan, Y., Zhang, Y., . . . Ding, X. (2016). Ancient Cannabis Burial Shroud in a Central Eurasian Cemetery. Economic Botany, 70 (3), 213-221.