Imagine looking up at a nearly vertical limestone cliff and seeing wooden coffins wedged into the rock hundreds of feet above you. There is no cemetery below. No marked grave. Just weathered wooden caskets sitting on ledges, inside crevices or on beams fixed into the cliff face. These are hanging coffins, one of the most unusual burial traditions found across parts of East and Southeast Asia.
Far from being a single mysterious cemetery, the term describes a broad family of ancient funerary practices in which the dead were deliberately placed in elevated locations, cliffs, caves, rock shelters and natural fissures. Archaeologists have documented examples across southern China and into Southeast Asia.
