The term "jar" refers to any man-made shape with the capacity to enclose something. Few objects are as universal and multi-functional as a jar-regardless of whether they contain food or drink, matter or a void, life-giving medicine, or the ashes of the deceased. As ubiquitous as they may seem, such containers, storage vessels, and urns are, as this book demonstrates, highly significant cultural and historical artefacts that mediate between content and environment, exterior worlds and interior enclosures, local and global, this-worldly and otherworldly realms. The contributors to this volume understand jars not only as household utensils or evidence of human civilizations, but also as artefacts in their own right. Asian jars are culturally and aesthetically defined crafted goods and objects, charged with spiritual meanings and ritual significance. Transformative Jars situates Asian jars in a global context and focuses on relationships between the filling, emptying, and refilling of jars with a variety of contents and meanings through time and throughout space. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of scholars with backgrounds in curating, art history, and anthropology, this book offers perspectives that go beyond archaeological approaches with detailed analyses of a broad range of objects. By looking at jars as things in the hands of makers, users, and collectors, it presents these objects as agents of change in cultures of craftsmanship and consumption.