Pokekea sits at roughly 1,100 meters above sea level in the Behoa Valley, one of several broad highland basins within Lore Lindu National Park. The valley floor is flat and fertile, stitched with rice paddies that catch the light differently depending on the season. Clouds often snag on the surrounding hills, so it is common to see rain falling on one side of the valley while sunlight pours across the other. The kalambas stand among and between these fields, resembling enormous stone drums or barrels half-sunk into the earth. Some are upright, their openings facing the sky. Others have toppled or settled at angles over the centuries. A few still have their stone lids resting beside them, as though someone set them down a thousand years ago and never came back.

Excavations carried out in 2008 by archaeologist Dwi Yuniawati revealed that the kalambas served as family burial chambers. A single vat could hold the remains of ten or more individuals, their bones showing traces of both cremation and tooth mutilation -- a practice found across ancient Southeast Asian cultures, often marking social rank or rites of passage. Not everyone in the community received a kalamba burial. The evidence suggests these were reserved for the elite, a privileged class whose remains were gathered together in stone rather than returned to the earth. Radiocarbon analysis conducted in 2006 by Wiebke Kirleis, Valerio Pillar, and Hermann Behling dated two of the Pokekea kalambas to between 766 and 1272 AD, though the broader megalithic tradition in the Lore Lindu region may stretch back as far as 3000 BC.

The artistry at Pokekea is restrained but haunting. The faces carved into the largest kalamba near the park entrance follow a convention found across the Lore Lindu megaliths: eyebrows and nose rendered as a single continuous line, round eyes set wide, and no mouth at all. These same stylistic choices appear on the standing statues, or arcas, found in the nearby Bada Valley -- suggesting a shared artistic tradition spanning multiple valleys and perhaps centuries. The decorative lids add another layer of meaning. Small animal figures, monkeys and lizards, protrude from the edges of the stone covers as though guarding the contents below. Whether these carvings are totemic, protective, or simply ornamental remains an open question. The carvers left no written record. Their intentions survive only in the stone itself.

Archaeologists have long noted the striking resemblance between the kalambas of Central Sulawesi and the stone jars of the Plain of Jars in Laos. Both are large cylindrical stone vessels. Both appear to have served funerary purposes. Both are scattered across highland valleys in clusters that defy easy explanation. The parallel suggests ancient connections between megalithic cultures across Southeast Asia, possibly linked to the great Austronesian migrations that carried people, languages, and traditions across the islands and mainlands of the region over thousands of years. Indonesia submitted the Megalithic Cultural Heritage of Lore Lindu Area to UNESCO's tentative list in 2025, recognizing over 2,000 megalithic monuments across four valley groups as testimony to this deep migratory history.

Pokekea today receives a trickle of visitors compared to Indonesia's famous temple complexes. There are no tour buses, no entrance queues, no souvenir shops. The traditional customs of the Lore people remain strong in the surrounding villages, where wooden houses roofed with ijuk -- sugar palm fiber -- still line the roads. Visitors who make the journey into the Behoa Valley often stay in these traditional homes. The kalambas wait in the fields as they have for centuries, their carved faces watching the clouds gather and break against the hilltops. Lore Lindu National Park, which encompasses the site, has been a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 1978, protecting both the archaeological heritage and the montane forests that climb the valley walls to elevations above 2,600 meters. The spirit boats are not going anywhere. They never were.