Discovery of a stone implement in Singapore
This short note by H. N. Ridley reports the discovery of a worked stone adze at Tanjong Karang, Singapore, and its presentation to the Museum by Lieutenant A. D. Cox (p. 141).
Summary
The implement is a dark chocolate-brown granite axe, five inches long and nearly four inches across, with one end abruptly truncate and the other ground to a rounded cutting edge. A small coral attached to the surface indicated it had recently come from the sea, and Ridley traced its origin to below high water mark at Tanjong Karang, a small promontory of iron-stone on the West Coast of Singapore (p. 141). The uneven grinding of the edge led Ridley to identify it as an adze or biliong rather than a cutting axe (p. 142).
Ridley notes that this was the first worked stone of this class found in Singapore, though similar implements known as Batu Linta had been obtained in Perak and Pahang. He argues that, unlike the Pahang specimens made of a black igneous rock of uncertain provenance, the Singapore adze was likely made locally from granite available at Pulau Ubin or in the hills between Tanjong Karang and Toas (p. 142).