Article

Stone age

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Stone age

The Stone Age in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo is attested through a substantial corpus of polished stone implements, perforated discs, bark-cloth beaters, and associated ceramics recovered from shell mounds, caves, alluvial deposits, and surface finds across both regions. The material record spans from the Neolithic—characterised by cord-impressed pottery, polished quadrangular adzes, and cremation burials—into the early Metal Age, with radiocarbon dates placing the earliest confirmed Neolithic activity in the region at approximately 1,130 B.C. [1, pp. 150–151]. The assemblages document a complex of technical traditions whose origins, interactions, and diffusion routes remain subjects of active scholarly debate, with implications extending from local prehistory to the broader question of Austronesian and pre-Austronesian population movements across South-East Asia [2, p. 214], [3, p. 84].

Scope and Chronological Framework

The Malayan Stone Age, as understood from the published record, is not a single homogeneous phase but a composite of at least three distinct technical traditions that converged and interacted within the Peninsula. H. D. Noone, Field Ethnographer for the Federated Malay States Museums, proposed in 1941 that the bewildering variety of polished stone implements from North Malaya is best explained by the interaction of a local or Northern (possibly Bacson) chisel tradition, a Southern simple adze tradition, and a world-wide symmetrical axe form [2, pp. 214–215]. The chisel adze, with its rectangular section and steep bevel, is described as “perhaps the commonest form of polished implement in North Malaya” and was identified by Heine-Geldern as “the typical Austro-Asiatic tool” [2, p. 212]. The gouge adze, distinguished by a salient arched working edge often produced by hollow grinding, is “even more typical of the Malayan Peninsula than the plain chisel adze” [2, p. 213]. Large simple adze specimens reach up to eighteen inches in length and are stout enough for use in tilling soil, possibly as plough coulters [2, p. 212].

Chronological anchors for the Neolithic in Malaya come primarily from the cave sites of Kelantan and the burial grottos of Niah, Sarawak. At Gua Cha, Kelantan, excavations in 1953–54 yielded cord-impressed pottery, quadrangular stone axes, and hollow clay stands in association with Neolithic burials [3, pp. 82–83], [4, pp. 168–170]. The Magala cave system at Niah, Sarawak, provides the most precise radiocarbon evidence: a Neolithic burial in Mouth E yielded a date of 3,130 ± 240 years (c. 1,180 B.C.), while a comparable sealed jar from the nearby Lobang Jeragan site gave 3,070 ± 410 years (c. 1,130 B.C.) [1, pp. 150–151]. These dates establish a gap of over two millennia between the Neolithic phase and the subsequent Metal Age burial phase at Magala, which is characterised by imported Chinese and Siamese stoneware, glass seed beads, and wooden images of Melanau type [1, pp. 157–173].

The distribution of polished stone implements is concentrated in the southern half of the Peninsula. Noone’s classification draws on surface finds from shell mounds such as Guak Kepah, the Raffles Museum collection of Far Eastern Prehistory, and comparative material from Tonkin and Laos [2, p. 210]. G. de G. Sieveking recorded thirteen cross-hatched stone bark-cloth beaters, all from the southern portion of the Peninsula—Kelantan, Pahang, Perak, and Selangor—with four in unambiguous Neolithic associations [3, p. 82]. In Borneo, the record is more fragmentary: H. G. Keith documented Neolithic implements from North Borneo [5], and the Harrissons’ work at Niah established the presence of polished stone tools in the Neolithic burial assemblage, including a crescentic sandstone tool and a reshaped quadrangular adze of chert-like stone [1, p. 153].

Diagnostic Artefact Types

The polished stone implement assemblage of Malaya is typologically rich but resists simple classification. Noone’s 1941 scheme, grounded in the symmetry or asymmetry of the longitudinal section and the geometry of the cutting edge, derives three main divisions—Axe, Adze, and Centred-Edge Adze—which subdivide into six named forms: Axe, Notched Axe, Centred-Edge Adze, Simple Adze, Chisel Adze, and Gouge Adze [2, pp. 210–211]. He is careful to note that the terms “axe” and “adze” are used for convenience in the absence of socket holes or other definitive usage indicators [2, p. 210]. The notched axe, found at the Guak Kepah shell mounds, shows extensive fracturing or wearing of one end of the working edge, a pattern suggestive of adze or hoe use whose significance Noone leaves unresolved [2, p. 210]. The pointed-butt axe so common in Southern India is explicitly absent from the Malayan assemblage, and no double-edged pieces (as occur in Indo-China) have been found in Northern Malaya [2, p. 209].

Perforated stone discs represent a distinct category of Neolithic artefact. W. Linehan’s 1951 catalogue compiles at least twenty-eight specimens across Pahang, Perak, and Negri Sembilan, with the Tembeling-Jelai river region in Pahang accounting for over half the total [6, p. 77]. Most approximate the Chinese huan or huan-yuan type as established by Andersson and Siren, while the slit disc from the Kenaboi mine in Jelebu resembles the chueh ring common in protohistoric Indo-China [6, p. 76]. The unfinished disc from the Tui river, described by Tweedie, is particularly significant because it demonstrates the manufacturing technique—flaking, grinding, and drilling with a bamboo bit and sand abrasive—and confirms the Neolithic association of these objects, which Heine-Geldern had previously regarded as uncertain [6, p. 75]. Linehan favours a ritual or status-related interpretation, noting that several specimens are too fragile for percussive use, while the heavy wear on others suggests secondary use by later populations who had lost knowledge of their original purpose [6, p. 77].

The cross-hatched stone bark-cloth beater, examined by Sieveking in 1956, is a pebble or rock fragment pecked into a roughly cylindrical form with one end broken flat and cross-hatched with V-shaped grooves cut at right angles, producing a chequer-board pattern of truncated pyramidal blocks [3, p. 79]. The tools measure 90–125 mm in length with a working surface diameter of 60–80 mm [3, p. 79]. Sieveking argues that this type is a diagnostic marker of the Malayan Neolithic cultures and that its wider distribution into Sumatra and North Borneo reflects the reach of those prehistoric cultural spheres [3, p. 84]. Modern parallels exist in Sumatra (a wooden specimen from Sipora, Mentawi Islands) and North Borneo (stone examples from the Kelabit in the Sarawak Museum), none in use after 1914 [3, p. 83].

Ceramics and Associated Material Culture

The Neolithic ceramic tradition of northern Malaya is characterised by cord-impressed ware and a distinctive class of hollow clay stands. Prince John Loewenstein’s 1959 comparative study demonstrates that the hollow stands—ring, cylindrical, funnel, and hour-glass shaped—found at Gua Cha, Gua Musang, and Tengku Lembu are not a local invention but belong to a wide distribution originating in Mesopotamia and transmitted through India to South-East Asia [4, pp. 168–196]. The earliest known hollow stand comes from Al Ubaid, Mesopotamia, dating to approximately 4000 B.C.; the type subsequently appears at Uruk (3500 B.C.), Farah, Ur, and Kish [4, p. 177]. In the Indus Valley, ring-stands, cylindrical stands, and hour-glass-shaped stands are recovered in large numbers at all levels of Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, and Chanhu-daro (c. 2500–1500 B.C.) [4, pp. 166]. The largest Malayan specimen, a cylindrical stand of red ware from Gua Cha, measures 204 mm in height with a flaring rim diameter of 277 mm; a vessel resting on a similar cylindrical stand was found in situ at that site [4, p. 168].

Loewenstein simultaneously resolved the long-standing question of the function of perforated pottery cones from Kedah by demonstrating experimentally that they served as censers. A full-scale model with two wall perforations, placed over burning charcoal with five grams of incense, produced a continuous flow of smoke for forty minutes [4, p. 183]. B. A. V. Peacock, Curator of Museums, confirmed the interpretation in the field at Gua Berhala, Kedah, where the Chief Priest of a local wat demonstrated the use of the cones as incense burners [4, p. 185]. The association of lumps of resin (damar) with these ceramics at Gua Musang, and similar finds by Tweedie at Bukit Chintamani and Bukit Charas in Pahang, provides independent corroboration [4, p. 179].

At Magala, Niah, the Neolithic burial assemblage includes the characteristic Niah double-spouted funereal vessel, approximately 28 cm in height and 24 cm at maximum width, with spouts spreading 11.5 cm at the tip from an octagonal disk decorated with incised strokes, the body polished and rubbed with haematite [1, p. 153]. The authors interpret this assemblage as representing a small-statured group of modest economic status, practising burial rites with minimal grave furniture [1, p. 153]. The stone tools raise the question of local manufacture versus external trade: the cruder, locally made tools reflect endemic technique, while the more refined quadrangulars may have been carried in as value objects [1, p. 153].

Research and Documentation

The study of the Malayan Stone Age has evolved through distinct phases, each shaped by the available evidence and prevailing theoretical frameworks. The earliest contributions were short notices of individual finds: H. N. Ridley reported the discovery of a worked stone adze at Tanjong Karang, Singapore, in 1891, identifying it as the first worked stone of its class found in the island and arguing for local manufacture from granite available at Pulau Ubin or in the hills between Tanjong Karang and Toas [7, pp. 141–142]. Engku Abdul-Aziz documented four stone implements found on the beach at Tanjong Bunga, Johore, in 1919, two of which were identified as neoliths by the Dutch expert Dr. Ph. van Stein Callenfels [8, p. 159]. These isolated reports established the fact of Neolithic presence but offered no systematic framework.

The 1930s and 1940s saw the emergence of typological and distributional studies. Noone’s 1941 classification addressed the practical need to organise museum collections and proposed a developmental hypothesis linking the convergence of three technical traditions to the observed diversity [2, pp. 210–216]. Linehan’s 1951 catalogue of perforated discs consolidated two decades of scattered publications into a single inventory and engaged directly with the debate, initiated by Heine-Geldern in 1945, over the chronological and cultural attribution of these objects to the Neolithic [6, pp. 73–80]. Sieveking’s 1956 article on bark-cloth beaters introduced the concept of diagnostic artefact types as markers of cultural “horizons” and explicitly linked the distributional evidence to Heine-Geldern’s 1932 population-movement theory, which posited a mainland-to-island direction of influence for the pre-Austronesian cultural sphere [3, pp. 78–85].

The post-war period brought excavation-based archaeology to the fore. The 1953–54 excavations at Gua Cha, Kelantan, and the 1964 excavation of the Magala cave system at Niah, Sarawak, provided stratified assemblages with radiocarbon dates, transforming the field from a study of surface finds into one grounded in chronological sequence [3, p. 82], [1, pp. 148–175]. The Harrissons’ methodological contribution—applying systematic sherd reconstruction and spatial scatter analysis to Bornean burial ceramics—became standard in subsequent regional archaeological work [1, p. 164]. Loewenstein’s 1959 study of hollow clay stands extended the comparative framework beyond Malaya to India, Mesopotamia, Japan, and Korea, directly challenging Collings’ 1949 claim of Malayan uniqueness and positioning the Neolithic within a broader Old World diffusion network [4, pp. 168–196].

A persistent tension in the literature concerns the relative weight of local development versus external transmission. Noone’s hypothesis of three interacting traditions implies a degree of indigenous innovation [2, pp. 214–215]; Loewenstein’s demonstration of the Mesopotamian-Indian origin of hollow stands implies the opposite for that artefact class [4, pp. 194–195]. The question of whether the quadrangular adze—the “type fossil” of the Malayan Neolithic—was locally manufactured or imported as a value object remains unresolved, with the Magala evidence suggesting a mixture of both [1, p. 153], [4, p. 188]. The Bornean record, still limited in scope, complicates any simple mainland-to-island model: Harrisson’s 1973 report of five stone sculptures from the Kapuas region notes that no megalithic work in Borneo has been dated as early as the Stone Age, the earliest dated megalithic activity being c. 1,000 A.D. in the Sarawak River delta [9, p. 181]. The full picture of Stone Age activity across the region thus remains incomplete, with significant gaps in both the Bornean and southern Peninsular records.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. Harrisson B and Tom Harrisson (1968). Magala – a series of Neolithic and Metal Age burial grottos at Sekaloh, Niah, Sarawak JMBRAS 41(2): 148–175. Read on JSTOR
  2. H.D. Noone (1941). A proposed classification of Malayan polished stone implements JMBRAS 19(2): 210–216.
  3. G. de G. Sieveking (1956). The distribution of stone bark-cloth beaters in prehistoric times JMBRAS 29(3): 78–85.
  4. J. Loewenstein (1959). Hollow clay stands and censers from Neolithic Malaya, and their western prototypes JMBRAS 32(1): 168–196. Read on JSTOR
  5. H.G. Keith (1950). Neolithic implements from North Borneo JMBRAS 23(1): 148–150.
  6. W. Linehan (1951). Malayan perforated stone disks JMBRAS 24(3): 73–80.
  7. H.N. Ridley (1891). Discovery of a stone implement in Singapore JSBRAS 23: 141–142.
  8. Abdul Aziz (1932). Neoliths from Johore JMBRAS 10(1): 159. Read on JSTOR
  9. Tom Harrisson (1973). Stone sculptures from south-west Borneo (Kalimantan Barat JMBRAS 46(2): 179–184. Read on JSTOR