by: Adi Haji Taha

Department of Archaeology and Anthropology,

Faculty of Arts,

Australian National University

 

One of the projects being undertaken in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, in cooperation with the National Museum in Kuala Lumpur, concerns the prehistory of the Malay peninsula as traced through the excavation of two large rock shelters in the interior of Kelantan Province in the northeast peninsular Malaysia. The Malay peninsula itself formed the western part of the huge and now partially drowned subcontinent of Sundaland during the glacial periods of the Pleistocene (before 10,000 years ago). It must have served as a land connection for ancient movements of population from Asia into Indonesia, and ultimately of course Australia. Caves in many regions of northern and central peninsular Malaysia have produced rich archaeology of the millennia going back well into the Pleistocene, especially in the form of ‘Hoabinhian’ stone assemblages utilising edge-flaked river pebbles, an industry found widely over the whole of mainland Southeast Asia and South China. In later times, the use of pottery spread through the peninsula after 4,000 years ago, and in early historical times after 2,000 years ago it provided ports and trans-peninsular portages for the developing trade between India and China.

The area termed Ulu Kelantan, where my research is being undertaken, is situated in the deep rainforested interior of Kelantan. The Nenggiri and Galas rivers traverse the area and have been used extensively for communications until recent times. The majority of the population of Ulu Kelantan consists of Orang Asli, Malaysian aboriginal groups who speak languages belonging to the Mon-Khmer subgroup of the Austroasiatic family, a family quite different from the Austronesian family which contains Malay and most Indonesian languages. Two of the main ethnic groups of Ulu Kelantan are the Temiar agriculturists and the Mendriq (Negritos) hunters and gatherers. Ulu Kelantan has lots of limestone rock shelters with high archaeological potential along the banks of the main rivers.

In 1993, The Department of Museums and Antiquity of Malaysia conducted an archaeological survey in Ulu Kelantan. Two large rock shelters, Gua Chawas and Gua Peraling , were chosen by me for excavation in 1994. Both sites have dense occupation layers of the Malaysian Hoabinhian spanning many millennia, running into the Neolithic phase of pottery and presumed agriculture and then followed by an early historical occupation and a modern period of Orang Asli usage for camping. The Hoabinhian deposits produced much material which is now being analysed at the ANU, including bones of food animals, plant remains in the form phytoliths (tiny silica bodies from stems and leaves), riverine shellfish, locally manufactured stone tools made from river pebbles and hard limestone. The Neolithic pottery is mainly ‘cord-marked’, having a roughened surface due to beating during manufacture with a cord-wrapped piece of wood, and is of a type found all over the Malay peninsula after 4,000 years ago.

Despite similarities in the general assemblage of the two sites , there are some interesting differences. Gua Chawas, which is located far from any river, was excavated to a depth of three metres. Available radiocarbon dates from the ANU laboratory started at 10,700 years ago at a depth of 2.4 metres, but more dating samples are to be submitted. Gua Chawas produce very exciting evidence in its upper layers, about 1,000 years ago, for the offering of Buddhist clay tablets in a tiny side cave. Historians have always believed that there was an ancient pre-Islamic Malay kingdom situated deep in the interior of Kelantan. According to ancient Chinese chronicles, the seat of the kingdom ‘ch’ih-tu’, was one month’s journey from the eastern coast of the Malay peninsula.

Paul Wheatley, in his book ‘The Golden Khersonese’, identified Ulu Kelantan as the most likely location for this kingdom, citing the gold deposits of the area, mined historically from a few hundred years ago until the present, as a major attraction. The votive clay tablets from Gua Chawas, numbering more than 1,000 pieces (mainly broken), throw some light on this mystery. They are impressed with Bodhisatva and Avaloketisvara images characteristic of the Hindu-Buddhist Mahayanist art of the Srivijayan period of early Southeast Asia history (circa AD 670 - 1100). They are oval and pear-shaped and some were perhaps mixed with the cremated ashes of the deceased persons. The tablets are believed to have been made from clay located in part of the rock shelter.

Gua Peraling is a massive rock shelter located close to the Perias River, a tributary of the Nenggiri. The site produced much denser debris of Hoabinhian habitation than Gua Chawas, perhaps because of its location near to water, debris extending here right to the surface layers of the site. People clearly sat in this shelter manufacturing their stone tools in huge quantities for a very long time, although no radio carbon dates have yet been processed for this site. Some of the pebble tools had ground cutting edges like tools found in ancient deposits in northern Australia. A number of secondary Hoabinhian burials were also excavated, but mainly in poor preservation. Gua Peraling lies close to a famous archaeological rock shelter called Gua Cha, which produced many well preserved burials of Hoabinhian and Neolithic times when excavated by Sieveking in 1954. My re-excavations at this site in 1979 showed that the Hoabinhian and Neolithic burials formed a continuous sequence, suggesting rapid cultural change to a Neolithic material culture at about 3,000 years ago.

Whether Gua Peraling will show similar results to Gua Cha is not yet certain, partly because the upper Neolithic deposits here are very thin. At present , analysis of the excavated materials from Gua Chawas and Peraling is at an initial stage. However, these latest findings will surely contribute immensely to understanding cultural and historical developments in the area through at least the past 10,000 years.

(ANU Reporter, issue 16 August 1995, page 7)

Gua Cha & Other Archaeological Sites

KELANTAN ZAMAN AWAL