Brief Communications 33 1

Brief Communications THE EARLY METAL AGES OF INDONESIA Alfred G. Smith s review of H. R. van Heekeren s book, The Bronze-Iron Age of Indonesia (American Anthropologist, 1959: 335-336), calls for some comments since it is likely to create a completely wrong impression of our present knowledge of the period and cultures in question. It is largely due to van Heekeren s numerous excavations and studies that the veil over Indonesia s prehistoric past has been lifted at least to some extent. We ought to be grateful to him for having undertaken the thankless task of compiling and digesting the little that is known about the region s Early Metal Age and he should not be blamed for deficiencies which are merely due to the lack of reliable data. Smith finds fault with van Heekeren because a whole site is never described. No L whole sites are known. No dwelling place of the period has ever been discovered. Moreover, most of the early stone cist graves, stone sarcophagi, etc., found so far, had been looted and yielded only poor remnants of their original contents. Our knowledge of the pre-hindu metal-using cultures of Indonesia is therefore mainly based on stray finds, such as bronze axes, bronze drums, ornaments, or a few moulds. What else could van Heekeren have done under these circumstances than to give an inventory of the materials? The two sites tentatively ascribed by van Heekeren to the early metal period comprise the urn burials of Anjar in western Java, and the urn cemetery of Melolo on the island of Sumba. Both are described on pages 80-83 and 85-88 of van Heekeren s book. The cemetery of Melolo yielded stone adzes, beads of stone and shell, and a shell pendant, but no metal. It was only from the character and decorations of the earthenware flasks found in some of the burial urns that I inferred that the cemetery could not antedate the bronze-using Dongson period. W. J. A. Willems, who carried out excavations at Melolo but never published his notes, came to the same conclusion. This was also accepted by van Heekeren (Heine-Geldern 1945: 148; van Heekeren 1956; 1958:88). Influences of metal-using cultures seem to have spread faster in Indonesia than metal itself. It is mainly a question of terminology whether we should ascribe sites where such influences are discernible-but where no metal has been found-to the Neolithic or to the Metal Age. This applies, among others, to the site of Kalumpang in Celebes, where pottery decorated in a style characteristic of early metal-using cultures of Southeast Asia has been found in association with a wealth of stone tools, but with no trace of metal (Van der Hoop 1941:308; Heine-Geldern 1945: 138; van Heekeren 1949; 1957: 118-120). Neither stone tools nor bronze objects were found in the urn burials of Anjar, but the few pottery vessels they contained as funerary gifts indicate a post-neolithic date. Van Heekeren (1958: 83) cautiously remarks: No definite 330

Brief Communications 33 1 conclusions can be drawn as to the age of this graveyard, but we venture to believe that it does not date back further than about the 2nd or 3rd century A.D. It is inconceivable why the reviewer should single out the bronze kettle drums from Sumbawa (more correctly from the small island of Sangeang near Sumbawa) as being described in the order they were found, since they actually were discovered all at one and the same time. Van Heekeren mentions this quite clearly (p. 24). There is therefore no excuse for this oversight. The reviewer alleges that any piece of bronze, burial urn, or megalith found within this area [i.e. Indonesia] is automatically attributed [by van Heekeren] to a Bronze-Iron Age, and the reality of this Bronze-Iron Age is affirmed by these very pieces. This reproof is totally unfounded. Smith seems not to have realized that innumerable ancient bronzes found in Indonesia were not automatically attributed to a Bronze-Iron Age and, of course, not even mentioned by van Heekeren for the very good reason that they date from the Hindu-Buddhist period. Any archeologist at all familiar with Indonesia will readily agree that, with the possible exception of two specimens the dates of which I consider as somewhat uncertain, all the bronzes listed by van Heekeren antedate the establishment of Indian colonies in Indonesia or were at least made in the pre-hindu tradition. Moreover, van Heekeren states quite clearly that neither megaliths nor urn burials were confined to the prehistoric periods (pp. 44, 62, 79, 84, 89). Smith remarks that for no apparent reason, the text includes four tables ol detailed quantitative chemical analyses of beads. Since none of the specimens analyzed contained barium, any person familiar with Far Eastern archeology would immediately recognize that they are not of Chinese origin (cf. Seligman and Beck 1938) but must have been imported from either India or the Mediterranean region. The problem has been discussed by a number of scholars, and some glass beads of Mediterranean origin found in Malaya and Indonesia have been dated in the first millennium B.C. (Nieuwenhuis 1904; 1907:232-233; Beck 1930: 176-181; Van der Hoop 1932: 133-139; Seligman and Beck 1938: 14-15; Heine-Geldern 1945 : 146; Braddell 1947 : 1-10; Harrison 1950; 1954: 110-111). On the other hand, an ancient Chinese source lists glass among the commodities for which palace officials of the Han period used to sail to the southern islands and says that the latters inhabitants offered tribute (i.e. traded with China) ever since the time of Emperor Wu, 140-86 B.C. (Pelliot 1912:458). Obviously, the ancient glass beads of Malaya and Indonesia testify to an early sea-borne trade between the West and the countries and islands of southeastern Asia, a trade which in the Han period extended indirectly as far as China. It need hardly be stressed that the subject is of considerable interest. Van Heekeren was, however, quite right in publishing the mere facts, leaving it to specialists to draw the inferences. The analyses may eventually help them to determine more exactly the places of origin of the beads in question. Smith reproves van Heekeren for saying that in all excavations bronze and iron objects have been found side by side (van Heekeren 1958: 1, 96), although

332 American Anthropologist [62, 19601 the data presented in the text indicate no such associations (Smith 1959). The statement is again incorrect. Van Heekeren lists several instances in which bronze and iron objects were actually found side by side. Nevertheless, in this single instance I agree to a certain extent with Smith s criticism. The association of iron tools and weapons with bronze ornaments, as in a stone sarcophagus of Bali tentatively dated in the first centuries of the Christian era, and in the equally late-if not later-stone cist graves of Gunung Kidul in Java, means nothing. There can be no doubt that bronze ornaments were still produced and worn long after the use of bronze for tools and weapons had been discontinued. Moreover, those from the Gunung Kidul graves contain no lead and differ therefore in composition from the truly prehistoric bronzes. With a single exception (Pradjekan in Java) bronze tools and weapons have so far never been found together with iron ones. Conditions are not very much different in mainland Southeast Asia. One site only, the cemetery of Dongson in northern Annam, yielded both bronze and iron, besides numerous bronze tools and weapons, a few iron swords, lance heads,and arrow heads (Goloubew 1929: 30-31). Although the beginnings of the cemetery date back at least to around 300 B.C., the site continued to be used until the middle of the 1st century A.D., when the region was already under Chinese domination. Therefore the presence of a few iron weapons, probably all of them Chinese imports, does not tell us anything concerning the original local culture. On the basis of the evidence available, I consider van Heekeren s statement (1958: 96) that neither Indo-China nor Indonesia knew a pure Bronze Age as at least premature. As matters stand, we shall do better to distinguish between an Indonesian Bronze and an Early Iron Age. The chronological dividing line may possibly coincide with the first establishment of Hindu colonies in the islands. There must, of course, have been a transitional period, when both bronze and iron tools and weapons were used side by side, but so far we have only a single archeological proof of this. At Pradjekan in eastern Java local people found in the course of some digging operations an iron dagger with a bronze hilt decorated in the pre-hindu style, together with other bronze objects in the same style and with a bronze socketed axe (van Heekeren 1958:39-40). In conformity with established archeological usage, according to which a prehistoric culture should be named after the site where it was first recognized as a distinct entity (cf. such terms as Magdalenian, Hallstatt culture, La Tbne culture), we should designate the Bronze Age of both continental Southeast Asia and Indonesia as Dongson culture. This has the further advantage of not prejudicing the possibility that the use of iron may, after all, turn out to be older than would at present appear. I still subscribe to what I wrote fifteen years ago (1945 : 143) :... it is possible, although in my opinion not very probable, that the knowledge and use of bronze and iron may have been introduced in Indonesia at the same time.... It is only with this restriction that we may speak of a Bronze Age in Indonesia. It seems advisable to use, provisionally at least, the term Dongson Culture, leaving the question open whether this culture

Brief Communications 333 knew iron from the very beginning or whether the use of iron was introduced only during its final phases. It is true, as I and others have shown, that the Dongson Culture is distantly derived from cultures which already knew iron. But does this justify our calling it an Iron Age culture if it did not use iron? We are faced here with the same problem of terminology as the one I mentioned before with regard to those cultures of Indonesia which had undergone influences from metal-using cultures, but did not possess metal themselves. According to Smith, ( an artifact is never placed by van Heekeren in any relative or absolute chronology, and a context horizon is never identified. Van Heekeren discusses the possible dates of bronze kettle drums (pp. 15, 25) and very cautiously indicates those of beads (pp. 40-41), of megalithic tombs, of stone cist graves, stone sarcophagi and prehistoric stone statues (pp. 49-51, 58, 75), and of the urn burials of Anjar and Melolo (pp. 83, 88). This is about as far as one can legitimately go in the present state of our knowledge. It is only at Dongson that we have definite indications of absolute dates; on the one hand, Chinese bronzes of the Late Chou period of about 300 B.C., if not earlier, and on the other, Chinese imports of the Han period and several coins of the Emperor Wang Mang who reigned from A.D. 9 to A.D. 23 (Goloubew 1929: 11; Janse 1935-36; Karlgren 1942:3-8). Even so, our knowledge of the cemetery of Dongson is still very inadequate, and we shall have to wait for Janse s not yet published final report in order to get a clear view of its stratigraphy and chronology. Smith finally censures van Heekeren for having included in his book a brief abstract of my results concerning the stimuli which the Dongson culture received from.the Hallstatt culture and the early Iron Age cultures of the Caucasus. Why he brings in La The and what he means by saying that Hallstatt and La The were products of a western migration, is enigmatic. He ends his review with four verses in which he sets my views on a par with G. Elliot Smith s (children of the sun and Gladwin s Alexandrian fleet. Any comment on this would be superfluous. There are various points on which I disagree with van Heekeren. Nevertheless, I take great pleasure in saying that by his book on the Bronze-Iron Age of Indonesia he has rendered archeology a very real service. He has given us a base to work upon, even though his documentary inventory of materials may read like a laundry list, as his critic chose to say. ROBERT HEINE-GELDERN Institut filr Volkerkunde Universitat Wien REFERENCES CITED BECK, H. C. 1930 Notes on sundry Asiatic beads. Man 30: 166-182. BRADDELL, ROLAND 1947 Notes on ancient times in Malaya. Journal Malayan Branch Royal Asiatic Society 20(2): 1J9.

334 American Anthropologist [62, 19601 GOLOUBEW, VICTOR 1929 L ftge du bronze au Tonkin et dans le Nord-Annam. Bulletin de 1 Ikole Francaise d Extr&me-Orient 29: 1-46. HARRISSON, TOM 1950 Kelabit, Land Dayak and related glass beads in Sarawak. Sarawak Museum Journal 5(2): 201-220. 1954 Outside influences on the upland culture of Kelabits of North Central Borneo. Sarawak Museum Journal 6(4) : 104-125. HEEKEREN, H. R. VAN 1949 Rapport over de ontgraving te Kamasi, Kalumpang (West Centraal-Celebes). Oudheidkundige Dienst in IndonesiE, Oudheidkundig Verslag 1949: 26-48. 1956 The urn cementery at Melolo, East Sumba. Berita Dinas Purbakala, Bulletin of the Archaeological Service of the Republic of Indonesia 3. Djakarta. 1957 The Stone Age of Indonesia. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 21. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff. 1958 The Bronze-Iron Age of Indonesia. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 22. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff. HEINE-GELDERN, ROBERT 1945 Prehistoric research in the Netherlands Indies. In Science and Scientists in the Netherlands Indies. New York, Board for the Netherlands Indies, Surinam and Curacao. 1958 Steinurnen- und Tonurnenbestattung in Sudostasien. Der Schlern 32: 135-138. HOOP, A. N. J. TH. A. TH. VAN DER 1932 Megalithic remains in South-Sumatra. Zutphen, W. J. Thieme & Cie. 1941 Catalogus der praehistorische verzameling. Koninklijk Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen. JANSE, OLOV 1935-36 Rapport preliminaire d une mission archeologique en Indochine. Revue des Arts Asiatiques 9: 144-153; 10:42-52. KARLGREN, BERNHARD 1942 The date of the early Dong-so n culture. Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities Stockholm, Bulletin 14: 1-28. NIEUWENHUIS, A. W. 1904 Kunstperlen und ihre kulturelle Bedeutung. Internationales Archiv fur Ethnographie 16: 136-153. 1907 Quer durch Borneo, vol. 2. Leiden, E. J. Brill. PELLIOT, PAUL 1912 Review of Chau Ju-Kua, his work on the Chinese and Arab trade, by Friedrich Hirth and W. W. Rockhill. T oung Pao 13:446-481. SELIGMAN, C. G. and H. C. BECK 1938 Far eastern glass: some western origins. Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities. Stockholm, Bulletin 10: 1-64. SMITH, A. G. 1959 Review of The bronze-iron age of Indonesia, by H. R. van Heekeren. American Anthropologist 61 : 335-336. REJOINDER TO DR. ROBERT HEINE-GELDERN S THE EARLY METAL AGES OF INDONESIA Dr. Heine-Geldern s first criticism is of the review s statement that a whole site is never described. He objects, saying that no whole sites exist, and that, paradoxically, some of them are described by van Heekeren. Archeologists in Indonesia have been primarily interested in the rich temples