SEAArch – The Southeast Asian Archaeology Newsblog

Indonesia’s Radya Pustaka Museum receives a rp24 billion (US2.6 million) budget for renovations this year. You may remember this museum from a while back because of a scandal involving the theft of statues from its collection, as well as recent attempts to digitise the manuscript collection.

Radya Pustaka Museum

Radya Pustaka Museum to be Renovated
Tempo Interaktif, 04 Mar 2010
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Archaeologist have a developed a clearer picture of what life in India was like, 74,000 years ago before and after the massive supervolcano eruption of Toba in Sumatra.

photo credit: Marc Veraart

New archaeological sites reveal life after ancient Toba eruption
The Star, 23 February 2010
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A megalithic site believed to date back to 5,000BC has been unearthed in South Sumatra. Among the artefacts include a 1.3-metre wide relief depicting a woman riding an elephant.

Megalithic site found in South Sumatra
Jakarta Post, 17 February 2010
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Indonesia’s most famous ancient monument is to be visited by the president of the United States when he makes his visit to Indonesia next month.

photo credit: likeyesterday

Borobudur on the menu for Obama visit
Jakarta Post, 12 February 2010
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Readers planning to visit the ancient temples of Java like Borobudur and Prambanan will soon have to observe a dress code, or at least not be clad in skimpy miniskirts. The management company overseeing the sites are enforcing a dress code so as to preserve a sense of respect on what are, after all, sacred sites. It’s nice to see such a sense of respect for Buddhist and Hindu temples in such a predominantly Muslim country.

photo credit: hildo trazo

More temples plan to ban mini skirts, shorts
Jakarta Post, 05 February 2010
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A new paper published in BMC Biology may possibly reconcile the small size of the Hobbit’s brain with tool use – one of the arguments against the hobbit being a new species as it is assumed that for something as sophisticated as tool use – you’d need a pretty big brain. The study by Montgomery et al looked at the brain and body size of over 50 primate species indicate that while both brain and body size tend to grow with time, there is sufficient evidence to show that the opposite is also true, ie, shrinkage also does occur in some cases. So it looks like that it is possible for the Hobbit to have evolved to be smaller, thus strengthening the hypothesis that it’s a new species rather than a deformed human.

photo credit: Ryan Somma

Reconstructing the ups and downs of primate brain evolution: implications for adaptive hypotheses and Homo floresiensis
BMC Biology 2010, 8:9doi:10.1186/1741-7007-8-9

Is the Hobbit’s Brain Unfeasibly Small?
Science Daily, 27 January 2010

Reduced Brain Size of Homo floresiensis Hints at Her Likely Ancestors
Anthropology.net, 28 January 2010
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More funding is being allocated to set up tourist villages in a bid to increase tourism at Borobudur.

photo credit: hildo trazo

Borobudur to Woo Visitors With New Tourist Villages
Jakarta Globe, 20 January 2010
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