• Pots, perils and prehistory 🏺⠀ ⠀ This week’s Southeast Asian Archaeology newsletter takes us from Sulawesi’s painted caves to the gold treasures of the Philippines—and the vessels that once carried food across the seas.⠀ ⠀ Also inside:⠀ 🔥 Wildfires threaten prehistoric rock art in Sulawesi⠀ 🏛️ Eighteen Khmer antiquities move a step closer to returning home⠀ 📚 Timor-Leste prepares to welcome its first university history students⠀ 🍲 Singapore’s SHIPPED! exhibition connects archaeology with food traditions⠀ ⠀ To everyone at the IPPA Congress in Yogyakarta: have a great conference! Sorry to miss you this time.⠀ ⠀ Read the full edition via the link in bio.⠀ ⠀ #SoutheastAsianArchaeology #Archaeology #CulturalHeritage #SoutheastAsia
  • Tiny traces, long histories. 🌿⠀ ⠀ How do archaeologists recognise ginger, turmeric or cloves when the food itself has disappeared? And what was happening at Cambodia’s Baset village centuries before its royal temple was built?⠀ ⠀ This week’s extra-large SEAArch newsletter explores two new papers on ancient food and village life, alongside two weeks of discoveries, conservation news and heritage debates from across Southeast Asia.⠀ ⠀ A shoutout, too, to everyone gathering in Bali for the Asia Pacific Conference on Maritime & Underwater Cultural Heritage!⠀ ⠀ Read the full edition through the link in bio.⠀ ⠀ #SoutheastAsianArchaeology #SEAArch #Archaeology #Archaeobotany
  • What was inside these pottery vessels 3,000 years ago? In Peninsular Malaysia, researchers have found something unexpected preserved in prehistoric pottery: traces of milk. A new study analysed 15 pottery fragments from three archaeological cave sites—Gua Cha, Gua Kajang and Gua Harimau—using techniques that can identify microscopic traces of foods absorbed into ceramics. Among the substances detected were caseins and β-lactoglobulin, proteins found in milk. Their presence provides the earliest direct evidence yet reported for dairy processing in equatorial Mainland Southeast Asia, dating to around 3,000 years ago. Archaeologists have long struggled to establish when farming and animal domestication became part of life in prehistoric Peninsular Malaysia. Unlike sites further north in Southeast Asia, clear evidence of early livestock management and cultivation has been difficult to find here, partly because animal bones and plant remains are often poorly preserved. The milk proteins suggest that Neolithic communities were processing dairy products thousands of years ago. This does not necessarily mean they were raising dairy animals locally but it provides an important new piece of evidence for understanding food production and consumption in the region. The researchers also identified traces of plant and animal foods, suggesting that these vessels were used for a variety of food-processing activities. Reference Goh et al. 2026. “Pottery residues provide earliest direct evidence for domestication and dairy processing in equatorial Mainland Southeast Asia.” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 75, 106066. 10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.106066 #SoutheastAsianArchaeology #SEAArch #Archaeology #MalaysiaArchaeology #milk
  • FORTS, FINDS AND FAST BIKES! ⠀ ⠀ Archaeology isn
  • This week in Southeast Asian Archaeology:⠀ ⠀ 💀 What decades of funerary archaeology can tell us about the changing field of bioarchaeology in Indonesia.⠀ ⠀ 🏛️ Reconstructing the lost palaces of Lý dynasty Đại Việt—and what archaeology at Thăng Long reveals about their architecture.⠀ ⠀ 🙏 Two devas at Angkor Thom’s Victory Gate get their heads back, complete with an “eye-opening” ceremony.⠀ ⠀ 🪨 And the Singapore Stone has become Stoney, an absurdly adorable plushie - I want one.⠀ ⠀ All that and much more in this week’s Stones, Skeletons and State Rooms.⠀ ⠀ #SoutheastAsianArchaeology #Indonesia #Vietnam #Cambodia #Singapore
  • 🏺 CAVES, COMMUNITIES AND CULTURAL MEMORY⠀ ⠀ An archaeological site doesn’t stop changing once the excavation ends.⠀ ⠀ This week, we look at Ban Chiang through the memories of the people who live there, and at Sri Mahosot, where an ancient landscape remains part of contemporary worship and community identity.⠀ ⠀ Also this week:⠀ ⠀ 🇵🇭 Rescue archaeology at a cave in Romblon⠀ 🇮🇩 A possible Kadiri-era site in East Java⠀ 🇻🇳 A new forest-and-heritage trail at Mỹ Sơn⠀ 🇰🇭 Angkorian Buddhist sculpture⠀ 📢 SPAFACON 2027 call for abstracts⠀ 💼 New archaeology and heritage jobs⠀ 💰 Grants, fellowships and PhD opportunities⠀ ⠀ …plus archaeology and heritage stories from across Southeast Asia.⠀ ⠀ Caves, Communities and Cultural Memory⠀ Southeast Asian Archaeology Newsletter | 21–27 September 2026⠀ ⠀ 🔗 Link in bio / southeastasianarchaeology.substack.com⠀ ⠀ #Archaeology #SoutheastAsianArchaeology #SoutheastAsia
  • One river in northern Vietnam has yielded a remarkable record of more than 2,000 years of boatbuilding. From the bed of the Kinh Thầy River at Cầu Bình, researchers documented 23 boat remains, including eight virtually complete logboat hulls and fragments of bows, sterns and planks. Radiocarbon dates place most of them between roughly 700 BCE and 1500 CE. Many hulls showed signs of sophisticated work beyond simply hollowing out a tree trunk. The hulls could be widened during manufacture, while wooden thwarts or bulkheads helped maintain their expanded shape. Some boats also carried additional boards along their upper edges, attached through holes with fibre lashings. Around 2,000 years ago, during the late Đông Sơn and Han periods, several examples reveal another solution: mortise-and-tenon joints locked with wooden dowels. One boat even combined these joints with lashing holes. In later centuries, other Cầu Bình boats were built without this particular system. This shows that over 2,200 years, boatbuilders used, combined and abandoned different solutions while continuing a long tradition of wooden river craft in the northern Red River Delta. Reference Bellwood, Nguyễn, , Lê, Hung, & Calo. 2026. “A 2,200-Year Logboat Sequence (700 BCE–1500 CE) from the Northern Red River Delta, Vietnam.” International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. DOI: 10.1080/10572414.2026.2717219 #VietnamArchaeology #SoutheastAsianArchaeology #MaritimeArchaeology #NauticalArchaeology #RedRiverDelta
  • 🏺 Palaces, Pots and Porcelain⠀ ⠀ Xin Chào! 🇻🇳 It’s a very Vietnam-heavy week in Southeast Asian archaeology: imperial palaces, ceremonial architecture, ancient brick tombs, early tile kilns, Cham heritage and the return of a Đông Sơn bronze drum.⠀ ⠀ 🔬 New research from Malaysia finds molecular evidence for dairy processing around 3,000 years ago.⠀ ⠀ 🏺 And in the Philippines, some very unusual earthenware decorated with fragments of Chinese porcelain tells a story about Manila, material culture and the early colonial encounter.⠀ ⠀ There’s plenty more from around Southeast Asia in this week’s newsletter.⠀ ⠀ Palaces, Pots and Porcelain — read via the link in bio.⠀ ⠀ #Archaeology #SoutheastAsianArchaeology #VietnamArchaeology #MalaysiaArchaeology #PhilippineArchaeology
  • A 4.38-metre-long wooden rudder from the west coast of Sumatra is providing a rare glimpse of Southeast Asian seafaring around 1,300 years ago. The rudder was recovered at the Bongal Site in Central Tapanuli, North Sumatra. Today the site lies inland, but geomorphological research suggests that in the 7th–8th centuries CE it was part of a shallow bay or estuarine environment. The quarter rudder was carved from a single log and measures 4.38 metres long. Radiocarbon dating of the wood produced a calibrated date of 656–687 CE, making it the earliest securely dated rudder currently known from Southeast Asia. Researchers also documented hull planks with raised wooden lugs, dowels and surviving palm-fibre ropes. These suggest that parts of these boats were pegged and tied together—a construction method archaeologists call the Southeast Asian lashed-lug tradition. Differences between the surviving planks even suggest that several vessels may have been present. Bongal also produced ceramics, glass, beads and coins pointing to connections with much wider exchange networks. The researchers do not argue that the Bongal boats themselves were making long-distance voyages across the Indian Ocean, but propose that locally constructed vessels formed part of a regional maritime network, moving through rivers and along Sumatra’s coast and connecting communities there to broader systems of exchange. Reference Mochtar et al. 2026. “Lashed-Lug Boats from the Bongal Site: New Evidence for Early Maritime Networks on the West Coast of Sumatra.” International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. 10.1080/10572414.2026.2714901 #SoutheastAsianArchaeology #Indonesia #Sumatra #MaritimeArchaeology #NauticalArchaeology
  • Betel, Boats and Border Stones is this week’s Southeast Asian Archaeology Newsletter.⠀ ⠀ This issue starts with a fascinating new paper on ancient teeth from South Sulawesi, where unusual dental wear may point to the habitual sucking of whole areca nuts by pre-agricultural foragers.⠀ ⠀ Then we move from teeth to timbers: lashed-lug boat remains from Bongal on Sumatra’s west coast, including a 7th-century quarter rudder, add new detail to Southeast Asia’s early maritime networks.⠀ ⠀ And yes, there are more boats: Phanom Surin in Thailand and the Butuan boat sites in the Philippines both make appearances this week.⠀ ⠀ Plus: Preah Vihear, Koh Ker, Prambanan, Đông Sơn drums, repatriation, digital heritage, and more.⠀ ⠀ Read the full issue at the link in bio.⠀ ⠀ #SoutheastAsianArchaeology #Archaeology #MaritimeArchaeology
Tuesday, November 3, 2026
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Rock Art of Malaysia 刻在岩壁上的画，解读古人的生命密码 – 副刊 – 专题 – 周刊专题

20 April 2023
in Malaysia
Tags: rock art
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Source: Sin Chew 20230417

Source: Sin Chew 20230417

via Sin Chew, 17 April 2023: Feature on Dr Saw Chaw Yeh and her work on Malaysian rock art, particuarly that of the Kinta Valley where she has researched extensively. Article is in Chinese.

岩画 可喻为原始人类的古文献，以 图腾、线条、符号、色彩勾勒出古代生活和生存的场景。岩画并非无意识的随笔，众多人文岩画用图像展示了部落狩猎、祭祀崇拜、野生动物、群居生活等多元内容，堪称珍贵的古文明史书。

可是，岩画内容又是一个不解之谜，线条拙稚、纯真，却又蕴涵难以参透的意象图形，宛如失落的密语待解构。

Source: 【近打谷探洞／03】刻在岩壁上的画，解读古人的生命密码 – 副刊 – 专题 – 周刊专题 | 星洲网 Sin Chew Daily Malaysia Latest News and Headlines

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