Sacred Darkness: A Global Perspective on the Ritual Use of Caves

17. The Prehistoric Funerary Archaeology of the Niah Caves, Sarawak (Malaysian Borneo)

249 17 The prehistory of cave use in Island Southeast Asia is commonly summarized as a first phase of domestic use by Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene foragers followed by a second phase of funerary use by Neolithic and Metal Age farmers (Anderson 1997). The sequence was exemplified by the major program of excavations conducted in the 1950s and 1960s by Tom and Barbara Harrisson in the Niah Caves in Sarawak in northern Borneo (figure 17.1). Their remarkable discoveries in the West Mouth of Niah Great Cave included, in a deep sounding cut at the front of the cave termed the Hell Trench, a human skull (the socalled Deep Skull) in deposits that yielded a radiocarbon date of circa 40,000 BP (years before the present), making it the earliest modern human in southeast Asia (Brothwell 1960; T. Harrisson 1958). At higher levels in the same part of the cave they found evidence for intensive habitation and occasional burials dating to the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. Further into the interior they identified a cemetery of about 200 burials of broadly Neolithic date and character, yielding radiocarbon dates from circa 5000 BP to circa 2500 BP (Brooks, Helgar, and Brooks 1977; B. Harrisson 1967; T. Harrisson 1965, 1970). They also conducted excavations in several other entrances to the cave complex, finding evidence for small-scale Pleistocene occupation in Gan Kira, Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene occupation in Lobang Angus, and further possible Neolithic burials in Gan Kira. In Kain Hitam, the socalled Painted Cave a few hundred meters east of the Gan Kira entrance, they found bodies buried in wooden boats dated to about 1,000 years ago, together with wall paintings of boats and dancing figures that were thought likely to be associated with the boat burials. The Niah Caves remain unique in the region for the length of the sequence of human activity found and the wealth of the material culture associated with it. However, there have always been major uncertainties about the Harrissons’s findings, for three reasons (Bellwood 1985, 1997; Solheim 1977a, 1977b, 1983; Zuraina 1982). First, although numerous interim reports and specialist papers were published, there was never a final comprehensive report. Second, the excavation was in horizontal spits, a method ill suited to the typically complex and frequently dipping deposits of caves. Third, the various radiocarbon dates obtained were very early in the development of the method, and methodologies have of course transformed in precision and accuracy since then. In an attempt to resolve these uncertainties, since 2000 an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and environmental scientists has undertaken further fieldwork in and around the caves, integrated with detailed study of the substantial archive of records and finds from the previous excavations (Barker 2005; Barker et al. 2000, 2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2003, 2007). The scope of the present chapter is to discuss the evidence, old and new, for the complexity of prehistoric funerary behavior in the cave. The Prehistoric Funerary Archaeology of the Niah Caves, Sarawak (Malaysian Borneo) Graeme Barker and Lindsay Lloyd-Smith Graeme Barker and Lindsay Lloyd-Smith 250 over 150 meters across and over 75 meters in height. Even though the entrance is so large, however, a series of massive speleothem pillars, as well as large trees and the hanging jungle vegetation around the cave’s edges, mean that much of the cave’s immediate interior is shielded from bright sunPleistocene Burial in the West Mouth The West Mouth of Niah Cave is a truly monumental setting (figure 17.2). Formed by a confluence of two massive (cathedral-like) cave passages, the entrance measures Figure 17.1 Plan of the Niah Caves complex, Sarawak. The main excavations by Tom and Barbara Harrisson were in the West Mouth, Lobang Tulang, Lobang Angus, and Gan Kira. The Prehistoric Funerary Archaeology of the Niah Caves, Sarawak (Malaysian Borneo) 251 light. The main focus of its use by Pleistocene foragers was in one of the light and airy parts of the entrance in front of a small rockshelter or overhang at its northwest corner (figure 17.3), in a natural basin formed between, on the one side, the rocks of the cave lip or rampart and, on the other, the bat and bird guano deposits that slope down toward the cave entrance from the cave interior. The Hell Trench is located where the basin was situated. The geomorphological studies of our project have shown...