RI, Chinese museums hold joint exhibition

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Mon, 04/25/2011

Working in cooperation with the Guangxi Museum of Nationalities, China, the National Museum of Indonesia is featuring a colletion of 200 historical and archeological artifacts from both countries in an exhibition called the “Color of Uniqueness”.

The exhibition will first be in Indonesia from April 25 to May 31, and from there it will move to the Guangxi Museum where it will be held from July 1 to Nov. 1.

The exhibition will present 106 artefacts related to Chinese culture from the National Museum, 92 pieces from the Guangxi Museum, and two from the Trowulan Bureau for the Preservation of Ancient Relics.

Museum of Indonesia director Retno Sulistyaningsih said ties between Indonesia and China could be improved through the exhibition.

“The exhibition will explain that there has been an acculturation of Chinese culture into Indonesian culture, presented in traditional textiles, architecture, carvings, art performances, and ceramics," Retno said during the opening ceremony of the exhibition on Monday

Two prehistoric burial sites found in Papua

Antara News, Mon, April 11 2011

"The finds are very interesting. The two burial sites show that prehistoric people living in mountain areas had different raditions"

Jayapura, Papua (ANTARA News) - The Jayapura Archeology Service has found two prehistoric burial sites in Papua province`s Pegunungan Bintang district.

One of the burial sites was located at Kabiding Hamlet, Oksibil subdistrict and the other one at Wanbakok Hamlet, Serambakon subdistrict.

"The finds are very interesting. The the two burial sites show that prehistoric people living in mountain areas had different raditions," a researcher of the Jayapura Archeology Service, Rini Maryone, said here Monday.

According to Rini, the tribes in Pegunungan Bintang District had a prehisroric cave burial tradition, different from those residing in Pegunungan Tengah District.

For example, the Dani tribe who live in Wamena and Tolikara, have a tradition of cremating their dead instead of entombing them ad in caves, Rini said.

Some artifacts such as splinter stones, square stone axes, were found inside and outside the burial cave sites.

The artifacts indicated that prehistoric humans in the region had a hunting and gathering tradition, Rini said.

Besides the two burial sites, The Jayapura Archeology Agency also found a prehistoric cave related to the worship ritual conducted in Okmakok Hamlet, Oksibil District.

Therefore, Rini asked the local authority to develop the prehistoric sites as potential tourism spots as well as to generate new knowledge from the prehistoric sites.

"The sites definitely have great cultural values," Rini said, adding that the local people should also preserve the prehistoric sites.

Editor: Aditia Maruli

Hundreds of artifacts unearthed in S. Sulawesi

Andi Hajramurni, The Jakarta Post, Makassar | Wed, 03/30/2011

Researchers say they have discovered hundreds of artifacts spanning several eras from sites in Bantaeng, South Sulawesi.

“We can classify the archaeological findings in Bantaeng into the pre-historic, pre-Islamic, Islamic and [modern] Bantaeng periods, based on the artifacts' characteristics,” research team leader Naniek Harkantiningsih said.

Ten researchers from the National Archeology Research and Development Center, the Cultural and Tourism Resource Development Agency and the Culture and Tourism Ministry conducted research in eight Bantaeng sub-districts between March 14 and 28.

Naniek said the team found approximately 600 artifacts, including Chinese ceramics and pottery that dated to the Yuan, Ming and Sung dynasties, and artifacts from Vietnam, Thailand, Japan and the Netherlands.

Researchers also found several coins and a burial complex that might date to the Islamic period in the 1between the 15th and 18th centuries, he said.

The burial site, discovered in Ulu Ere and Gantarang sub-district, was still intact and had been unknown to local residents, he added.

The artifacts, which would be conserved in cooperation with local groups, were evidence that Bantaeng was a center of the spice trade, shipping cacao and vanilla to European countries during the Gowa Tallo kingdom, Naniek said.

“The cultural remains must be preserved and be turned into a cultural heritage site as well as an object of tourism. This way the remains will bring benefits as an archaeological research center and as a source of economic development to the regency and people of Bantaeng” she said.

The researchers began work in January 2007 and were expected to investigate sites in nine regencies and one municipality in the province before the project ends in 2015.

Researchers will next move to Bulukumba, Sinjai, Bone and Maros regencies.

World’s Oldest High-Altitude Human Settlements Found in Papua New Guinea

Jakarta Globe, October 01, 2010

Sydney. The world’s oldest known high-altitude human settlements, dating back up to 49,000 years, have been found sealed in volcanic ash in Papua New Guinea mountains, archaeologists said on Friday.

Researchers have unearthed the remains of about six camps, including fragments of stone tools and food, in an area near the town of Kokoda, said an archaeologist on the team, Andrew Fairbairn.

“What we’ve got there are basically a series of campsites, that’s what they look like anyway. The remains of fires, stone tools, that kind of thing, on ridgetops,” the University of Queensland academic said.

“It’s not like a village or anything like that, they are these campsite areas that have been repeatedly used.”

Fairbairn said the settlements are at about 2,000 meters and believed to be the oldest evidence of our human ancestors, homo sapiens, inhabiting a high-altitude environment.

“For homo sapiens, this is the earliest for us, for modern humans,” he said. “The nearest after this is round about 30,000 years ago in Tibet, and there’s some in the Ethiopian highlands at around about the same type of age.”

Fairbairn said he had been shocked to discover the age of the finds, using radio carbon dating, because this suggested humans had been living in the cold, wet and inhospitable highlands at the height of the last Ice Age.

“We didn’t expect to find anything of that early age,” he said.

The findings, published in the journal Science, suggest that the prehistoric highlanders of Papua New Guinea’s Ivane Valley in the Owen Stanley Range Mountain made stone tools, hunted small animals and ate yams and nuts.

But why they chose to dwell in the harsh conditions of the highlands, where temperatures would have dipped below freezing, rather than remain in the warmer coastal areas, remains a mystery.

“Papua New Guinea’s mountains have long held surprises for the scientific community and here is another one — maybe they were the home of homo sapiens’ earliest mountaineers,” Fairbairn said.

Agence France-Presse

Central Aceh once inhabited by prehistoric humans, archeologist

Antara News, Sunday, September 26, 2010 15:48 WIB

Takengon, Aceh Province (ANTARA News) - Two senior archeologists from Medan said Kampung Mendale area, Central Aceh district, had once inhabited by prehistoric humans.

The two archeologists Ketut Wiradnyana and Lucas Partanda Koestoro made the statement after they found some prehistoric remains such as a niche (Rock Shelter/Abris Shous Roches), a square stone axe, pottery pieces and a human skeleton in a cave near Danau Laut Tawar lake in Kampung Mendale.

"One of our latest discovery is a human skeleton which we found in Ujung Karang Kebayakan area, another excavation site near Kampung Mendale area," Ketut said here on Sunday.

However he could not yet confirm the skeleton`s exact age since excavation was still ongoing.

"In order to determine the age of these objects more accurately, they will go through a carbon dating process at the National Atomic Energy Agency (BATAN)," Ketut said.

Last May, local residents of Jayapura district, Papua province, found some prehistoric relics at two different locations.

The leader of an Archeological Institute research team, Hari Suroto, said locals who were digging in the ground at Kalkote hamlet in East Sentani district on Tuesday (April 27) came across pottery pieces now believed to date back to 1500 BC (before Christ) or the Neolithic era.

The archeological team had also established that the same type of pottery was found in Vanimo, Papua New Guinea, in 1996. In fact, `Lapita` pottery was previously discovered in many places in the Pacific region and the Bismark islands, he said.

At Kwadare village in Waibu district, locals had also found a bronze axe which the archeological team believed was made in 300 BC and originally came from Dong Son, North Vietnam.

Hari said the skill of bronze axe making was brought to the northern coastal regions of Papua by people of the Austronesian race.

But the bronze axe found at Kwadare village was not handed over to the Archeological Institute but kept by the Kwadeware community`s chieftain.

Indonesian Archeologists to Investigate Potentially ‘Phenomenal’ Discovery

Jakarta Globe, Kinanti Pinta Karana, August 04, 2010

A photograph of a statue that claims to have been taken at a previously undiscovered underwater temple in the Bali Strait (Twitter Photo/@andjrot)

Jakarta. Indonesian tourism and cultural authorities have pledged to investigate a stunning series of photographs that claim to be of a number of underwater temples beneath the Bali Strait between Java and the resort island.

The story first broke on social networking site Twitter, with one user, identified as @andjrot, claiming that there were ten such underwater temples between Java and Bali.

Surya Helmi, director of undersea archeological division at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, refuted claims that the temples were discovered by Yogyakarta’s Archeological Office, saying if that was the case then the ministry would have been told about it.

“I first heard about the undersea temples two months ago but I doubt that the pictures were taken by Yogyakarta’s Archeological Office because they would have informed us,” Surya told the Jakarta Globe.

“I believe the pictures were taken by an independent team and I was informed that they wanted to meet me next week,” Surya said, adding that the ministry would conduct a thorough investigation.

“First, we will have to check whether the pictures are real or fabricated,” he said.

Surya, however, conceded that if the photographs were real, then the discovery was “phenomenal.”

“We do not know the exact location and we are intending to investigate after August 17,” he said, referring to Indonesian Independence Day.

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