1927.38.9

Collection type

Object

Description

Pounder. Rounded stone. Pink/brown in colour. [AB [OPS Move] 25/10/2016]

Geographical reference

Malaysia

Asia > South-eastern Asia > Malaysia

Perak, Gunong Pondok, cave of Gua Kerbau

Person

Field collector Ivor Hugh Norman Evans

PRM source Taiping Museum

Date

Date collected

By 1927

Acquisition information

Donated: 1927

Materials and processes

Material Stone, Process Ground

Dimensions

Width: max 62 mm, Depth: max 70 mm, Height: max 54 mm

Object numbers

Accession number: 1927.38.9

Research and responses

This collection was examined by Dr Huw Barton as part of the Fell funded project Characterizing the World Archaeology Collections. He noted that the site of Gunong Pondok "was first identified by L. Wray who noted deposits of bone and shell in 1880, however, he does not appear to have conducted excavations here. W.M. Gordon dug some exploratory test pits in 1921 but did not produce a report, though a summary based on site visits was published by Evans (1922). Controlled excavations were later undertaken by P. Callenfels of the Netherlands East Indies Archaeological Service and Ivor H. Evans, Perak Museum, in 1926 and 1927 (Evans 1927, 1928). The objects in the Pitt Rivers collection appear to date to the 1927 excavation. The site is also notable as it represents one of the first attempts to formally describe the unifacially worked pebble tools, now known as ‘sumatraliths’, that are typical of the Hoabinhian Industry (Tweedie 1953: 12). While the site has never been dated by radiocarbon or other absolute methods, based on the assemblage recovered, David Bulbeck (2003) estimates the site to date from the early to late Holocene." [AS 12/07/2010]

Associated publications

See Evans, I.H.N. (1927) Papers on the Ethnology and Archaeology of the Malay Peninsula (Cambridge) and Evans, I.H.N. (1922) A rock shelter at Gunong Pondok. Journal of the Federated Malay States 9, 267–70. [AS 13/07/2010]

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