Article

Implements

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Implements

The implements documented in the Society’s literature span a wide chronological and functional range, from Neolithic stone tools to Iron Age iron artefacts and ethnographic wooden and iron agricultural instruments, all recovered from or described in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo. These objects—harvesting knives, bark-cloth beaters, iron tools of uncertain function, bone implements, and oil presses—collectively illuminate the material culture of prehistoric and historic communities across the region, and their study has been central to debates over cultural attribution, technological diffusion, and the economic life of Malayan societies [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6].

Members & Sub-Topics

Typology and Construction

The implements recorded in the Society’s journals fall into several distinct material and functional categories. The pisau penggiau, a Kedah harvesting knife described by J. A. Baker in 1940, consists of a nine-inch wooden handle with a fourteen-inch hook limb on one side and an iron blade set on the opposite side; the user gathers padi stalks with the hook and cuts them with a half-turn of the wrist [1, p. 43]. Baker traces the etymology of giau (Malay for ‘hook’) to the Siamese kiau and notes that the common Kedah expression for harvesting is kerat padi or potong padi rather than menyabit [1, p. 44]. A close parallel exists in the Philippine lingcao, described by Copeland from Camus’ work, which shares the same hook-and-blade configuration and harvesting technique, suggesting a wider historical distribution of this implement type across the region [1, p. 44].

The cross-hatched stone bark-cloth beater, examined by G. de G. Sieveking in 1956, is a pebble or rock fragment pecked into a roughly cylindrical form, one end broken flat and cross-hatched with V-shaped grooves cut at right angles to produce a chequer-board pattern of truncated pyramidal blocks [3, p. 79]. The design is functionally specific: the broad working surface and the gaps between raised areas maximise the efficiency of separating bark fibres without severing them entirely [3, p. 79]. Thirteen examples are recorded from the Malay Peninsula, all from the southern half (Kelantan, Pahang, Perak, Selangor), measuring 90–125 mm in length with a working surface diameter of 60–80 mm; four bear a broad hafting groove just above the working face [3, p. 82]. Sieveking distinguishes this Malayan type from the flat, squared, parallel-grooved hammerstones of modern Central Celebes and the “Horned Bark Cloth Beater” of the Philippines, which represent separate design traditions [3, pp. 80–81].

The tulang mawas, an enigmatic Iron Age iron implement recovered from sites across the Malay Peninsula, has attracted the most sustained scholarly debate. Its form—a blade with a transverse socket—has been variously interpreted as a miner’s tool, a weapon, a ceremonial object, or a carpenter’s implement [2, pp. 37–38]. J. G. D. Clark’s 1959 note on two bone tools in the Raffles Museum adds a further category: one specimen from Da Phuc, Tonkin, excavated by Mme Colani, is a section of long bone split and shaped by flaking with a polished concave working edge, compared by Clark with a pair of similar tools from Star Carr, Yorkshire, England, made from elk femur [6, p. 197]. The second, from Bukit Chuping, Perlis, appears to be made from a splinter of thick tubular bone with only a slight and dubious trace of flaking [6, p. 197].

Economic and Ecological Context

Several of the documented implements are directly tied to specific economic activities. The pisau penggiau was used in conjunction with the now-rare practice of threshing padi by buffaloes (irek), a method that Baker associated with the tool’s distinctive hook-and-blade design [1, p. 43]. The native oil press (chandasan) described by H. G. Keith in 1928 from North Borneo was employed for extracting oil from Katiau (Ilipe) and Kawang (Tengkawang) nuts: the cotyledons were pounded in a mortar (lesong), steamed over boiling water for approximately one hour, packed into a woven rotan or bamboo bag (kandol), and pressed between half-round timbers (gapit), the oil running down a trough (chachurong) made of betel-nut palm leaf-sheath into a bamboo tube or metal bowl [5, p. 97]. Keith notes a key distinction between the two oils: Kawang oil hardens into a tallow-like substance on cooling and is therefore collected in bamboo tubes, while Katiau oil remains liquid and is bottled; both are used for cooking, and Kawang nuts are of considerable commercial value, being exported to England for use in the manufacture of chocolates and confections [5, p. 97].

The bark-cloth beater is associated with the manufacture of bark cloth, a practice still extant across Malaya, Indo-China, Borneo, and parts of Indonesia at the time of Sieveking’s writing [3, p. 79]. Modern specimens of the same design are known from Sipora (Mentawi Islands, Sumatra) and from the Kelabit of North Borneo, though Harrisson considered it certain that none of the Bornean examples were in use after 1914 [3, p. 83].

Prehistoric Attribution and Cultural Diffusion

The most contested questions surrounding Malayan implements concern their cultural attribution and the direction of their diffusion. Loewenstein’s 1953 re-examination of the tulang mawas was fundamentally a correction of the visual record: he demonstrated that H. D. Collings, whose 1937 and 1949 drawings were the primary published illustrations, consistently rendered the socket as tubular when direct examination of the originals in the Raffles Museum collection shows it to be conical [2, p. 39]. This single morphological fact has decisive consequences: a conical socket admits a solid tapered handle inserted at its wider opening, projecting in the direction opposite to the working edge [2, pp. 37–38]. Loewenstein further notes that the pointed end of the blade is consistently worn or broken across specimens, a pattern consistent with a pushing motion analogous to the operation of a wooden plane [2, p. 40]. From this corrected physical evidence, he argues that the tulang mawas was a carpenter’s tool, most plausibly used in the manufacture of boats—the most vital occupation of the Iron Age wood-worker in Malaya [2, p. 40]. He supports this by pointing to the distribution pattern of finds: rather than being concentrated in mining districts (as Baker’s miner’s-tool hypothesis would predict), the implements are scattered along river-beds from the Kinta district of Perak down to Klang in Selangor, and in East Malaya around Kuala Lipis, the Tembeling region, and Tersang in Pahang [2, p. 40].

H. G. Quaritch Wales, in a 1974 note prompted by a recent find in the Raub district, argued for an Indochinese origin of the tulang mawas, supporting Sieveking’s earlier conclusion that the Malayan Iron industry derived from Indochina rather than India [4, p. 110]. Wales links the tulang mawas to the Khmer phkak, a weapon prominent in twelfth-century Angkor bas-reliefs, and to a similar tool carried by Moi (Stieng) tribesmen as illustrated by Aymonier [4, p. 110]. He concludes that the phkak represents a prehistoric element of material culture that survived among the Khmers, while the tulang mawas entered Malayan Iron Age culture from Indochina and was later suppressed there by more thorough Indianization [4, p. 110].

Sieveking’s distributional analysis of the bark-cloth beater similarly engages with questions of cultural reach. The restricted distribution of the cross-hatched type within the Peninsula, combined with its presence in Sumatra and Borneo, points to an extension of Malayan prehistoric cultural influence into western Indonesia during the period when these tools were still in active use [3, p. 83]. Sieveking explicitly links this evidence to Heine-Geldern’s theoretical framework for early population movements in South-East Asia, which posits a mainland-to-island direction of influence for the pre-Austronesian cultural sphere characterised by cord-impressed pottery and polished stone tools [3, p. 83]. Four of the thirteen recorded examples bear unambiguous Neolithic associations, including one recovered beside a Neolithic skeleton at Gua Cha, Kelantan, alongside cord-impressed pottery and quadrangular stone axes; a further example from Changkat Menteri, Perak, was found in close contiguity to an Iron Age cist grave, indicating the tool’s persistence into the early historic period [3, pp. 82–83].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on implements reveals a clear evolution in methodological approach and interpretive priority. The earliest contributions—Keith’s 1928 description of the chandasan and Clark’s 1959 note on bone tools—are descriptive in character, documenting construction and operation with minimal interpretive ambition [5], [6]. Baker’s 1940 note on the pisau penggiau similarly prioritises ethnographic description and comparative typology, extending the analysis to a Philippine parallel [1].

The tulang mawas debate, by contrast, illustrates the Society’s engagement with the interpretive challenges of prehistoric archaeology. The dominant interpretation, articulated by Baker in 1937 and endorsed by Braddell and Linehan, held that the transverse socket was too small and poorly positioned for a wooden haft, and that the tool was instead suspended from the user’s body by a loop of rattan cord passed through the socket and tucked under the arm—hence the folk legend of the “iron forearm” [2, pp. 37–38]. Loewenstein’s 1953 intervention corrected a foundational error in the published visual record and thereby reopened the functional interpretation of one of the most discussed Iron Age artefact types in the region [2, p. 39]. He also dismisses Collings’s suggestions of ceremonial use or currency, arguing that the hoards in which tulang mawas have been found are mixed with spearheads and potsherds, and that none of the standard criteria for identifying prehistoric currency (uniform weight standards, impractical sizes, half-finished forms) are met [2, p. 42]. Loewenstein cites W. Koppers’s methodological caution that prehistorians may not infer social complexity from the mere presence of artefacts without independent evidence [2, p. 40].

Sieveking’s 1956 article sits within the mid-century tradition of Malayan prehistoric archaeology that sought to define cultural “horizons” through diagnostic artefact types, and it explicitly engages with Heine-Geldern’s 1932 population-movement theory as a framework for interpreting distributional evidence [3]. Quaritch Wales’s 1974 note, though brief, represents a later attempt to situate the tulang mawas within a broader Indochinese cultural context, linking it to Khmer and Stieng material culture [4]. Together, these contributions trace a trajectory from descriptive ethnography through typological classification to increasingly sophisticated debates over cultural attribution, technological function, and the direction of prehistoric influence across the region.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. J.A. Baker (1940). A Kedah harvesting knife JMBRAS 18(2): 43–45.
  2. J. Loewenstein (1953). “Tulang mawas” re-examined JMBRAS 26(1): 37–42.
  3. G. de G. Sieveking (1956). The distribution of stone bark-cloth beaters in prehistoric times JMBRAS 29(3): 78–85.
  4. H.G.Q. Wales (1974). The origin of the “tulang mawas” JMBRAS 47(1): 110–111.
  5. H.G. Keith (1928). Description of a native oil press (chandasan) from North Borneo JMBRAS 6(3): 96–97.
  6. J.G.D. Clark (1959). Two bone tools in the Raffles Museum JMBRAS 32(1): 197.