Article

Iron age

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Iron Age

The historiographical treatment of the Iron Age in MBRAS publications develops from early attention to surface finds and implement types into a more complex picture of riverine craft, metallurgical production, exchange, and ritual association. Linehan’s survey of Klang and the Tembeling region emphasized that iron implements occurred alongside traces of Bronze Age culture, implying that the arrival of iron was not an abrupt replacement of earlier metal-using communities but a protracted process of cultural continuity in western Malaya [1]. This framing was complemented by monographic studies of the Malayan metal age, which sought to relate artefactual evidence to living social and ceremonial practices, such as recorded mock-combat rites in which rods were hurled across a gully to purify rice fields [2, p. 249]. Taken together, these works present the Iron Age less as a single technological stage than as a set of regionally variable practices embedded in forest, river, and coastal environments.

A major historiographical debate concerned how to interpret characteristic Iron Age implements, especially the tulang mawas. Earlier scholarship, following Baker and reinforced by Braddell and Linehan, had treated its transverse socket as too small and poorly placed for a wooden haft, proposing instead that it was suspended by rattan cord under the arm, an explanation linked to the “iron forearm” legend [3, pp. 37–38]. Loewenstein’s re-examination of specimens in the Raffles Museum collection corrected this interpretation by showing that published drawings had misrepresented the socket as tubular when it was in fact conical, a morphology that admits a solid tapered haft projecting opposite the working edge [3, p. 39]. He argued that consistent wear or breakage at the pointed end indicated a pushing motion analogous to a wooden plane, while the scattered distribution of finds along river beds in Perak, Selangor, and Pahang made a mining function unlikely and pointed toward riverine carpentry, especially boat construction [3, p. 40]. The same evidence undermined earlier speculative interpretations of hoards as currency or ceremonial objects, since the assemblages were mixed with spearheads and potsherds and did not meet standard criteria for prehistoric coinage [3, p. 42]. This episode became methodologically important because it reinforced the caution that the mere presence of iron artefacts should not be taken as evidence for social complexity, ritual status, or specialized economic roles without independent corroboration [3, p. 40].

The Bornean evidence, particularly from the Sarawak River delta, extends this overview from implement typology to actual production landscapes. Harrisson’s excavations at Santubong demonstrated that the site functioned as a coastal trading station and iron-smelting centre from sometime after the tenth century until its fourteenth-century collapse [4, p. 2]. The Jaong locality, with dense iron slag reefs and marked sandstone boulders, indicates that industrial activity was embedded in a landscape that also carried sacred or commemorative meanings [4, p. 4]. The enormous quantity of broken Chinese stoneware and earthenware sherds found with the smelting waste has been interpreted cautiously, not simply as ordinary domestic debris but possibly as material connected to ritual or ceremonial dimensions of iron-working [4, pp. 4–7]. Similarly, the identification of large clay cylinders initially as crucibles for an Indian wootz process has since been revised in favour of tuyeres, highlighting the importance of technological re-evaluation in the field [4, p. 6]. Within the broader Southeast Asian chronology, mainland evidence indicates that iron manufacture was present by the beginning of the first millennium B.C., making the Malayan Iron Age part of a wider regional development rather than an isolated phenomenon [4, p. 4]. In general overview, the MBRAS literature therefore portrays the Iron Age as a period defined not only by the spread of iron technology but also by riverine craft traditions, coastal exchange networks, ritualized production settings, and long-term cultural continuity across Malaya and Borneo.

The Iron Age of the Malay Peninsula and western Borneo denotes a period of prehistoric and early historic metallurgical activity characterised by the production, use, and exchange of iron implements, alongside the importation of bronze objects from the Dong-son cultural sphere of Indo-China. The period is attested across a wide geographic range, from the river valleys of Perak and Selangor in the west to the coastal delta of the Sarawak River in the east, and spans roughly from the second century B.C. to the fourteenth century A.D. [1, p. 36], [2, p. 2]. Its significance lies not merely in the technological transition from stone to metal, but in the complex interplay of indigenous iron-working, long-distance trade in bronze and ceramics, and the ritual dimensions that accompanied metallurgical practice in the region.

Scope and Chronological Definition

The chronological boundaries of the Malayan Iron Age have been the subject of sustained scholarly debate. Loewenstein and Sieveking (1956) demonstrated that the concept of a unified “Bronze-Iron” culture, previously assumed by several researchers, was untenable. Their chemical analysis showed that Dong-son bronzes contain significant lead (approximately 18–21 per cent), whereas the minor bronze fragments associated with Iron Age sites in Malaya contain no lead, indicating that the two metal traditions were distinct and not contemporaneous in the same cultural context [1, p. 44]. The bronze drums and bells found at Tembeling and Klang, which Loewenstein and Sieveking dated to the second century B.C. on typological grounds, are not associated with the iron implements or slab-graves of Southern Perak [1, pp. 36]. This separation effectively redefines the Iron Age as a period in which iron was the dominant indigenous metal, while bronze persisted only as an imported prestige good from the north.

The earliest evidence for iron manufacture in mainland Southeast Asia, as cited by O’Connor, comes from excavations at Chansen and the Lopburi Army site in Central Thailand, which indicate that iron production was present by the beginning of the first millennium B.C. [2, p. 4]. In Malaya itself, the Iron Age is marked by slab-built graves in Perak, first described by I. H. N. Evans in 1928, and by the distribution of iron implements 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 [3, p. 40]. In Borneo, the Santubong sites on the Sarawak River delta functioned as a coastal trading station and iron-smelting centre from sometime after the tenth century until its collapse in the fourteenth century [2, p. 2].

The Tulang Mawas and the Question of Function

Among the most discussed Iron Age artefact types in the region is the tulang mawas (literally “rib bone”), an enigmatic iron implement recovered from sites across the Malay Peninsula. The implement attracted considerable scholarly attention from the 1920s onward, with contributions by Baker, Collings, Braddell, and Linehan [3, p. 37]. 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—giving rise to the folk legend of the “iron forearm” [3, pp. 37–38].

Loewenstein’s 1953 intervention corrected a foundational error in the published visual record. He demonstrated that H. D. Collings, whose 1937 and 1949 drawings were the primary published illustrations, had consistently rendered the socket as tubular when direct examination of the originals in the Raffles Museum collection showed it to be conical [3, p. 39]. A conical socket admits a solid tapered handle inserted at its wider opening, projecting in the direction opposite to the working edge. Loewenstein further noted 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 [3, p. 40]. From this corrected physical evidence, he argued 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 [3, p. 40]. He dismissed alternative interpretations of ceremonial use or currency, noting that the small hoards in which tulang mawas have been found are mixed with iron spearheads and potsherds, and that none of the standard criteria for identifying prehistoric currency—uniform weight standards, impractical sizes, half-finished forms—are met [3, p. 42].

Iron-Smelting at Santubong and the Ritual Economy

The Bornean evidence, centred on the Santubong coastal area of western Borneo, presents a markedly different picture from the Malayan riverine sites. Tom Harrisson’s excavations at the sites of Jaong and Bongkissam revealed dense iron slag deposits coexisting with sandstone boulders bearing anthropomorphic and geometric markings, and with what Harrisson and O’Connor termed a “Tantric shrine” [2, p. 4]. This mingling of the industrial and the sacred resists the secular framework of modern industrial archaeology, suggesting that iron smelting may have functioned as a metaphorical and spiritual practice, analogous to the ritual dimensions of kris-making and mining in the wider archipelago [2, p. 4].

The most puzzling empirical feature of the sites is the profligate quantity of broken Chinese stoneware sherds found mixed with smelting waste. Harrisson’s 1955 excavation at Bongkissam recovered 49,393 Chinese stoneware sherds, 66,668 earthenware sherds, and 659 glass beads from a single small section of the major iron-working site [2, p. 5]. These ceramics were highly valued objects in local ritual and trade economies, yet at Santubong they appear shattered and embedded in slag-rich soil on a scale that defies straightforward economic explanation. O’Connor speculated that their presence may point to some form of ceremony or ritual associated with the iron-working process itself, though he acknowledged the question remained open pending comparative evidence from other smelting sites in the archipelago [2, p. 5]. A second interpretive problem concerns the clay cylinders recovered in large numbers from the iron-rich trenches; in the original report, O’Connor and Harrisson tentatively identified these as crucibles associated with an Indian “wootz” steelmaking process, but O’Connor later conceded that informed opinion favoured their identification as tuyeres [2, p. 6].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on the Malayan Iron Age reveals a clear historiographical trajectory. The earliest contributions, from the late 1920s through the 1940s, were dominated by descriptive typology and the attempt to assign functions to enigmatic implements, with Baker’s 1937 hypothesis of the tulang mawas as a miner’s tool representing the prevailing paradigm [3, p. 37]. The 1950s marked a decisive methodological shift: Loewenstein’s 1953 article corrected a visual error that had underpinned a decade of interpretation, while Loewenstein and Sieveking’s 1956 monograph introduced chemical analysis and rigorous typological comparison to dismantle the “Bronze-Iron” synthesis and establish the imported character of Malayan bronzes [1, pp. 1]. By the 1970s, attention had turned to Borneo, where Harrisson’s excavations at Santubong opened an entirely new field of inquiry into prehistoric iron-smelting in the region, and O’Connor’s 1977 memorial tribute highlighted the interpretive challenges—ritual economy, technological metaphor—that would define subsequent work on prehistoric metallurgy in Southeast Asia [2, p. 4]. The arc of this scholarship, from functional speculation to chemical and contextual analysis, mirrors the broader maturation of Southeast Asian archaeology as a discipline.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. J. Loewenstein and G. de G. Sieveking (1956). Papers on the Malayan metal age JMBRAS 29(2): 1–138.
  2. S.J. O’Connor (1977). Tom Harrisson and the ancient iron industry of the Sarawak River delta JMBRAS 50(1): 4–7.
  3. J. Loewenstein (1953). “Tulang mawas” re-examined JMBRAS 26(1): 37–42.