Prehistoric double-spouted vessels excavated from Niah Caves, Borneo
Tom Harrisson’s 1971 monograph presents the first comprehensive study of prehistoric double-spouted earthenware vessels excavated from the Niah Caves in north-west Sarawak, Borneo, a class of pottery that had been largely neglected in the literature despite its conspicuous presence in the cave deposits. Drawing on fifty vessels recovered across nine caves over a decade of excavation, Harrisson establishes a typology, traces a developmental sequence spanning roughly two millennia (c. 2000 B.C. to c. 1000 A.D.), and argues for a fundamentally local, indigenous origin rather than external diffusion.
Summary
Harrisson’s central problem is one of classification and interpretation. The double-spouted vessels resist easy typological placement because their bodies vary considerably in shape—rounded or angular, with or without a pronounced shoulder—while the spouted heads, which carry the diagnostic features, were often made as separate pieces and joined to the body. After examining size, body form, foot shape, and decoration, Harrisson concludes that only the spout configuration itself provides a reliable classificatory basis. He identifies four types: Type I (asymmetrical, angular, upswept spouts rising from a common head), Type IIA (rounded spouts placed separately on a domed top, unbridged), Type IIB (as IIA but with a bridge connecting the spouts), and Type III (two rounded, bridged spouts fixed to a flat top applied as a complete unit). A general developmental trend runs from Type I in purely stone-age contexts toward Types IIB and III in mixed stone- and metal-age deposits, though the sequence is not strictly linear and individual potters could have produced transitional forms within a single lifetime (pp. 44–45, 55–57).
The functional question proves more intractable. No recovered vessel shows clear signs of domestic use, and the small, often top-heavy bodies with narrow inflow apertures make them impractical as water or liquid containers in the ordinary sense. Harrisson instead situates them firmly within funerary practice: they are consistently associated with secondary burials, human skeletal remains, and in one case placed directly beside a separated skull. He proposes that the double spout may have symbolized the passage of the spirit from this world to another, with the bridge or the space between spouts representing a threshold, and that the form may derive from the hornbill casque—the most persistent head symbol in Borneo. A hornbill casque was in fact excavated from the West Mouth, and ethnographic parallels include a Kayan bead mat depicting human heads with hornbill beaks emerging from the ears, and a Kenyah tobacco box made from a casque whose negative form resembles the Samti stirrup-like top (pp. 39–40, 71–72).
On decoration, Harrisson and his collaborator Lynn Patterson identify a restricted repertoire of incised or impressed circles and straight lines, applied exclusively to the bridge and flat-top surfaces and never to the main body or the spouts themselves. The patterns are irregular, sometimes apparently incomplete, and resist comparison with the curvilinear, interlacing line traditions that dominate historic Borneo art. Harrisson suggests these designs may constitute a form of coded or semi-esoteric notation related to burial status, analogous to marker devices identified in Sabah caves, though he stops short of a definitive decoding (pp. 59–64, 68).
Key Findings
- Fifty double-spouted vessels were studied from nine caves within the Niah limestone massif; the richest assemblages come from Jeragan (11), Kain Hitam upper (16), and the West Mouth of the Great Cave (12) (Table I, p. 39).
- Radiocarbon dates anchor the sequence: a Jeragan coffin burial yields c. 2,250 B.C. (4,300 ± 160 years), a Jeragan jar burial c. 1,120 B.C. (3,070 ± 410 years), and a Magala burial c. 1,180 B.C. (3,130 ± 240 years); West Mouth urn contents date to 1,330–1,120 B.C. (pp. 69–70).
- Four wooden “death-ship” dates from Kain Hitam and Gua Samti range from c. 350 B.C. to c. 915 A.D., confirming the survival of Type III vessels well into the Chinese ceramic import trade of the T’ang and Sung dynasties (Table V, p. 70).
- No double-spouted vessel bears paddle-beater marking on its body, despite paddle decoration accounting for 29% of all Great Cave earthenware; decoration is confined to the spouted top section (pp. 41, 59).
- The vessels are unknown in historic times and have not been found outside the Niah massif despite extensive search in burial caves along the Bakong and Baram rivers within 50 miles (p. 38).
- The Samti vessel, with its angular, nearly pyramidal bridge and two virtually identical rounded spouts, may represent a final evolution of Type III—or even a Type IIIB—possibly placed as a separate spouted disc divorced from any body (pp. 56, 58).
Conclusion
Harrisson’s definitive takeaway is that double-spouted vessels represent a long-lived, locally evolved funerary tradition rooted in the indigenous stone-age culture of the Niah complex, not an import or a transient fashion. Their two-millennium continuity—nearly one hundred generations of potters—testifies to a persistent cultural need, and their eventual decline was driven not by cultural replacement but by the practical superiority of imported Chinese stoneware and brass urns for burial purposes. He explicitly rejects both the “outside influence” explanation favoured by some Western scholars and the parochial insistence that everything must be internally derived, instead advocating a model of local creation within a wider pattern of human achievement in the tropical world (pp. 72–74).
Context
- The study draws exclusively on the Sarawak Museum collection at Kuching, comprising all artifacts from Harrisson’s own directed excavations at Niah (1954–1967); no comparative material was excavated by the author.
- Historiographically, the paper corrects the 1959 Solheim, Harrisson and Wall survey, which had identified only “about half a dozen” double spouts and suggested a “general deterioration” of pottery in caves other than the Great Cave; Harrisson’s quadrupled sample and wider cave distribution overturn both assumptions (pp. 40–41).