Recent archaeological discoveries in Malaya (1955
G. de G. Sieveking, writing as a senior officer of the Museums Department, presents this annual survey of archaeological discoveries made across the Malay Peninsula in 1955, covering sites from the prehistoric through the historic periods. The article’s central contribution lies in its stratigraphic re-interpretation of the Tanjong Rawa site in the Selinsing estuary, where new excavations clarified a three-phase occupation sequence and recovered a complete canoe burial with associated pottery and a human skeleton.
Summary
The article is organised chronologically by period—Prehistoric, Early Historic, and Historic—and reports on finds from Perak, Pahang, and Perlis. The most substantial section concerns the Tanjong Rawa site, previously excavated by Evans in 1932, where a 1955 campaign by naval airmen of H.M.S. Simbang under Museums Department supervision resolved long-standing stratigraphic confusion. Evans had originally treated the site’s finds as belonging to a single settlement, yet the assemblage ranged from an Indian seal stone and gold ring (sixth–ninth centuries A.D.) to celadon porcelain unlikely to predate the fourteenth century. Sieveking’s work demonstrated that the uppermost layers had been reworked by sea action, mixing artifacts of all ages, and that at least three distinct occupation phases could be distinguished: an earliest phase associated with Tanjong Rawa stone ware, boat burials, and opaque glass beads (linked to proto-Malay populations); a middle phase characterised by coarse impressed wares of probable Indian origin; and a later phase extending to modern times.
The prehistoric section reports on rock shelter excavations at Gunung Rapat in the Kinta Valley, where Neolithic pottery and stone tools were recovered, including a long polished stone axe comparable to one from the Gua Cha burial and a distinctive Perak variety of cord-impressed ware identified by its deeper, firmer impression technique. The historic period section covers a range of finds: a tin candlestick of European design cast locally at a Bidor tin mine; a series of approximately 150 tin tokens from the Bidor area, identified by F. Pridmore as private Patani gambling counters or jokoh issues dated to 1880–1910; the Lion Rock inscriptions on Pangkor Island bearing the VOC cipher and dates 1741–1743; and an eighteenth-century bronze Kuan Yin figure recovered from a Kampar tin mine. A brief Perlis entry notes an impressed earthenware sherd of probable Siamese origin found in association with a tin chain and ingot.
Key Findings
- The Tanjong Rawa canoe burial contained an extended human skeleton with a short wooden steering paddle under the left arm, five pottery vessels (black rather than the grey ware previously recorded), orange-red glass beads, and a stingray sting positioned above the head (pp. 203–204).
- The excavated canoe hull fragment measured 18.5 feet in length, was broken at both ends, and featured heavy pierced rectangular cleats six inches long and two feet apart along either side, with isolated timbers suggesting outriggers (p. 203).
- The surface layer at Tanjong Rawa, extending to 18 inches below datum, yielded over 3,000 glass and polished stone beads mixed with pottery of all periods, confirming that the sea had reworked the upper deposits (p. 201).
- The tin tokens from Bidor measured 30.7 mm in diameter, weighed between 4.625 and 5.170 grammes (mean 4.966 g), were uniface with a small centre hole, and bore a Malay/Arabic inscription in mirror script reading “pitis ini” followed by an issuer’s name (p. 206).
- The Lion Rock on Pangkor Island displays the VOC cipher and a lion rampant holding a bundle of arrows, with the dates 1741, 1742, and 1743 prominently incised, likely by Dutch militiamen serving at the fort (p. 208).
- The Kuan Yin bronze figure from the Tai Tong Kongsi mine at Kampar was 13 inches in height, hollow-cast, found at a depth of 15 feet, and dated to the eighteenth century (p. 209).
Conclusion
Sieveking’s definitive takeaway is that the Tanjong Rawa stratigraphy, long misunderstood since Evans’s 1932 report, now supports a clear three-phase occupation model in which the earliest proto-Malay phase is characterised by boat burials, cardium-decorated pottery, and glass bead manufacture on site, while the uppermost layers represent a marine reworking of mixed-age material rather than a single settlement horizon. This re-interpretation provides a more reliable chronological framework for the early historic archaeology of the Perak estuarine zone.
Context
- The article draws on excavations supervised by the Museums Department (then under the Director of Museums, C. A. Gibson-Hill) and on specialist analysis by F. Pridmore of the Raffles Museum for the tin tokens.
- As a standard annual survey in the JMBRAS tradition, the piece serves as a primary record of 1955 fieldwork and is of particular value for the Tanjong Rawa stratigraphic sequence, which remains a reference point for early historic Malayan archaeology.