The Niah research program
Wilhelm G. Solheim II’s 1977 assessment of Tom Harrisson’s Niah Caves research program, published in a memorial issue of the JMBRAS, evaluates the scope, methods, and legacy of what Solheim considers Harrisson’s most important archaeological undertaking in Borneo. Writing from personal acquaintance and field experience at Niah in 1958–59, Solheim argues that while Harrisson’s excavation techniques were fundamentally flawed, the extraordinary breadth of his ecological approach and his success in sustaining a two-decade program under severe financial constraints produced results of lasting significance for the prehistory of Island Southeast Asia.
Summary
Solheim structures his critique around three levels of the Niah program: strategy, tactics, and scientific execution. At the strategic level, he identifies Harrisson’s approach as ecological from the outset—encompassing zoology, ethnohistory, geology, soil science, and palaeoclimatology—predating the widespread adoption of such frameworks in archaeology. The program’s strength lay in its integration of multiple scientific disciplines, with first-class specialists in bone, shell, and living fauna contributing extensively, even as the core archaeological methodology remained rudimentary.
The tactical dimension reveals Harrisson as a formidable publicist and fund-raiser who leveraged television coverage, press connections, and personal relationships with Shell Oil and the Gulbenkian Foundation to sustain the program against the indifference of the colonial budget. Solheim is candid about Harrisson’s controlling personality: he excluded other trained archaeologists from the site, withheld publications strategically to create leverage for future funding, and maintained absolute control over imagery and access to the caves. The guano mining schedule, which placed the caves under Harrisson’s legal control, simultaneously protected the sites and made unauthorized access illegal.
On the scientific execution, Solheim is the article’s most critical voice. Excavation proceeded by artificial six-inch levels in rectangular trenches of varying sizes, with no published section drawings, no attempt to correlate strata across trenches, and no sieving of soil. Burials were left in situ for years, creating stratigraphic confusion below them. Yet Solheim contends that the general conclusions drawn from Niah—particularly the deep time sequence of human occupation—are sound, and that a competent final report, combining Harrisson’s notes, existing collections, and targeted spot excavation, could still recover much of the site’s potential. He positions Niah alongside the Tabon Caves of Palawan as the two foundational sequences for the prehistory of Island Southeast Asia between 50,000 and 1,000 years ago.
Key Findings
- Approximately 200 caves had been located and mapped at Niah by 1959, with helicopter surveys (loaned by Shell and the military) essential for identifying high cliff-face entrances invisible from the ground (p. 34).
- The 1958 field season alone shifted 750 tons of deposit; under optimum conditions the team achieved 9 cubic feet per man-hour, but below level 72 (c. 30,000 B.C.) the rate dropped to 1 cubic foot per 12–13 man-hours (p. 36).
- By the time of Barbara Harrisson’s 1967 burial classification, the Great Cave had been divided into 370 individual trenches, with 166 burials recorded in the excavated area; trenches were generally 5 × 10 ft or 5 × 5 ft, excavated in 6-inch layers (p. 35).
- The earliest human skull from Niah was initially dated at approximately 40,000 B.P. (Harrisson 1972) but was revised downward to c. 35,000 B.P. in Harrisson’s 1976 UISPP congress paper (p. 39).
- Field seasons of two to four months were conducted practically every year from 1958 to 1967, with floods occasionally cutting seasons short; only one issue of the Sarawak Museum Journal in this period lacked at least one Niah paper (p. 30).
- A sterile pink-and-white band was identified through a considerable portion of the Great Cave excavation, representing the one notable stratigraphic marker recorded (p. 35).
Conclusion
Solheim’s definitive judgment is that Harrisson’s Niah program, despite its methodological deficiencies, achieved more than a first-class archaeologist might have managed under the same conditions of remoteness, limited funding, and colonial administrative indifference. The breadth of the ecological program and the sheer volume of material recovered compensate for the lack of rigorous stratigraphic control, and the general chronological framework it established remains valid. The critical unresolved question is whether a final report can be produced to realize the site’s full potential—a task Solheim believes is achievable but contingent on the legibility of Harrisson’s notes and the involvement of Barbara Harrisson in a core editorial team.
Context
- This article draws primarily on Harrisson’s own publications in the Sarawak Museum Journal, Man, and Asian Perspectives, supplemented by Solheim’s direct field observations and personal correspondence with Harrisson during 1958–59.
- Historiographically, the piece serves as a rare contemporaneous insider’s account of the Niah program’s operational realities—funding politics, personnel management, and methodological shortcuts—that no subsequent formal report has addressed with comparable candour.