Faces in the Stone: Further Finds of Anthropomorphic Engravings Suggest a Discrete Artistic Tradition Flourished in Timor-Leste in the Terminal Pleistocene
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Faces in the Stone: Further Finds of Anthropomorphic Engravings Suggest a Discrete Artistic Tradition Flourished in Timor-Leste in the Terminal Pleistocene Sue O’Connor , Nuno Vasco Oliveira, Christopher D. Standish , Marcos García-Diez , Shimona Kealy & Ceri Shipton Engraving sites are rare in mainland and Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) where painted art dominates the prehistoric artistic record. Here we report two new engraving sites from the Tutuala region of Timor-Leste comprising mostly humanoid forms carved into speleothem columns in rock-shelters. Engraved face motifs have previously been reported from Lene Hara Cave in this same region, and one was dated to the Pleistocene–Holocene transition using the Uranium–Thorium method. We discuss the engravings in relation to changes in technology and material culture that took place in the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene archaeological records in this region of Timor as well as neighbouring islands. We suggest that the engravings may have been produced as markers of territorial and social identity within the context of population expansion and greater inter-group contacts at this time. Introduction mainland New Guinea and islands to the west. This observation on the bipartite distribution of Rock art is one of the principal means through which engraved versus painted rock art was one of the prehistoric peoples expressed social and territorial major outcomes of Specht’s(1979, 63) early analysis identities (e.g. David & Wilson 2002), and as such of the rock art of the western Pacific. Specht (1979, has been viewed as a key indicator of cultural ‘efflor- 74) also argued that the execution of engravings escence’ at times of heightened social pressures was focused in areas of igneous geology, in open (David & Lourandos 1998). At the site of Lene locations on boulders or rock walls near water, and Hara on the eastern tip of the island of Timor, ‘never in caves or shelters’. He reasoned that engraved face motifs have been reported dating although Near Oceania has a prehistory stretching from the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. In this back into the Pleistocene, engravings sites showed a paper we describe further examples of these speleo- high co-occurrence with areas where Austronesian them faces, suggesting they constitute part of a languages were spoken, and thus that this artistic wider tradition. We explore how this relates to a tradition was probably introduced by incoming range of other changes that are apparent in the ter- Austronesian settlers after 3500 bP. These features, minal Pleistocene and early Holocene of the region, coupled with the fact that the engravings had a styl- including bead and burial traditions. istic coherence, being characterized by motifs which Engraving sites are rare in mainland and Island were ‘generally curvilinear geometric forms such as Southeast Asia (ISEA) (see Tan 2014 for an over- spirals, concentric circles, face-like forms’ led Specht view), but common to the east in Near and Remote (1979, 74) to define ‘the Austronesian engraving Oceania, while painted art is more common in style’ (AES). Cambridge Archaeological Journal 31:1, 129–142 © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re- use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. doi:10.1017/S0959774320000323 Received 18 May 2020; Accepted 25 Aug 2020; Revised 6 Aug 2020 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.14, on 26 Sep 2021 at 23:50:18, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000323 Sue O’Connor et al. Wilson and Ballard’s(2018; see also Wilson engravings and grey-green algal growths that coat 2004) recent synthesis of the rock art of Oceania is the surface of the speleothems. The engravings are geographically the broadest yet undertaken and thus not obvious unless the speleothems are closely included both engraved and painted art. They define inspected with good lighting. They were found Oceania as encompassing the area from ISEA in the while undertaking a survey of the speleothems for west, to Micronesia and Hawai’i in the north, possible owl roost deposits using high-luminosity Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand) to the south caving torches. One of the faces (Fig. 2A) in Lene and Rapa Nui (Easter Island) to the east. Near Hara Cave has been dated using the Uranium– Oceania spans from New Guinea in the east to, and Thorium method to between 12,500 and 10,200 including, the main Solomon Islands group in the years ago (O’Connor et al. 2010a). west. Their analysis found that there was more over- Here we describe further engravings from lap in motif type between engraving and painting another two shelter sites, Pati Patinu and Kiiru 4, traditions in the western Pacific than had previously which, like Lene Hara, had been previously surveyed been thought, but they still recognized an east–west for painted art, but in which the engravings were dis- division which they suggested might be ‘governed covered only in 2017. Most of the new Timor-Leste by the geological availability of rock surface types’. engravings are humanoid in form like the Lene Painted galleries occur in areas where limestone Hara faces, raising the possibility that a discrete art- cliff faces are present, from eastern Indonesia to istic tradition arose in this region in the terminal Fiji, while engravings predominate in areas of vol- Pleistocene. We explore this idea and the factors canic geology where boulder fields, volcanic flows that may have led to an efflorescence of symbolic and beach platforms are available, as in much of expression at this time. Polynesia (Wilson & Ballard 2018). Recent rock-art surveys in eastern Indonesia Engravings at Pati Patinu and Kiiru 4 and Timor-Leste have discovered a number of engraving sites which are changing this perspective. In 2017, a survey of the painted rock-art sites in the The engravings occur in caves or rock-shelters which Nino Konis Santana National Park was undertaken are not in close proximity to water (O’Connor et al. to assess the potential of the rock art for Uranium– 2010a; 2018a) and, at least in the case of the Thorium dating. During this survey engravings Timor-Leste engravings, do not occur in were recognized in two of the limestone shelters in Austronesian language areas (Fig. 1). While it is which paintings had previously been recorded; Pati still true to say that painted rock art dominates pre- Patinu and Kiiru 4 (Fig. 1). The fact that both sites historic artistic expression in ISEA, the lack of had previously been surveyed for painted art and engraving sites may partly be an outcome of the lim- occupation deposit is telling in terms of the difficulty ited amount of field survey undertaken and the com- of seeing the engravings on the speleothems. paratively low visibility of engravings compared Pati Patinu is a large limestone overhang or with pigment art. shelter in a north–south-running coralline limestone In 2007, two engraved face motifs were discov- terrace, southeast of the well-known rock-art gallery, ered in Lene Hara Cave in the Nino Konis Santana Ili Kere Kere (Almeida 1967;O’Connor 2003). The National Park at the far eastern end of Timor-Leste entrance of the overhang faces east. The site was ori- (Fig. 1;O’Connor et al. 2010a). These extraordinary ginally recorded in 2004 as potentially having images were pecked into massive speleothem col- painted rock art and a floor deposit with surface evi- umns located in two different areas of the cave dence of occupation and excavation potential. The (Fig. 2). Although Lene Hara Cave has a long and painted art comprised a few areas of red pigment extensive history of archaeological prospection and including a star-shaped geometric motif and a excavation (Almeida & Zybszweski 1967; Glover small red anthropomorph, but no further motifs 1972;O’Connor et al. 2002; 2010b), and painted could be distinguished. The paintings are spatially rock art has previously been recorded on the cave separated from the engravings. walls (Almeida 1967; Cinatti 1963;O’Connor 2003; The Pati Patinu face engravings are on an exten- Standish et al. 2020), the engraved motifs had sive area of speleothem flow on the back wall of the escaped detection. This is probably the result of a overhang (Fig. 3). The form of the original features of combination of factors, including their position the engravings is almost entirely obscured by subse- above eye height on columns which are located in quent deposition of carbonate (Figs. 4A & B). Only dimly lit parts of the cave, the presence of more the upper engraving at c. 2 m above the floor of the recent calcite growth which partially obscures the deposit is clearly a face (Fig. 5). All that remains is 130 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.14, on 26 Sep 2021 at 23:50:18, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000323 Faces in the Stone Figure 1. Map of Southeast Asia (top) and Timor-Leste inset (bottom) showing location of various engraved and painted rock art and archaeological sites. Top: Site numbers correspond to the following; (1) Leang Bulu’Sipong 4; (2) Makpan; (3) Tron Bon Lei; (4) Here Sorot Entapa. Bottom: Sites are labelled accordingly. The distribution of Non-Austronesian and Austronesian languages in Timor-Leste is also shown in addition to the boundary of the Nino Konis Santana National Park.