Page 45 - THE MELANESIA DIASPORA FILE CETAK ISI 10022017

Artifacts from Song Terus.
Stone tools found in some sites in Indonesia from the end of
the Pleistocene. Stone artifacts from the Limestone of
Braholo Cave.

shelter, but as also places to bury their dead, and sometimes as workshops. They went out
from the cave hunting for animals and searching for tubers and grains.
We know from the animal remains found in the inhabited caves around the Mount
Sewu region, that they hunted types of cow and buffalo (bovidae), deer (cervidae), pigs
(suidae), and Cercopithecidae group such as Colobine monkeys (genus Trachypithecus).
It was possible that elephants (elephantidae) and rhinos (rhinoceritidae) were also hunted
animals as their bones were also found with the other animal remains. In the Niah Cave,
North Kalimantan, Malaysia, it was slightly different. The dominant hunted animals in
the beginning were wild boars (Sus barbatus) and rodents later changing to monkeys in
the next inhabited period. Pangolin (Manispalaeojavanica), tapir, orangutan, deer, and
buffalos (bovidae) were the hunted at the end of the inhabited Pleistocene (Bowdler, 1990,
Jones, 1979). Among the coastline inhabitants, there was a tendency to rely on the sea
biota. In the Golo Cave, Gebe Island (North Maluku) for example, only shellfish were found
along the inhabited layer, with no land animals found except in the Holocene layer with
remains of wallaby and cuscus (Bellwood, 2000). Interestingly, the research in Leang Sarru
(Talaud Islands) did not find any land animal or fish remains, just shellfish (Bellwood, 1998).
EMH made tools by using available rocks in the neighborhood environment. Generally
they were flake tools or tools made from stone flakes (lithic). In the beginning, the primary
flakes released through the cutting of a raw material were used directly. Subsequently,
there were efforts at retouching to try and achieve the shape and sharpness wanted. The
flake tools were used for a variety of purposes such as to slice, cut, scratch, and perforate.
Apart from flake tools, sometimes primary stone tools were also produced, although
this was very rare (Tanudirjo, 2001, 2005). The types of tools could differ in each region

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