Adhi Agus Oktaviana

Griffith University · School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science

The rock art at Gua Andomo and Gua Lampetia, two newly described sites in the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, is dominated by hand stencils. The Gua Andomo stencils include a variant focused on Sulawesi which involves narrowed fingers. This variant has been documented for many of the hand stencils of southwest Sulawesi, including an example dated to...

Figurative cave paintings from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi date to at least 35,000 years ago (ka) and hand-stencil art from the same region has a minimum date of 40 ka1. Here we show that similar rock art was created during essentially the same time period on the adjacent island of Borneo. Uranium-series analysis of calcium carbonate deposits...

The rock paintings of Muna Island first became the subject of research by Indonesia’s National Research Centre of Archaeology in Jakarta, Indonesia, almost 40 years ago. Since then, a large assortment of images has been documented, the majority of which are done using brown pigment. The rock art includes figurative motifs such as anthropomorphs, zo...

Humans seem to have an adaptive predisposition for inventing, telling and consuming stories¹. Prehistoric cave art provides the most direct insight that we have into the earliest storytelling2–5, in the form of narrative compositions or ‘scenes’2,5 that feature clear figurative depictions of sets of figures in spatial proximity to each other, and f...

Indonesia harbors some of the oldest known surviving cave art. Previously, the earliest dated rock art from this region was a figurative painting of a Sulawesi warty pig (Sus celebensis). This image from Leang Bulu' Sipong 4 in the limestone karsts of Maros-Pangkep, South Sulawesi, was created at least 43,900 years ago (43.9 ka) based on Uranium-se...

Previous dating research indicated that the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is host to some of the oldest known rock art1–3. That work was based on solution uranium-series (U-series) analysis of calcite deposits overlying rock art in the limestone caves of Maros-Pangkep, South Sulawesi1–3. Here we use a novel application of this approach—laser-ablati...

This study investigates the darkening processes affecting Maros-Pangkep rock art through a comprehensive multianalytical approach. We integrate in-situ color index measurements using Nix color Pro 2 with various physicochemical characterization techniques, including optical microscopy, XRF, SEM-EDS, Raman spectroscopy, and FTIR. By examining microb...

Until recent years, most western scholars had overlooked the existence of rock art in Indonesia or viewed it as being of limited antiquity and of largely regional-interest only. In 2014, however, an Indonesian-Australian team announced the results of a program of Uranium-series (U-series) dating of rock art in Maros-Pangkep, Sulawesi, including a s...

Although first identified 120 years ago, knowledge of the Toalean technoculture of Middle Holocene Sulawesi, Indonesia, remains limited. Previous research has emphasised the exploitation of largely terrestrial resources by hunter-gatherers on the island. The recent recovery of two modified tiger shark teeth from the Maros-Pangkep karsts of South Su...

Article accessible for free here: https://rdcu.be/c7HpZ We appreciate the accompanying technical Comment by Murphy et al.1—a group of practicing orthopaedic surgeons—on our original paper2. However, we strongly disagree with their conclusion that a reductionist approach was taken in the diagnosis of surgical amputation in a 31,000-year-old individ...

The color change process is among the various threats endangering the preservation of the Maros-Pangkep rock art. It is necessary to be concerned about this issue because it can cause rock art to lose its original hue, fade, obscure, or darken. Among the rock art sites in the Maros-Pangkep Region experiencing the color change of rock art pigments i...

The Indonesian island of Sulawesi, located in the ‘Wallacean’ biogeographical zone at the axis of human migration between the super-continents of Sunda and Sahul, has been linked to many research questions relating to the early movements of humans in the region between the landmasses of Asia and Australia. From an archaeological perspective, South...

In recent decades, East Borneo has become an increasingly important archaeological “hot-spot” in Island Southeast Asia as a result of early dates for rock art ca. 38,000 BP and the greater number of excavated sites that support a much longer period of human occupation. However, the chronology of settlement and adaptation to environmental changes du...

The prevailing view regarding the evolution of medicine is that the emergence of settled agricultural societies around 10,000 years ago (the Neolithic Revolution) gave rise to a host of health problems that had previously been unknown among non-sedentary foraging populations, stimulating the first major innovations in prehistoric medical practices...

Approximately 50000 stone artefacts have been recovered from the prehistoric site of Leang Bulu Bettue (LBB), on the Wallacean island of Sulawesi, in Indonesia. This large assemblage offers the opportunity to produce a large‐scale, comprehensive model of the early lithic technologies of South Sulawesi. Through the analysis of half of this assemblag...

Previous research indicates that human genetic diversity in Wallacea—islands in present-day Eastern Indonesia and Timor-Leste that were never part of the Sunda or Sahul continental shelves—has been shaped by complex interactions between migrating Austronesian farmers and indigenous hunter–gatherer communities. Yet, inferences based on present-day g...

The prevailing view regarding the evolution of medicine is that the emergence of agricultural societies around 10,000 years ago (the ‘Neolithic Revolution’) gave rise to a host of health problems that were previously unknown among non-sedentary foraging populations, stimulating the first major innovations in prehistoric medico-socio-cultural practi...

Development of projectile hunting tools remains a significant tenant associated with modern humans' adaptive and migratory success. Technological innovations which accompanied the human odyssey between the now submerged ice-age shelves of Sunda and Sahul (the first major sea crossings by our species) are amongst the most decisive topics of human ev...

Recent archaeological excavations at Liang Jon, a limestone rockshelter in the East Kalimantan province of Indonesian Borneo, have revealed a cultural sequence covering the period from around 16,700 calibrated radiocarbon years before present (16.7 kyr cal BP) until the late Holocene—a time of dynamic environmental, social, and economic change thro...

The central Indonesian island of Sulawesi has played an important role in modern and pre-modern human migration through the Southeast Asian island chain. Over the last two decades, archaeological excavations in South Sulawesi have provided new insights into the ancient human past of this region, in particular the extensive Mid-Holocene or "Toalean"...

Gambar Cadas dengan motif perahu di Indonesia ditemukan dalam jumlah yang cukup melimpah. Situs-situs tersebut terutama ditemukan di wilayah Sulawesi, Kalimantan, dan Maluku. Motif perahu yang ditemukan tersebut memiliki bentuk yang bervariasi. Keberagaman tersebut mendorng penelitian ini untuk mendokumentasikan dan memberikan gambararan mengenai b...

Tulisan bermaksud memutakhirkan narasi akar prasejarah khususnya gambar cadas yang diurai buku Art in Indonesia: Continues and Changes karya apik dari Claire Holt, dengan memberi beberapa catatan tentang: batasan 'art', jenis gambar, dan tradisi gambar prasejarah Indonesia. Uraian pengkelasan gambar cadas prasejarah di daerah Sangkulirang dibagi be...

Previous research indicates that the human genetic diversity found in Wallacea - islands in present-day Eastern Indonesia and Timor-Leste that were never part of the Sunda or Sahul continental shelves - has been shaped by complex interactions between migrating Austronesian farmers and indigenous hunter-gatherer communities. Here, we provide new ins...

Major gaps remain in our knowledge of the early history of Homo sapiens in Wallacea. By 70–60 thousand years ago (ka), modern humans appear to have entered this distinct biogeographical zone between continental Asia and Australia. Despite this, there are relatively few Late Pleistocene sites attributed to our species in Wallacea. H. sapiens fossil...

Much remains unknown about the population history of early modern humans in southeast Asia, where the archaeological record is sparse and the tropical climate is inimical to the preservation of ancient human DNA ¹ . So far, only two low-coverage pre-Neolithic human genomes have been sequenced from this region. Both are from mainland Hòabìnhian hunt...

The Indonesian island of Sulawesi harbours numerous early rock paintings of the endemic Sulawesi warty pig ( Sus celebensis ). Several S. celebensis images, including one dated to at least 45,500 years ago (ka), portray these suids with an anatomical character not observed in the living species: a pair of teat‐like protuberances in the neck area. T...

Liang Pu’en site is a limestone wall which located at Hingalamamengi Village, Lembata Island is one of the biggest petroglyph sites had found in Nusa Tenggara Timur territory. The depictions which engraved consists of face-like motifs, boats, zoomorphics, therianthropes and cupules. Between those five motifs, face-like motifs are unique because the...

The archaeology of Sulawesi is important for developing an understanding of human dispersal and occupation of central Island Southeast Asia. Through over a century of archaeological work, multiple human populations in the southwestern region of Sulawesi have been identified, the most well-documented being that of the Mid- to Late Holocene ‘Toalean’...

The equatorial tropics house some of the earliest rock art yet known, and it is weathering at an alarming rate. Here we present evidence for haloclasty (salt crystallisation) from Pleistocene-aged rock art panels at 11 sites in the Maros-Pangkep limestone karsts of southern Sulawesi. We show how quickly rock art panels have degraded in recent decad...

Recent excavations at Leang Bulu Bettue, a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, have yielded a collection of flaked chert and limestone artefacts with cortical surfaces that had been deliberately incised prior to or after the knapping process. The markings engraved on these artefacts, which were recovered from deposits ranging in ag...

Preserved ancient botanical evidence in the form of rice phytoliths has confirmed that people farmed domesticated rice (Oryza sativa) in the interior of Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, by at least 3,500 years ago. This discovery helps to resolve a mystery about one of the region’s major events in natural and cultural history, by documenting when rice f...

South Sulawesi's pre-Neolithic assemblages are dominated by Toalean-period cultural deposits, however the nature and extent of the Toalean technoculture continues to be enigmatic. To date, the chronology of Toalean technology remains unclear, and no art has yet been attributed to this period despite the rich cave art of the karst region of the Maro...

The ability to produce recognizable depictions of objects from the natural world—known as figurative art—is unique to Homo sapiens and may be one of the cognitive traits that separates our species from extinct hominin relatives. Surviving examples of Pleistocene figurative art are generally confined to rock art or portable three-dimensional works (...

The Preneolithic Stone Artefact of Leang Jarie Site: The Oldest Evidence of Maros Point Technology in the Toalean Culture Region, South Sulawesi. Maros Point is one type of flake tool that shows characteristics of the techno-complex Toalean from South Sulawesi. Early emergence of the Toalean Culture phase is still debated, but most experts agree th...

This short article report about the new findings of finely made dentate-stamped and lime infilled potteries from the Goa Topogaro site in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Most of them are red-slipped pottery decorated with dentate-stamped, lime infilled, and can be identified as burial potteries as they are excavated with secondly burials of the Early...

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has not been fixed in the paper.

This cranio-morphometric study emphasizes a “two-layer model” for eastern Eurasian anatomically modern human (AMH) populations, based on large datasets of 89 population samples including findings directly from ancient archaeological contexts. Results suggest that an initial “first layer” of AMH had related closely to ancestral Andaman, Australian,...

Rock art comprises various forms of images and markings, including paintings, drawings, and engravings, created by prehistoric people on immobile surfaces of rocks. In Indonesia, the distribution of rock art sites has been relatively well studied and documented. Indeed, Uranium-series analysis of speleothem materials overlying negative hand stencil...

Rock art in Indonesia has been investigated before the 20th century. A number of previous scientific publications noted the existence of rock art sites on Seram Island, Maluku Province, which was on the cliff of Sawai and Tala River. Recent archaeological surveys in the area of East Seram and Seram Laut conducted by a joint Indonesian-American Rese...

Rock art in the Maros karsts of Sulawesi, Indonesia, has generated interest on a global level. Uranium-series dating has shown that a hand stencil in this region was created at least 40,000-years ago, a finding that dramatically backdates the known antiquity of local rock art that had long been assumed to have been of early Austronesian (i.e., Neol...

New evidence from the rockshelter site of Aru Manara, on the island of Morotai, in the northern Moluccas, East Indonesia, suggests an earlier than previously assumed date for extensive interactions between this area of Southeast Asia and the wider Pacific. Shared mortuary customs and associated ceramic grave goods, along with other practices such a...

The Austronesian language is spread from Madagascar in the west, Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) in the east (e.g. the Philippines and Indonesian archipelagoes) and throughout the Pacific, as far east as Easter Island. While it seems clear that the remote ancestors of Austronesian speakers originated in Southern China, and migrated to Taiwan with the...

Cranial and mandibular measurements (mm) for the Gua Harimau series. (DOCX)

Pattern of postmortem misincorporation. C to T indicates C in reference genome and T in Gua Harimau samples, and G to A indicates G in reference genome and A in Gua Harimau samples. For No. 26, reduction of the misincorporation in 5’ end compared to 3’ end is explained by the inability of AccuPrime Pfx to bypass uracils, which is frequent in sequen...

Fragment size distribution of sequence reads mapped to rCRS. Only sequences having mapping quality equal or larger than 20 were used. PCR duplicates were removed. (JPG)

Fragment size distribution of GH14. GH14 includes all mapped reads, and GH14 damaged includes the reads having C/T or G/A changes at 3 bases of sequence termini. White circle indicates the reads having mutations relating to haplogroup M7b1a. Those reads are relatively longer than other reads, and we considered that these are contaminants. (JPG)

The Harimau Cave Site, Padang Bindu, South Sumatra has been studied since 2009 with high archeological content. At least there are three significant discoveries, include: the long chronology of human occupation, the great number of human burials, and the existence of rock art, believed to be the first finding on the island of Sumatra. The results o...

Logam Awal setelah 2300 sampai 2000 tahun BP di Wallacea, migrasi manusia dan jaringan maritim menjadi lebih berkembang. Melalui bukti linguistik, misalnya, trans-migrasi oleh kelompok berbahasa Austronesia dan kelompok berbahasa Papua, atau bukti arkeologi seperti perluasan dan pengembangan tembikar yang memiliki kemiripan, membuat tradisi ini men...

In this paper we discuss the results of excavation at the Aru Manara site in the Northern Maluku islands along with a description of the recovered pottery assemblage and results of compositional analysis of glass ornaments. By comparing our data to those from other sites in the area, we suggest the possible development of regional maritime networks...

Significance We present evidence from the Late Pleistocene of Sulawesi, Indonesia, where an unusually rich and unique symbolic complex was excavated from archaeological deposits spanning 30,000 to 22,000 y ago. Including previously unknown practices of self-ornamentation, used ochre, pigmented artifacts, and portable art, these findings advance our...

Wallacea, the zone of oceanic islands separating the continental regions of Southeast Asia and Australia, has yielded sparse evidence for the symbolic culture of early modern humans. Here we report evidence for symbolic activity 30,000–22,000 y ago at Leang Bulu Bettue, a cave and rock-shelter site on the Wallacean island of Sulawesi. We describe h...

This study is the first in-depth archaeological examination of a pottery assemblage found in the Indonesian part of Borneo Island. It aims to balance the regional knowledge of this large island, since the majority of information comes from sites located in the Malaysian northern part. Excavations in the Liang Abu rock shelter (East Kalimantan) led...

The Lithic Technology at Talimbue Site, Southeast Sulawesi: Continuing Technology from Late Pleistocene up to Holocene Periods. The Talimbue site at Southeast Sulawesi is packed with lithic and these offer a new perspective on the lithic technology of Sulawesi. The absence of information on the prehistoric lithic technology of Southeast Sulawesi is...