LOCAL CERAMICS
PREHISTORY
Manufacture of earthenware pots had already started in the mesolithic or sub- neolithic stage ( Van Heekeren 1972)6 In this period people were already settling down on seashores, lakes or riverbanks, and in caves and rockshelters.
In the Gua Lawa cave near Ponorogo (Central Java), cord-marked potsherds were found at a great depth together with bone spatulas. These spatulas, says Van Heekeren, were used for peeling wild or domesticated yams and tubers. There were also ill-preserved human skeletons, but the only funeral gift was a necklace of drilled shells around a child's neck. It appears that at that stage pots made by the paddle- and anvil method were not yet used as funeral gifts.
Kitchen utensils were of course still in the form of leaves to eat from or to wrap and cook food in, and there were bowls of coconut husk. Water containers were provided by bamboo and gourds or-, perhaps, large shells. Progress in pottery manufacture started at the Neolithic Stage when people lived in permanent settlements and practiced agriculture. Van Heekeren found at Kendeng Lembu, East Java polished stone rectangular adzes, and a great number of plain potsherds. This site does not seem to have been a neolithic settlement but the site of a neolithic workshop; no traces of village life were found.
In Kalumpang, upstreams on the Karama river (N.W. Sulawesi) 706 plain baked brown potsherds were found with rectangular adzes, ground oval axes, spearheads, arrow heads, knives, unfinished stone adzes and "planks", one stone bark cloth beater, etc. One sherd had incised stylized human figures.
During the Bronze- Iron Age, which coincides with the time when the first Indonesian toponyms appear in foreign records, around the beginning of the Christian Era, pottery was evidently used for burial purposes. Van Heekeren investigated large ceramic jars found at Anyer (west coast of West Java). They contained skeletons and gifts of earthenware, consisting of one jar, 2, 92 mm high, dishes, and a globular bowl. In the same area a systematic excavation carried out by himself yielded potsherds, probably belonging to urns, and fragments of human bones and skulls.
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