[ { "id": 204528, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 9, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "September 27th\n\nOctober 16th\n\nShow of three documentary films made by Mr. Hugh Gibb for B.B.C. Television:\n\n\"Rituals of Rice\" (colour) describes rice growing in Japan and old Shinto practices associated with transplanting and harvest festivals.\n\n\"Zen\" (black and white) is the first film to be made in a Zen Buddhist monastery in Japan. Permission was granted only after several months of negotiation and then the film had to be shot in one morning.\n\n\"Dance and Drama\" (colour) won the Gran Premio award for T.V. documentaries at the Bergamo Film Festival in 1961 and describes the evolution of dance and drama in Japan including the Kagura, the traditional village drama, and abridged performances of puppet plays, Noh and Kabuki theatre.\n\nThree further films made by Mr. Hugh Gibb: \"The Dyaks\" tells the story of the communal life and customs of the Sarawak \"Long Houses.\" \"Birds' Nest Soup\" was made in the Great Cave of Niah in Sarawak, where edible birds' nests are collected from the walls and ceilings to prepare one of the most expensive delicacies in the world.\n\n\"Turtle Island\" takes place on a small island off the coast of Sarawak where as many as one hundred turtles come in the course of one night to dig their nests and lay their eggs. The film tells the story of the cumbersome process and of the scientific work on these edible turtles, the collection and sale of whose eggs is a considerable industry.\n\nThe lectures in January and February by Professor S. H. Hansford on \"Some Problems of Ancient Chinese Jades and Bronzes\" and by Mr. R. D. Bromhall on \"Underwater Photography in Eastern Seas\" will be included in the Report for the coming year.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204897, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 5, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPAGE\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1964\n\nHON. TREASURER'S REPORT FOR 1964\n\nTRANSACTIONS OF THE BRANCH, 1964 - 1965:\n\n✓ Archeological Discovery in and around Hong Kong S. G. Davis\n\nNiah Cave, 1947 - 1964 T. HARRISSON\n\nCHINA BRANCH TRANSACTIONS REPRINT:\n\nThe Population of China SIR JOHN BOWRING\n\nARTICLES CONTRIBUTED:\n\nThe Dialects of Hong Kong\n\nBoat People: Kau Sai J. McCoy\n\nThe Southern Sung Stone Engraving at North Fu-t'ang JEN YU-WEN\n\nPiracy on the China Coast A. D. BLUE\n\nThe Hong Kong The Chinese University of S. HUANG\n\nReview Article: Government and People in Hong Kong, by G. B. Endacott C. LUPTON\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nLIST OF Members\n\n1\n\n6\n\n9\n\n20\n\n27\n\n46\n\n65\n\n69\n\n86\n\n95\n\n101\n\n116\n\n127", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204917, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 25, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "NIAH CAVE, 1947 - 1964\n\nA lecture delivered on 2nd September, 1964\n\nTOM HARRISSON\n\nArchaeology, the past, is everywhere. There is a lot more of it than of the present, of course. But it takes observation and experience to find and analyse it! Once the methods are learned, there is archaeological work to be done everywhere in the Far East. Hong Kong is alive with it. Studies so far have only scraped, no, only touched the surface of Hong Kong's prehistory. But a lot of hard thinking and training (and financing) will have to be done before much can be expected in the way of major results. Major results are there to be won, I feel sure.\n\nPerhaps I can best illustrate what is involved by a case history from quite another place, Borneo, where I have lived since early 1945. In Borneo no serious archaeological work had been done and there was no idea of doing any when I started serious work there after the war years, in 1947. In this short article, I will stick to one of the main sites we have developed - one of many, but currently the best-known and, indeed, one that is becoming famous. Twenty years ago, however, no one outside a small district in Borneo had ever heard of Niah in Sarawak,\n\nBorneo is far from Hong Kong and the madding crowd. But all our recent work has shown that great streams of influence had emanated from or passed through Hong Kong and down to Borneo for centuries and even millennia in the past. Indeed, it was one major source of cultural influence among several.\n\nThe great cave assemblage in the Subis Mountain limestone massif at Niah, Sarawak, the west side of Borneo, has been a local focus of human activity, for many thousands of years. But it was unknown to non-Asians until only recently. In 1947 - 48 it was the subject of initial archaeological reconnaissance when I made a long overland tour of West Borneo caves, coastal and inland.\n\nMr. Harrisson was in Hong Kong attending the Second Conference of Asian Historians, 31st August - 5th September, 1964. His talk was illustrated with two new films taken by his wife on Borneo's \"living past\". His Niah and related work has recently been recognized by the award of the Founder's Medal from the Royal Geographical Society and a Prince Philip Medal from the Royal Society of Arts.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204918, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 26, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "The Great Cave seen from the Niah gorge, note the barely discernible camp house in the lower right centre for scale\n\nphotograph: SARAWAK MUSEUM", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204919, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 27, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "Part of the excavation in the West Mouth of the Great Cave, Niah. Down to C.A. 30,000 B.C. in foreground\n\nphotograph: Sarawak Museum", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204920, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 28, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "NIAH CAVE, 1947 - 1964\n\n21\n\ninterior, prior to planning an excavation programme on the island where, up until then, no systematic work had been attempted. Indeed, years before, a Royal Society report had advised against intensive exploration of Borneo caves for human remains.\n\nTo my eye, Niah was clearly a major target: by virtue of its vast size and elevation well above at least late Pleistocene submergence levels and for other exciting reasons. But it is up a small river in a remote place, unapproachable overland, and thus costly to investigate. (Archaeology is seldom worthwhile on the cheap.) So first, we settled for more accessible sites where experience, good-will, skilled staff, and public support could be built up on the basis of continuing direction and organisation. From this base, and with outside help attracted by the first phases of results, by 1954 we were able, with the aid of my friends, Mr. Michael Tweedie (then Director, Raffles Museum, Singapore) and Mr. Hugh Gibb, plus the Shell group of companies, to do a test dig at Niah. Results were so encouraging that I decided the job required major organisation and long-term planning. We therefore resumed our work in 1957, with help from the Gulbenkian Foundation (who continue their support), Shell (whose support also continues), Chicago Natural History Museum, and others.\n\nThe main work in the field is now financed from local sources. In the last seven years, we have built permanent camps on the river, and two miles away, inside the West Mouth of the Great Cave, a new plank walk over the jungle floor between the two points. We keep resident staff on the site; and at this established base, which includes a laboratory, stores, and boat-house, we have trained a team of Niah people to carry out many of the routines. These measures now greatly reduce recurrent field costs, which were very high in the first years.\n\nCAVE STUDIED TO DATE\n\nAs of 1st September, 1964, our excavation position at Niah was broadly as follows:\n\n1. West Mouth Great Cave, (a) main deep shaft (\"Hell\")\n\ndown to 180 inches. Carbon 14 at 98-100 inches was 38,000 years (approx.). Below 100 inches, all bone, shells, and carbon decompose, but stone tools, mostly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204921, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 29, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "T. HARRISSON\n\ntiny flakes, remain. It is planned to concentrate on continuing down to deeper levels when we resume field work later in 1964.\n\n2. West Mouth (b) rest of outer mouth-rich, undisturbed stone-age occupation in light area; stratified sequence from late neolithic down to full palaeolithic occupation; about 700 square feet completed.\n\n3. West Mouth, (c) inner, half dark section not in general early use as occupation, but dense late Stone Age cemetery, and up to early Iron. Eighty burials so far exposed; most treated and left in site for fuller physical study.\n\n4. Lobang Angin (“Wind Mouth\") - a shelf of c.400 square feet high on cliff edge, fully occupied before the late Stone Age and back into the palaeolithic; excavations, half-done so far, will be completed.\n\n5. Gan Kira (Traders Cave\") — a smaller rockshelf near sea level, evidently a neolithic trading camp, which includes an apparent murder incident and scattered sub-surface skeletons (some beheaded). Fully excavated down to limestone bedrock (fossil oysters, O.gigas).\n\n6. Lobang Tulang (“Caves of Bones\")-cliff grottos full of jar and other secondary burials, mainly of the early birds' nest trade with China period (?900 - 1200 A.D.); bronze and other finds; completed.\n\n7. Kain Hitam (\"the Painted Cave\")-a separate cave high in a limestone island, discovered by Barbara Harrisson in 1958; 200 feet of wall paintings above floor littered with \"death ships\" and an abundance of bone, beads, porcelain and stoneware sherds, etc. Evidently this was the centre of elaborate prehistoric funerary rites, related to those still extant in the Niah River (as filmed). C-14 dates on four \"death ships\" so far received give between 0 and 780 A.D.\n\nExcavated in 200×5 foot square blocks correlated to wall paintings. A small section was left for a check-study in 1965.\n\n8. Samti - a small rock shelter in an isolated corner of the Great Cave formation, which also held death ship remains.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204922, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 30, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "NIAH CAVE, 1947 - 1964\n\n23\n\n9. Jeragun a very high cave up a barely accessible cliff, discovered in 1960 (c.600 square feet). Crammed with primary burials of small-bodied adults and urn burials of infants and some women. Very simple material culture, perhaps of a more primitive group (Punans?) integrated economically with the Great Cave people. The deposit has been entirely removed, owing to danger of guano-extraction and difficulty of control at this point. This material is being studied as a unit in Britain, by Dr. Calvin Wells and others.\n\nMATERIAL FINDS\n\nA new building in Kuching, completed in 1958, now houses the bulk of the materials from Niah and related excavations just described. These include stone tools from fully palaeolithic \"hand-chopper\" and flake tools, through to neolithic polished round axes and then to quadrangular adzes — about 5,000 pieces in all. Bone-tools are richly represented and have been recently classified tentatively into seventeen categories by Lord Medway and the writer. A great quantity of food-bone remains are all kept. Where possible, these are sent abroad to zoological specialists and reported upon separately (see below). Animals now extinct in Borneo include tapir, rhinoceros, giant pangolin, and tiger. Food shells abound. Samples are kept for each trench; all others are counted-off as excavated, against a coded species identification list. Shell tools (including fossil oyster) are less common. Skeletons are treated as above; plus several thousand scattered teeth which are being studied on the spot by Dr. Yim Khai Sun and assistants.\n\nIn the upper levels, earthenware pottery (studied on the scene by Dr. W. S. Solheim) in a wide range of types starts in the neolithic and reaches an apotheosis in massive \"three-colour ware\" urns, several of which have been reconstructed and are on museum display. Some of this pottery was made in the caves; one such site has been excavated. Pottery and bone were also used for beads in the neolithic. Glass replaced bone as a bead material a little later and shell and bone jewellery then became scarce in the sub-surface. Several fragments of fine bronzes, carved ivory, and also iron tools came in the topmost levels or in the special burial caves. A few textile fragments\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204923, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 31, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "24\n\nT. HARRISSON\n\nand carved wood have also survived there. Some fifty rush mats and wrappings survived under late neolithic or early metal burials in the West Mouth of the Great Cave.\n\nPUBLICATIONS\n\nMany smaller caves have been studied; and many others are available for study - over fifty. But there is no point in constantly repeating work that is very costly. Rather we seek constantly to define and re-define the project, so as to add new data, modifying or widening ideas — in preference to multiplying the established points. So far, about fifty papers have been published on the Niah results in Asian Perspectives (annually), Archaeological Newsletter, Journal Royal Society of Arts (a general review to 1963), Man (three papers), Oriental Art (Oxford), Artibus Asiae (Switzerland), Bijdragen (Holland), and the Geographical Journal (Royal Geographical Society, London). The full background and a long series of technical reports are published in the last eight issues of the Sarawak Museum Journal (Kuching, Sarawak, East Malaysia). The S.M.J. papers include specific contributions from Dr. R. Brothwell of the British Museum, Miss J. Clutton-Brock of the Institute of Archaeology, Dr. Calvin Wells of the Norwich Museum, Dr. D. A. Hooijer of Leiden and Professor G. H. R. von Koenigswald of the University of Utrecht, Dr. W. S. Solheim of the University of Hawaii, Drs. R. Inger and Wayne King of Chicago, the Earl of Cranbrook and Miss Pat Aldridge (now Dr. P. Marshall) of the University of Hong Kong. While those who have made specialist studies on the spot, working in Kuching, include Lord Medway (both here and at the University of Malaya), Dr. Alastair Lamb (glass beads), Dr. Solheim with Mrs. Lindsay Wall (prehistoric earthenware), Mrs. E. Moore in association with Miss Mary Tregear at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Yueh and other early porcelains), Mr. Benedict Sandin and Mr. R. Nyandoh (links to cave and other Niah folklore), Mr. Geoffrey Barnes (burial rites), Mr. J. Revers (U.S. Peace Corps; topography), Professor N. Haile (geology; now of the University of Malaya), Mrs. Barbara Harrisson and her husband. Work of this sort involves multiple cooperation, as has already been well demonstrated by the University team from Hong Kong working on Lantau Island. In 1965-66 we hope to get additional outside help from Dr.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204924, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 32, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "NIAH CAVE, 1947 - 1964\n\n25\n\nSheila Brooks, Dr. Richard Shutler (who has already made one visit) and their associates in the U.S.A.\n\nThe work continues actively with increasing emphasis on publication, generously aided by The Asia Foundation and the Otago Museum in New Zealand, as well as those already listed. In conclusion, I stress that from start to finish this has been and is a Sarawak Government-based study. The main costs and all the conceptions have been derived from this Government, first as a Crown Colony and now as a State in Malaysia.\n\nAPPENDIX\n\n——\n\nSpecimen list of mammals so far identified from Niah Cave Stone Age food-bone deposits will illustrate the value of keeping everything in an excavation; in this case to build up a complete picture of prehistoric food habits. Similar studies on bird, fish, and reptile bone are in hand. The mammal work was organized and patiently carried on by Lord Medway and largely undertaken by him personally, with special help from Dr. Hooijer, in Holland, Lord Cranbrook in England, and Pat Marshall in Hong Kong. (For an introductory survey see Medway in Sarawak Museum Journal, VIII, 1958, 12:627-636). Comparative frequency of remains in the first seasons for a typical series of trenches down to 72\" (Medway p. 631) gave approximately:\n\nTotal no. of identifiable bones in Stone Age food remains (0 - 72\").\n\n(Sample only);\n\n \n Group\n Mammal\n Bird\n Reptile\n Fish\n \n \n \n 6,380\n 85\n 383+(Turtle, 305)\n 27\n 6,875\n \n\nOver ninety per cent mammal bone is common form. For the mammals eaten, other than seven species of bat (also living in the cave, and difficult to distinguish as between food and dead falls), here is a brief summary, based mainly on Lord Medway's records, but my generalizations (and possible errors):", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 } ]