[
    {
        "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
    }
]