The Niah Cave Complex is an enormous and beautiful set of caves known best for the tens of thousands of bats that stream out at dusk. The complex is important archaeologically because of the Middle Paleolithic occupation, part of the Southern Disperal Route argument. The Niah Cave Complex is located on the north side of the island of Borneo, inland from the South China Sea some 12 kilometers, and within the Niah National Park.
Excavated between 1954 and 1967 by Tom and Barbara Harrisson, the site included the discovery of the 'Deep Skull', an anatomically modern human skull directly dated to approximately 42,000 years ago and buried some 1.6 meters below the modern surface.
Recent Excavations at Niah Cave
Niah Cave was reopened recently by the Niah Caves Research Project at the Sarawak Museum and the Universities of Adelaide and Leicester. These excavations have concentrated on clarifying the quite early date, and identifying the environmental habitat and changes defined in the long period of occupation.
Dating Niah Cave
Results to date indicate that the cave was likely first occupied beginning perhaps as long ago as 52,000 years. Evidence includes charcoal, debitage and cut-marked bone at this period, exhibiting a complex set of foraging for tubers and possible fish and mammal-trapping and butchering. And, on the basis of the "Deep Skull" and related stratigraphy, the occupation is likely to represent the behaviors of anatomically modern humans.
The level with which the 'Deep Skull' is associated has been definitively dated to ca 40-44,000 years ago, making it the oldest established presence of anatomically modern humans outside of Africa. However, the behaviors exhibited in the assemblage are one of complex foraging behaviors with a fairly crude tool capability, rather than the full range of "behaviorally modern" suite of blade tools and parietal art predicted by the Howiesons Poort tradition-or the European Aurignacian, for that matter.
Niah Cave and Pigments
The later Mesolithic and Neolithic burials at Niah Caves, including beads, complete seashells and human remains, were coated with a red pigmentation, first believed to be hematite or ochre. Recent analysis of the materials was reported, identifying the pigment as an organic resin from the Pterocarpus indicus, a substance also found at the Gua Sireh site, also in Sarawak, and used in the Kain Hitam (Painted Cave) rock art located in Niah Caves.
Sources
For more information, see the Niah Cave Project website at the University of Leicester.
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com Guide to the Middle Paleolithic, and part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
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Stephens M, Mattey D, Gilbertson DD, and Murray-Wallace CV. 2008. Shell-gathering from mangroves and the seasonality of the Southeast Asian Monsoon using high-resolution stable isotopic analysis of the tropical estuarine bivalve (Geloina erosa) from the Great Cave of Niah, Sarawak: methods and reconnaissance of molluscs of early Holocene and modern times. Journal of Archaeological Science 35(10):2686-2697.
