Scratching the Surface: Engraved Cortex as Portable Art in Pleistocene Sulawesi
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Scratching the Surface: Engraved Cortex as Portable Art in Pleistocene Sulawesi Adam Brumm 1 & Michelle C. Langley 1 & Budianto Hakim 2 & Yinika Perston 1 Suryatman 2 & Adhi Agus Oktaviana 3,4 & Basran Burhan 1 & Mark W. Moore 5
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# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract 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 age between approximately 30–14 thousand years ago (30–14 ka), comprise cross-hatched patterns and other non-figurative imagery. This behaviour is of interest because of the almost total absence of portable art in the Pleistocene record of Island Southeast Asia, and the long-standing idea that the early modern human lithic technology of this region was fundamentally simple and remained so over tens of millennia. Here, we take stock of these incised stone artefacts from methodological and theoretical perspectives. Our findings suggest that unless one is specifically examining cortex on stone artefacts for these fine incisions, they are easily overlooked, and hence, we focus on how to improve detection of these faint engravings. We also consider why the Leang Bulu Bettue inhabitants engraved stone tool cortex, a practice we regard as an enigmatic form of portable lithic art and an apparent example of the creative process being as important as the end product—if not more so. We conclude that otherwise unremarkable lithic assemblages in Island Southeast Asia and beyond may potentially harbour hidden evidence for symbolic content in the form of often barely perceptible markings on remnant cortical surfaces. Keywords Incised stone artefacts . Engraved cortex . Portable art . Pleistocene Sulawesi * Adam Brumm [email protected] 1
Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, Environmental Futures Research Institute, Griffith University, Nathan, Australia
2
Balai Arkeologi Sulawesi Selatan, Makassar, Sulawesi, Indonesia
3
Pusat Penelitian Arkeologi Nasional, Jakarta, Indonesia
4
Place, Evolution and Rock Art Heritage Unit (PERAHU), Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
5
Stone Tools and Cognition Hub, Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology, University of New England, Armidale, Australia
Brumm et al.
Introduction Those familiar with the early archaeological record of Island Southeast Asia and how it fits into the global story of modern human behaviour in the Pleistocene will be aware of two apparent ‘facts’. The first is that this region is apparently bereft of objects akin to portable art as it is known from the famously rich and diverse archaeological record of Upper Palaeolithic Europe, by which we mean carved figurines, stone plaquettes incised with figurative animal depictions, and so on (se
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