Reviewed by: Yaroslav V Kuzmin, Leading Research Scientist, Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk 630090, Russia; and Laboratory of Mesozoic and Cenozoic Continental Ecosystems, Tomsk State University, Tomsk 634050, Russia. Email: kuzmin_yv@igm.nsc.ru; kuzmin@fulbrightmail.org.

The two books under review are parts of the series “The Archaeology of the Niah Caves, Sarawak, Volumes 1–2”; they complement each other, although some photos, figures, and tables are reproduced twice. The team of 50 contributors (including Gathorne Cranbrook; in Kidd and Williamston [Reference Kidd and Williamston1985: 293–4] he is listed as Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy; a.k.a. Lord Medway, and since 1978 the 5th Earl of Cranbrook in the UK Peerage), led by Prof. G Barker from the McDonald Institute of Archaeological Research (Cambridge, UK), produced the complete excavation report for the Niah Caves, perhaps the best-studied archaeological complex in Southeast Asia. These caves are situated on the island of Borneo, and administratively belong to the Sarawak State of Malaysia.

The books represent the results of multidisciplinary research carried out since the 1950s, and contain information “about human activity there over the past 50,000 years, and the changing climatic and ecological contexts in which it was situated; and the implications of Niah’s archaeology for human history in Island Southeast Asia, from the initial arrival of our species to the ‘world systems’ that linked the peoples of the Pacific rim on the eve of European colonialism. The companion volume, Archaeological Investigations in the Niah Caves, Sarawak, 1954–2004, set out the detailed record of the excavations in the Niah Caves from 1954 to 2004, the investigations of climate and environment by the environmental scientists in the Niah Caves Project team, the dating programmes, and the studies of the artefacts (such as stone and bone tools, pottery, and textiles) and ‘ecofacts’ (such as animal bones, human bones, and molluscs collected in the excavations)” (Barker Reference Barker2013a: xvii).

Because the archaeological aspects of the Niah Caves have already been reviewed (see Denham Reference Denham2015; Higham Reference Higham2017), I would like to concentrate here on the chronological context of these sites, due to the fact that chronology is the backbone of any prehistoric archaeological and geoarchaeological research. The main excavation campaign in the Niah Caves was conducted in the 1950s and early 1960s by eccentric British scholar Tom Harrisson (1911–1976) and his then wife Barbara (née Güttler) (1922–2015) (see Heimann Reference Heimann2003). The first ¹⁴C dates from the West Mouth of Niah Great Cave (the main area of excavations in the Niah Caves complex) were obtained in 1957, with two values of ca. 41,500–39,600 BP generated on charcoal and bones from the lowest strata. This immediately made the Niah Caves extremely important for understanding the human colonization of insular Southeast Asia, a subject scarcely studied at that time. In the 2000s, the smaller-scale excavations in the Niah Caves were carried out by a group under the leadership of G Barker.

¹⁴C dating was the most widely employed method used during the investigation of the Niah Caves. In total, about 200 ¹⁴C values were obtained, mainly on charcoal, human bones, wood, and plant remains; baskets and textiles unfortunately were not directly ¹⁴C-dated. The Uranium-series (U-series) method was used to establish the antiquity of Pleistocene human remains, the so-called Deep Skull. Application of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) was not overall successful due to particular sedimentological features, such as genesis of cave deposits (mostly fluvial and colluvial sediments, without the necessary degree of bleaching) and their heterogeneity; possible leaching of one of the daughter products in the ²³⁸U chain which caused the variations in the environmental dose rate; and mixing of quartz grains because of bioturbation. The amino acid racemization (AAR) dating of shells was experimental in nature, and did not bring important information about the sites’ chronology; it only established that some shells were collected in the Early and Middle Holocene.

Based on the results of the extensive ¹⁴C dating program, the following chronological patterns for the Niah Caves can now be established. The initial human occupation took place before ca. 45,900 BP, with an estimated calendar age of ca. 50,000 cal BP. People continued to live in the caves throughout the Late Pleistocene (with a possible hiatus at ca. 21,400–17,700 BP); the most intensive occupation phase can be placed at ca. 17,700–10,000 BP. Reversals in ¹⁴C date sequences indicate the disturbed nature of sediments in some parts of the West Mouth. In the Early Holocene, people continued to occupy the caves and created burials at ca. 10,000–7600 BP with a hiatus afterwards, at ca. 7600–3200 BP. The “Neolithic” people (i.e. agriculturalists) lived and buried their dead members in the caves at ca. 3000–2200 BP; at this time, pottery appeared in this region. Careful analysis of ¹⁴C values from human burials (run on wood and plant remains, due to poor preservation of bone collagen) allowed pinpointing the funerary practice in the Neolithic at ca. 3080–2310 BP. The first acquaintance with metal can be established at ca. 2400 BP, and the main phase of human activity belongs to the “Metal Age” dated to ca. 2200–400 BP. It is worthwhile to note the ¹⁴C date of ca. 3180 BP for Burial B36, which is associated with a bronze knife; if true, this would be the oldest evidence for metalwork in Island Southeast Asia.

Pretreatment of charcoal from a tropical environment, wet oxidation in an acid-dichromate solution with step combustion (ABOx–SC), a more extensive method than routine acid-base-acid (ABA) cleaning, was applied to the Niah Great Cave specimens (see also Higham et al. Reference Higham, Barton, Turney, Barker, Bronk Ramsey and Brock2009). It was found that “[In the] majority of cases, the method appears to produce older determinations that samples treated using the ABA method, at least for samples dating to more than about 25,000 bp.” (vol. 2, p. 220). It is assumed that “[In] radiocarbon, the oldest result must be favoured due to variable effects of modern versus old carbon contamination” (vol. 2, p. 222). This is not necessarily correct, because the true age (i.e. established by another independent dating method) for the charcoal analyzed is unknown, and it is hard to judge which of the ¹⁴C values—older or younger—is the more reliable one. Although the ABOx–SC values are ca. 300–5000 ¹⁴C years older than the ABA ones, in one case it is ca. 200 ¹⁴C years younger (see vol. 2, p. 223, Table 12.2); this is explained by “lower amount of contaminating carbon present in the charcoal selected for dating” (vol. 2, p. 222). It seems that the “advanced” ABOx–SC technique does not inevitably give more reliable ages compared to “routine” ABA pretreatment.

The find of the Deep Skull by B Harrisson in the 1958 excavation season was a remarkable event in the archaeology and paleoanthropology of Southeast Asia. At that time, its age was assumed by T Harrisson to be closely associated with a ¹⁴C value of ca. 38,800 BP which made it the oldest skull of anatomically modern human (Homo sapiens sapiens) in the world! However, there were doubts about the precise determination of the age of this find (see Barker Reference Barker2013b). The attempt in 1987 to get an AMS ¹⁴C date for a small piece of the skull failed due to the absence of collagen, which is a common problem with bone dating at the Niah Caves in particular and in the tropics in general. Later on, the Deep Skull was directly dated by the U-series method to 35,200 ± 2600 years ago (in calendar time scale), and the ABOx–SC ¹⁴C dates on charcoal collected near the place where the skull was found are ca. 35,500–35,000 BP, corresponding to a calendar age range of ca. 41,500–39,000 cal BP (see also Barker et al. Reference Barker, Barton, Bird, Daly, Datan, Dykes, Farr, Gilbertson, Harrisson, Hunt, Higham, Kealhofer, Krigbaum, Lewis, McLaren, Paz, Pike, Piper, Pyatt, Rabett, Reynolds, Rose, Rushworth, Stephens, Stringer, Thompson and Turney2007). It was therefore suggested that the skull may have been inserted by ancient people into the older sediments. The Deep Skull is still one of the few directly dated Pleistocene human remains in Southeast Asia (see Keates et al. Reference Keates, Kuzmin and Burr2012), and in the entire Asia (see Kuzmin and Keates Reference Kuzmin and Keates2014). Recently, anthropological re-study of the Deep Skull was conducted (Curnoe et al. Reference Curnoe, Datan, Taçon, Leh Moi Ung and Sauffi2016); it is proposed that it belongs to a female of advanced age, and is morphologically close to early modern humans from mainland East Asia.

As for the earliest evidence of matting technology in East Asia mentioned by Cameron (Reference Cameron2016), it is stated than the oldest extant find of tabby weave mat around the South China Sea comes from the content of a dugout boat at the Kuahuqiao site (Cameron Reference Cameron2016: 357). This site, located near the coast of the East China Sea, is ¹⁴C-dated to ca. 7070–6990 BP (Jiang and Liu Reference Jiang and Lui2005), and it is definitely younger than the woven mats from the Chertovy Vorota Cave in far eastern Russia, with direct AMS ¹⁴C dates of ca. 8215–7710 BP (Kuzmin et al. Reference Kuzmin, Keally, Jull, Burr and Klyuev2012). It is unclear to me why this information was ignored.

The real strength of these books is in their interdisciplinary approach, and there is no doubt that the complete results of the Niah Caves excavations, now finally released, will serve as a valuable source on the archaeology of Southeast Asia and adjacent regions in the years to come.

The writing of this review was supported by the Tomsk State University Competitiveness Improvement Program.