A stone adze from Kuala Manong, Batu Niah, Miri, Sarawak


 

THE SARAWAK MUSEUM JOURNAL
VOL LXX NO.91 DECEMBER 2012
 
 
Title : 
A stone adze from Kuala Manong, Batu Niah, Miri, Sarawak
Author : 
Chris Hunt, Barrie Hartwell, Alastair Ruffell and Earl of Cranbrook
Abstract:
This note documents a stone artefact found by Anuar bin Haji Jaya of Kampung Niah, Niah National Park, Miri Division, Sarawak, Malaysia in 2009. The artefact was lent to Lord Cranbrook for analysis and then returned to its finder, who regarded it as extremely significant and an important heirloom. It seems, from conversation with the finder, that broadly similar stone artefacts have turned up around Niah before, and that local people regard them as ‘thunderbolts’, of some magical significance. The artefact was a surface find, exposed on a bulldozed surface on the summit of a low knoll in the young oil palm plantation near Kuala Manong, behind Batu Niah (Plate V).The soil was the lateritic orange clay usual for the area. At the time of the find, the find-spot was unvegetated, and a gravelly subsoil exposed on the surface (Plate VI), suggesting that the stone artefact may originally have been buried. Anuar took Lord Cranbrook to a nearby sandstone exposure, the nearest ‘hard’ rock that he knew, and a comparative sample was taken.
DOI:
XXXX
How to cite:
Chris Hunt et. all. (2012). A Stone Adze From Kuala Manong, Batu Niah, Miri, Sarawak. The Sarawak Museum Journal, LXX (91): 107-116
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