Dating Methods: AMS radiocarbon dating of charcoal pigments (where preserved) and calcium carbonate crusts overlying/underlying pigment. Additionally, thermoluminescence (TL) dating of associated pottery shards found on shelter floors.
Study Area: Primary sites include Gua Saleh, Liang Karim, and Gua Tewet (East Kalimantan); Painted Cave (Niah, Sarawak); and Batu Tulug (Sabah). Over 80 rock art sites with schematic components were reviewed.
While early researchers dismissed these as crude "decadent" art, recent landscape archaeology and dating programs reveal a complex, regionally specific symbolic system. This paper defines the Borneo Schematic as a distinct horizon (c. 4000 BP to historic contact), analyzes its core iconographic repertoire, and proposes that its primary functions were territorial marking during Neolithic land clearance, ritual communication with ancestral/spirit beings, and the encoding of cosmological navigation knowledge. borneo schematic
The Borneo Schematic Rock Art Tradition: Chronology, Symbolism, and Landscape Use in Island Southeast Asia
The Borneo Schematic rock art tradition is a long-lived, internally coherent, and symbolically dense expression of Neolithic to Metal Age Austronesian societies in Island Southeast Asia. It is not a primitive scribble but a sophisticated visual language encoding shamanic journeying, territorial boundaries, and cosmological navigation. Future research should focus on residue analysis of pigment binders (to identify plant-based ritual substances) and expanded dating of the enigmatic boat motifs. Understanding the Schematic tradition illuminates not only prehistoric art but the spiritual and political lives of the ancestors of today’s Borneo peoples. Dating Methods: AMS radiocarbon dating of charcoal pigments
The Schematic tradition is markedly distinct from its predecessor (Table 1).
Perston, Y. (2019). The spatial organization of rock art in the Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat region. Archaeology in Oceania , 54(2), 89-104. Over 80 rock art sites with schematic components
For over a century, the caves and rock shelters of Borneo have been known to contain prehistoric images. However, systematic archaeological research since the 1990s—particularly the collaborative French-Indonesian project in the Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat karst of East Kalimantan—has refined our understanding of two distinct pictorial traditions. The earliest, the "Naturalistic" tradition, features exquisitely rendered large mammals (banteng, bearded pigs) and hand stencils in reddish mulberry hues. The later "Schematic" tradition, typically in black, dark purple, or hematite red, comprises small, stylized, often repetitive geometric designs.