Copper in Atjeh is the corpus of colonial-era geological observations that document the occurrence of copper minerals in the Residency of Atjeh, recorded in the copper chapter of Van Bemmelen’s *Geology of Indonesia* (1949) and based on the field-work of Jansen, Lindberg and Wolvekamp (1922). Seven Atjeh localities are recorded — Pulu Bras, Gle Broë, Aer Talu, Beutong, Aloe Baru, Aer Si Hajo, and (across the Tapanuli border) Muara Sipongi — though Van Bemmelen’s general assessment of the East-Indian copper record is that “the quantities are so small and the transport problems so difficult, that workable deposits have not yet been found”.
The Atjeh copper localities
The Atjeh copper localities recorded in Van Bemmelen’s Fig. 33 key are:
- Pulu Bras (Province): Atjeh.
- Gle Broë (Province): Atjeh.
- Aer Talu (Province): Atjeh.
- Beutong (Province): Atjeh.
- Aloe Baru (Province): Atjeh.
- Aer Si Hajo (Province): Atjeh.
- Muara Sipongi (Residency: Tapanuli, immediately south of the Atjeh border).
The seven localities are recorded with the residency or province attribution but without individual locality descriptions in Van Bemmelen’s text — they appear in the key to Fig. 33 (the map of copper occurrences in the East Indies) as the northernmost group of Sumatran copper localities. The field-work underlying the record is the 1922 Jansen-Lindberg-Wolvekamp survey, which is cited (alongside Van Dijk 1860 for the Muara Sipongi locality) as the principal source for the Atjeh copper occurrences.
The Muara Sipongi locality
The Muara Sipongi locality, though technically in the Tapanuli residency rather than in Atjeh proper, is included in the Atjeh copper record because of its immediate geographical proximity to the Atjeh border and its geological continuity with the Atjeh slate-formation. Van Bemmelen records that “A few boulders, containing copper ore, are mentioned by VAN DIJK (1860). Malachite and chalcopyrite are supposed to have been observed. VAN DIJK determined a copper-percentage of 7½, but no value should be attached to this figure, as only boulders, from which the origin is unknown, were under discussion.”
The Muara Sipongi locality is also significant for the iron-ore record — see the entries on Muara Sipongi and A. Tobler for the contact-metamorphic theory of the Muara Sipongi iron-ore deposits, which supplied the geological model that the Jansen-Lindberg-Wolvekamp survey applied to the Atjeh iron-ore localities.
Place in the East-Indian copper record
Van Bemmelen’s general assessment of the East-Indian copper record is unambiguous:
“In some places (Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Celebes, Timor, New Guinea), the quantities are so small and the transport problems so difficult, that workable deposits have not yet been found. Such is the case in the island of Timor, where investigations by the Netherlands Indies Government have shown an irregular ore body, containing 48,000 tons of copper ore with a grade of 2½ % Cu. In the Southern Mts of Java, near the boundary of Surakarta and Madiun, the Ishihara concern has explored…”
The Atjeh copper occurrences are, in this context, part of the wider East-Indian copper record — a record in which workable deposits had not been found by the end of the colonial period, and in which the documented occurrences are typically of small tonnage and isolated distribution. The Atjeh occurrences are accordingly best understood as part of the broader mineral geography of the residency rather than as a stand-alone copper resource.
Significance
Copper in Atjeh is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it is the corpus of colonial-era geological observations that document the occurrence of copper minerals in the Residency of Atjeh — a corpus that comprises seven localities (six in Atjeh proper, one across the Tapanuli border at Muara Sipongi) recorded by the 1922 Jansen-Lindberg-Wolvekamp survey. The Atjeh copper occurrences are part of the broader East-Indian copper record, in which workable deposits had not been found by the end of the colonial period, and they are accordingly best understood as part of the wider mineral geography of the residency rather than as a stand-alone copper resource. The inclusion of the Muara Sipongi locality in the Atjeh copper record — despite its technical location in Tapanuli — reflects the geological continuity of the Atjeh slate-formation with the Tapanuli slate-formation across the residency border, and the consequent impossibility of drawing a clean mineralogical boundary at the Atjeh–Tapanuli border.
See Also
- Acheh
- A. Tobler
- B. B. Lindberg
- H. Wolvekamp
- Iron ores in Atjeh
- Muara Sipongi
- P. J. J. Jansen
- Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949)
- 1922
Source
The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), pp. 147–149 (copper in Sumatra, Fig. 33 key, with the Atjeh localities and the Muara Sipongi reference to Van Dijk 1860).