Sumatra-bijl — Dutch for “Sumatra axe”, in French hache courte (“short axe”), in German Kurzaxt — is the mesolithic stone-tool type named for the island of Sumatra, where it was first identified in great quantities and where it is found in the Atjeh region and on the immediately adjacent Sumatra East Coast. The type is recorded in Dr. Van Naerssen’s chapter De oudste cultuurstroomen in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk (1946).
Van Naerssen’s account
Van Naerssen introduces the Sumatra-bijl as one of the two principal tool-types of the Bacson-Hoabinh mesolithic culture. His wording: “This type of artefacts in the Archipelago is usually called the Sumatra-bijl, after the island where they were dug up in great numbers. … Another object, which has played an important role during the spread of culture in the mesolithic, is the so-called short axe (hache courte, Kurzaxt), a fist-axe which has approximately the form of a circle-segment. It is mainly these two types, the Sumatra-axe and the short axe, which have served us as guides in the search for the land of origin and the spread therefrom of one of the mesolithic cultures of the Archipelago.”
The type is further described as a stone tool of which “the surface, already smoothed by nature, was left unworked and the new fracture-surface was finished by knocking small shards off it. The already developed inventive spirit of man has then gratefully made use of the slip surface of nature”. The Sumatra-bijl thus represents an early stage in the transition from the wholly-flaked palaeolithic tools to the wholly-ground neolithic axes: the natural smoothing of the stone’s surface is preserved, while the new fracture-surface (where the stone was broken off the parent rock) is finished by flaking.
Significance for Atjeh
For the Atjeh-focused reader, the Sumatra-bijl is significant as the type-specimen of the mesolithic culture of Atjeh and the Sumatra East Coast. Van Naerssen’s account notes that the type was found “in great quantities” on Sumatra — including, by his specific dating, in Atjeh at approximately 3000 years before the present (see Bacson-Hoabinh culture in Atjeh). The same tool-type is found at the Bacson-Hoabinh culture-centres in Tongkin (Achter-Indië), confirming Van Naerssen’s hypothesis of a mesolithic migration from the mainland through the Malay peninsula to Sumatra. The Sumatra-bijl thus places Atjeh within the wider Bacson-Hoabinh mesolithic continuum, and gives the Atjeh region a specific place in the prehistoric archaeology of the archipelago.
Dutch terms used in this article
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk — What the Indies Received and Gave
- Wereldbibliotheek N.V. — World Library Ltd.
- oudste cultuurstroomen — oldest cultural streams
- pen — open/wide (Atjeh concept)
- Atjeh — Aceh
- Acheh — Aceh
- Sumatra — Sumatra
- Tongkin — Tonkin
- Achter-Indië — Mainland Southeast Asia
- Bacson-Hoabinh — Bacson-Hoabinh (mesolithic culture)
- Sumatra-bijl — Sumatra axe (mesolithic tool type)
- hache courte — short axe (French)
- Kurzaxt — short axe (German)
- Dr. — Doctor
See Also
Source
Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk, onder leiding van Dr. C. W. Wormser (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek N.V., 1946), pp. 17 and 19 (chapter De oudste cultuurstroomen door Dr. F. H. van Naerssen).