Bacson-Hoabinh culture in Atjeh is the mesolithic archaeological culture identified in Atjeh and on the immediately adjacent Sumatra East Coast (around Medan in Deli) by Dr. Van Naerssen’s chapter De oudste cultuurstroomen in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk (1946). The culture — named for the two Tongkin localities in Achter-Indië (mainland Southeast Asia) where it was first identified, the Bac-son mountains in the north and the province of Hoa Binh in the south — is held to have reached the archipelago via the Malay peninsula and Sumatra, with Atjeh and the Medan plain forming one of its principal Sumatran centres. Van Naerssen dates the Atjeh manifestation of the culture to approximately 3000 years before the present.
Van Naerssen’s account
Van Naerssen’s account of the Bacson-Hoabinh culture in Atjeh runs as follows: “In North Sumatra, on the East Coast in the surroundings of Medan, the one-sidedly worked fist-axes have been dug up in great quantities, whence one has given this type, as we already said, the name [Sumatra-bijl] — as in Atjeh, where the age of this civilisation is estimated at 3000 years, while it is also represented in East Java in the surroundings of Besoeki and goes for older there, namely 5000 years. And yet the last-named centre lies much further from the land of origin. These figures are approximate and somewhat doubtful.”
The same chapter further notes that the kjökkenmöddinger (kitchen-middens) of Sumatra’s East Coast — including those of the Atjeh-adjacent regions — yielded “fragments of elephant tusks, deer antlers, bones of rhinoceroses and bears. Striking is also here the presence of pipe-bones, smashed for the sake of the marrow. … There are also human bones among them, from which the conclusion has been drawn that anthropophagy existed.” The Bacson-Hoabinh finds in the Atjeh-adjacent East Coast are thus associated with a mesolithic population of hunter-gatherers who practised cannibalism.
Significance
For the Atjeh-focused reader, the Bacson-Hoabinh finds in Atjeh are significant as the earliest archaeological evidence of human settlement in the Atjeh region. The 3000-year date places the Atjeh mesolithic within the same period as the Sumatra East Coast mesolithic around Medan (also c. 3000 years) and earlier than the East Java mesolithic at Besoeki (c. 5000 years). The Atjeh Bacson-Hoabinh finds establish a continuous human presence in the Atjeh region from approximately 1000 BCE — that is, some two millennia before the first Muslim polity of Perlak in 1292, and some three millennia before the Dutch-Aceh war of 1873.
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
- Deli — Deli
- Java — Java
- Sumatra — Sumatra
- Medan — Medan
- Besoeki — Banyuwangi
- Perlak — Peureulak
- Tongkin — Tonkin
- Achter-Indië — Mainland Southeast Asia
- Bacson-Hoabinh — Bacson-Hoabinh (mesolithic culture)
- Sumatra-bijl — Sumatra axe (mesolithic tool type)
- kjökkenmödding — kitchen-midden (Danish)
- 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).