In Atjeh opgedolven glazen kruikjes (Tichelmann, 1939)

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tagsdocument, article, colonial, archaeological, atjeh, tichelmann, 1939, de-natuur, glass, excavation
aliasesTichelmann 1939, In Atjeh opgedolven glazen kruikjes, Glass jugs excavated in Atjeh, Tichelmann glass Atjeh, Atjeh glass kruikjes, Glazen kruikjes Atjeh, Excavated glass vessels Atjeh

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In Atjeh opgedolven glazen kruikjes — “Glass jugs excavated in Atjeh” — is an illustrated article by G. L. Tichelmann, published in 1939 in De Natuur (Nature), vol. 39, p. 40 e.v., recording glass vessels — glazen kruikjes — excavated in Atjeh. The article is recorded as No. 625 in Van Meurs’s Literatuur-Overzicht over het jaar 1939 (The Hague, 1940), in the Sumatra chapter.

Subject

The article’s subject, as recorded by Van Meurs, is the glazen kruikjes — the glass jugs, small glass vessels — opgedolven (excavated, literally “dug up”) in Atjeh. The diminutive kruikjes — small jugs, flasks, or phials — indicates that the vessels are small glass containers, likely of the kind associated with trade-goods, perfumes, medicines, or ritual substances. The excavation of such glass vessels in Atjeh is of archaeological interest for the trade-history of the sultanate: glass vessels of Middle Eastern, Chinese, and European provenance are among the standard small-finds of Southeast Asian coastal and riverine sites, and their presence in Atjeh reflects the sultanate’s participation in the long-distance trade networks of the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. The identification of the vessels’ provenance — whether Middle Eastern, Chinese, or European — would be the subject of the article itself.

The article’s publication in De Natuur — a popular natural-history monthly — places it in the genre of illustrated antiquarian-naturalistic notes that were a common feature of Dutch colonial popular science journalism, and the article is likely to have included both illustrations of the vessels and a discussion of their likely provenance and date.

Author and venue

Tichelmann — G. L. Tichelmann, the Dutch colonial ethnographer and artist — is represented extensively in the Sumatra chapter of Van Meurs’s survey, with entries on Batak antiquities, on the si gale gale (the Batak death-puppet), on Batak rock-inscriptions, on a new Batak museum, and on the prehistoric and ethnographic material of northern Sumatra. His work is characterised by the combination of ethnographic observation with artistic illustration, and the glass-vessel article is likely to have included his own illustrations of the kruikjes. The cross-reference in No. 568 — the Harders account of the van Daalen campaign — “zie bij TICHELMAN, G. L.” — indicates a connection between Tichelmann’s work and the Harders article, and it suggests that Tichelmann’s ethnographic and antiquarian observations on northern Sumatra were made, in part, in connection with the retrospective military-historical writing on the van Daalen campaign.

The article appeared in De Natuur (Nature), vol. 39, p. 40 e.v., a popular Dutch natural-history monthly that carried illustrated notes on the natural history, prehistory, and antiquities of the Netherlands Indies. The choice of venue signals the article’s intended audience: the educated Dutch public with an interest in the natural and antiquarian history of the Indies.

Place in the 1939 Literatuur-Overzicht

The article is No. 625 in the Sumatra chapter (Hoofdstuk III, Nos. 548–658) of Van Meurs’s survey, where it stands among the T-letter entries of the Sumatra chapter, between Tichelmann’s other entries on Batak and northern Sumatran antiquities. Its placement there — in a cluster of Tichelmann entries on the prehistoric and ethnographic material of northern Sumatra — marks it as one of the antiquarian notes on Atjeh published in 1939, and the only one to record excavated glass vessels.

Significance

For AcehWiki, the article is significant as a 1939 record of glass vessels excavated in Atjeh — a small-find of archaeological interest for the trade-history of the sultanate. The article furnishes an independent source for the material culture of Atjeh, and it complements the corpus’s existing entries on the archaeology and antiquities of Atjeh and of northern Sumatra. The connection to Tichelmann’s wider work on the ethnography of northern Sumatra — and the cross-reference from the Harders account of the van Daalen campaign — places the article within the broader antiquarian-ethnographic enterprise that Tichelmann pursued in the late-colonial period, and it suggests that the glass vessels may have been excavated in the course of, or in connection with, the post-campaign exploration of the interior.

See Also

Source

Literatuur-Overzicht over het jaar 1939 van de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde en Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch-Indië, door H. van Meurs (‘s-Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff, 1940), Hoofdstuk III (Sumatra en naburig gebied), No. 625. Citing: G. L. Tichelmann, “In Atjeh opgedolven glazen kruikjes. Met ills.,” De Natuur, vol. 39 (1939), p. 40 e.v.

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