Tjot Seumeureueng (modern Cot Seumeureueng) is a bog-iron (swamp-ore) locality on the West coast of Atjeh, recorded by Jansen, Lindberg and Wolvekamp in 1922 and reproduced in Van Bemmelen’s *Geology of Indonesia* (1949) in the description of the Kwala Boe and Tjot Plaj bog-iron deposits. Tjot Seumeureueng is one of the five supplementary bog-iron localities that the Jansen-Lindberg-Wolvekamp survey recorded in the same general area as the principal Kwala Boe and Tjot Plaj deposits but did not indicate on Van Bemmelen’s map (Fig. 41).
The 1922 Jansen-Lindberg-Wolvekamp observation
Van Bemmelen’s record of the Kwala Boe and Tjot Plaj bog-iron deposits, drawn from the 1922 Jansen-Lindberg-Wolvekamp report, includes the observation that “These swamp ores were also found on the Tjot Seumeureueng, Tjot Meuseugit, Tjot Regan, Tjot Darat and Tjot Mane (not indicated on the map).” The five supplementary Tjot localities — including Tjot Seumeureueng — are accordingly part of the wider West-Atjeh bog-iron zone, of which the principal mapped localities are Kwala Boe and Tjot Plaj (30 and 12 km NW of Meulaboh).
The combined Kwala Boe–Tjot Plaj bog-iron reserve — which presumably includes the five supplementary Tjot localities — is estimated at 300,000–400,000 tons of lump-ore, distributed over a total area of about 2 sq km with a thickness of 0.40 m and an ore-content of about 15 %. For the full account see the entry on Kwala Boe Tjot Plaj.
The name “Tjot”
The Acehnese word Tjot (modern Cot) — meaning “hill” — is the standard prefix for the named hills of the West-Atjeh coast, and the five supplementary bog-iron localities (Tjot Seumeureueng, Tjot Meuseugit, Tjot Regan, Tjot Darat, Tjot Mane) are accordingly all named hills in the same general area as the principal Kwala Boe and Tjot Plaj deposits. The recurrence of the Tjot prefix across the West-Atjeh iron-ore localities is itself a measure of the geological continuity of the bog-iron zone along the West-Atjeh coast.
Significance
Tjot Seumeureueng is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it is one of the five supplementary bog-iron localities recorded by the 1922 Jansen-Lindberg-Wolvekamp survey in the same general area as the principal Kwala Boe and Tjot Plaj deposits, and accordingly part of the wider West-Atjeh bog-iron zone. The locality is part of the only Atjeh iron-ore zone classified in the colonial geological literature as bog-iron (swamp-ore) deposits rather than as contact-metamorphic magnetite-hematite deposits, and its inclusion in the Jansen-Lindberg-Wolvekamp 1922 report — despite its absence from Van Bemmelen’s Fig. 41 map — establishes it as part of the documented colonial-era iron-ore record of Atjeh.
See Also
- Acheh
- Atjeh’s Westkust
- B. B. Lindberg
- H. Wolvekamp
- Iron ores in Atjeh
- J. Zwierzycki
- Kwala Boe Tjot Plaj
- Meulaboh
- P. J. J. Jansen
- Philippi
- Tjot Darat
- Tjot Mane
- Tjot Meuseugit
- Tjot Regan
- 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. 207–208 (key to Fig. 41, Nos. 6/7, with the list of supplementary Tjot bog-iron localities).