The Niah Cave Project: The Third (2002) Season of Fieldwork

The paper describes the preliminary results of the third (2002) campaign of fieldwork by the Niah Cave Project. The major sedimentary units and geomorphic features described in the 2001 report have been further refined by fieldwork supported by the initial results of micromorphological analysis, and the importance of interior guano deposits for the formation and transformation of many of these units has become ever more apparent. The archaeological fieldwork has found clear evidence that the West Mouth was being visited by humans before the encorporation of the Deep Skull into its sediments around 43,000 BP. There is increasing evidence that highly sophisticated tropical foraging systemswere being practised from the time of the first arrival of modern humans in this part of Borneo, findings of considerable importance for debates about the pathways of initial colonisation in southeast Asia. The food-rich pits and post-holes found in 2001, believed then probably to be early Holocene (Mesolithic) in date, are now thought more likely to be part of the culturally-rich deposits of the ‘frequentation zone’ of the terminal Pleistocene excavated by the Harrissons, or even older. Small scale excavations of exposed skeletons have revealed further complexity in ‘Neolithic’ funerary ritual. Studies of the cave taphonomy have been considerably advanced. The potential of other entrances inthe Niah complex for targeted fieldwork of the same kind as in the West Mouth has been established. The renewed programme of archaeological investigations is variously confirming, altering and amplifying the picture from the earlier excavations, but in all three respects is greatly enriching our understanding of the history of the site and of the inhabitants’ changing interactions with their surrounding landscape.