AN IRON AGE FIND NEAR KLANG

Note:

This paper was produced in December 1949 about ancient iron work in, Bukit Jati, Klang.

We did bring the same subject based on SQ Fatimi thesis paper that he writes in 1963. But the story was quite different, as SQ Fatimi claimed that those artefacts were found during Japanese occupation by Japanese army while land clearing job being carried out.

Anyway, lets read while we refer the actual events to the the researchers.

AN IRON AGE FIND NEAR KLANG

By H. D. COLLINGS

In December last year, Public Works Department coolies found twenty-one iron age tools and parts of tools of the kind which the Malays call tulang mawas, on Bukit Jati, a small hill about a mile and a half east of Klang, Selangor. Mr. R. H. Rains, the Executive Engineer, told the District Officer, Mr. M. C. ff. Sheppard, and he asked for me to come and see the site.

The site was right on the top of the hill, which is 132 feet high, and the tools were found by the coolies while digging a pit for the foundations of a water tank. The pit was 46 x 36 feet and the tools were found in three hoards, two of them on the northern side near the east corner, and one near the south-west corner; they were said to have been about one foot six inches down and lying on the hard laterite which is the bed rock of the hill.

A few bits of much broken pottery and some charcoal were also found, but not much importance can be put on the latter, as charcoal is usually common in ground that has been cleared of jungle. There is quite a lot of iron stone in the hill, but there was no sign of iron smelting, indeed the waterless top of a small hill is not the place that any one would choose for that kind of work. Nothing else was found and there were none of the great granite grave slabs which would normally have been there if the place had been used as a burial ground.

When I first saw the tools they were in the District Office, and it was no longer possible to know how they had been associated. While walking round the site under the guidance of Dato' F. W. Douglas, I was struck by the lack of signs of early occupation and found only one small nest of much broken and rotten pot shards in the road cutting near the top of the hill. These shards were of the usual Iron Age type of soft grey ware with burnt reddish-brown outsides, or perhaps a red brown slip that may have been burnished. No soft brick-red ware was seen; neither was there any of the ware decorated on the rim with lines and dots which is found in the slab graves, but there were a few small bits which had string marked patterns on the outside like those of the Neolithic period.

The only two rims found were shaped like the two specimens in fig. 3 of my paper "Re-cent finds of iron age sites in southern Perak and Selangor" (1), but the flat rim is undecorated and it is not the all-through soft red ware. A few shards have small traces of a black coating which is almost certainly the same as that described in the above paper and which was said to be "bitumastic rather than resinous".There are also several shards with a bright yellow glossy coating which analysis shows to be made "essentially of lead oxide (litharge) and an organic medium such as a drying oil".

The iron tools are spear heads and axes and are all so much rusted that little metal remains. The spear heads are of two kinds: waisted (no. b) and leaf-shaped (no. c), and in their present state, only four can be identified as being waisted and one as leaf-shaped. There are five others tha t are so much rusted tha t their shape can no longer be made out; one of them has a socket 6 inches long. As they are now, the average length of the spear heads is about 14 inches.

The axes are of four kinds (nos. a, d,f and g.). Four belong to type a, one to type d, four to type f, and one to type g. The biggest one, type f, is 19 inches long. I have not seen a tool of type g from any other site and although the socket was broken when it was being dug up enough bits remain to allow it to be reconstructed. It is of such a strange shape that its use must be conjectural.

There is also one broken blade that cannot be fitted into any type.

The question of the use to which tulang mawas axes were put is a difficult one, but there can be no doubt tha t most of them were for warlike or ceremonial use and some of them may indeed have been ordinary working tools. Since some antiquarians find it hard to believe tha t the axes were indeed axes, two drawings are given of copper battle axes from Kish, Mesopotamia, which are dated between 2943 and 2753 B.C. (nos. f and h). It is not for one moment suggested that the Malayan ones have any kinship whatsoever with those from Kish, but as weapons, they are as far removed from the conventional idea of axes as are the Malayan tulang mawas.

Objects of the Malayan Iron Age have been found in many places on the western side of the Main Range from Perlis to Negri Sembilan, as well as in several sites in Pahang, and Dato' F. W. Douglas records the finding of some iron tools many years age on Bukit Badak near Bukit Jati, so that the Klang river area may have been an important one. (1).

Who were the Iron Age folk?

The only thing tha t is certain is that no one knows. No human bones have ever been found associated with the culture either in graves or elsewhere. The tools and pottery are quite unlike those found in any other part of the Far East or India. The beads from the graves are almost certainly trade goods and are therefore of little use as a means of identification, and the granite slab graves, although belonging to a wide-spread megalithic type, are unlike those of Java , Sumatra or Indo-China. The socketed iron tools are also quite foreign to Malayan types for all the local tools are tanged and not socketed.

Dr. Quaritch-Wales believes that the makers of this culture were Indonesians but gives no good evidence for his theory. Moreover he does not say what he means by "Indonesian". The word can have three distinct meanings; it can mean a geographical area, a bodily type or a linguistic family. It cannot be used to describe accurately any one people or culture. All that can be said is that since this Iron Age culture is so unlike and foreign to any other culture known from Malaya it can be presumed to have come from overseas, and there is some evidence for this, for the black and yellow coatings found on the pottery do not seem to be of Malayan origin. The black coating is bitumastic and the yellow one is of lead oxide. Now neither of these things is found in Malaya in such a way as to be easily accessible under primitive conditions, but the bitumen could be easily got from the mineral oil areas of Burma, Sumatra or Borneo.

In a letter to me, Dato' Douglas says that it is known that there is a high percentage of manganese in the iron stone from Bukit Jati and he suggested that it might have been smelted to make the tools. Analysis of the tools shows that there is only 0.02 per cent of manganese in them, but this evidence is inconclusive as little is known about locally made iron.

APPENDIX

Extracts from two reports made by Mr. A. W. Burt, Chief Chemist, Singapore, on the coating on the pottery and the composition of the iron tools.

(1) The sample consisted of two fragments of pottery, small areas on which had a yellow "glaze".

The colour of this "glaze" was compared with a colour chart by a member of the I.C.I. staff who described it as "a shade yellower/lighter than Golden Brown 414 British Standard Colour Chart (Paints)".

The "glaze" was readily removable in thin flakes. On gentle ignition it was found to be partly organic in composition (the material charred, gave off smoke and finally glowed brightly for a moment) leaving an inorganic residue. The residue was found to contain lead. No other metal was detected; nor was there any evidence of the presence of silicates.

In my opinion the "glaze" is a paint composed essentially of lead oxide (litharge) and an organic medium such a drying oil. (2) The samples consisted of:—

(a) a flattish irregular fragment having a superficial layer, on both sides, of red iron rust, and an inner core of black, brittle, magnetic material. The black material appeared to be essentially Fe3 O4, but there was evidence of the presence of some free iron.

This fragment was found to contain:—

Iron(Fe) .. 61.1%

Manganese (Mn) .. 0.02%

(b) a very small piece of black, magnetic material, weighing 0.03 gram, similar in appearance to the black material in (a), but probably less oxidised. The presence of Manganese could not be detected by the colorimetric method used, but it should be noted that had the Manganese content been as small as that in (a) a negative result would be given by this method on the amount available.

Spectroscopic analysis could not, unfortunately, be carried out owing to the loss of equipment.

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12 September 2021 / 5 Safar 1443H: 12.58 pm