to fill in the framework using collected data acquired during the previous period of research. Researches and excavations to find items from successive cultural stages were carried out cooperatively in order to build a prehistoric chronology” (Soejono 1970, 13).

Only one of the archaeologists working during this period, W.J.A. Willems, had been trained in prehistoric archaeology and he was not active for long, nor did he publish very much. Many of the discoveries and resulting short reports were done by amateurs who were not employed by the Archaeological Service. Van Stein Callenfels was originally a historical archaeologist, and though he advocated what could be called “scientific” archaeology in the field he did not make use of it in published reports; instead of making use of the stratigraphic position of excavated artifacts that he advocated his interpretation was based primarily on typology.

Brief reports concerning van Stein Callenfels’s investigations as well as information announced by him in newspapers or magazines remind us of the steady work of this energetic scholar. Many sites of the Toalian culture, the fertile Kalumpang Neolithic settlement [both in Sulawesi], and the Bali bronze-age sarcophagi were excavated during the years before his sudden death in 1938, and it is regrettable that van Stein Callenfels did not publish full reports on the results of these important investigations.

(Soejono 1969, 75)

P. V. van Stein Callenfels was considered by his contemporaries the leading archaeologist in Southeast Asia. He was certainly a leader in the field. He organized the First Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East, held in Hanoi in 1932, which led to the founding of the Far-Eastern Prehistory Association and the indo-pacific prehistory association. He also saw to the establishment of the division of prehistory at the Museum of the Koninklijk Bataviaasch Genootschap in 1933, which later became the National Museum of Indonesia.

H. R. van Heekeren was one of the most serious amateurs doing archaeological fieldwork before World War II, concentrating primarily on excavations of rock shelters at Besuki, in Java, and in southern Sulawesi. Several of his books (1957, 1958a, 1958b) were the first extensive and detailed reviews of Indonesian prehistory and were based primarily on the research done before World War II. In a review of one of these books the reviewer referred to it as a “laundry list” (Smith 1959, 335). Others argue that this was not van Heekeren’s fault as practically all the data in published reports could be considered as coming from surface finds (Solheim 1975a, 115).

Research on Pleistocene fossil man and Paleolithic cultures has been a strong element of Indonesian archaeological research. Following Dubois, the primary searchers for fossil man were C. Ter Haar, W.F.F. Oppenoorth, and G.H.R. von Koenigswald. Their finds were made in central Java at such sites as Trinil, Patjitan, and Ngandong. Koenigswald recovered a considerable number of stone tools and interpreted them as a part of traditional European typology. American H.L. Movius reinterpreted these tools as a part of his Chopper/Chopping Tool Tradition, a Southeast and East Asian typological tradition. Unfortunately the stone tools have not been found in association with fossil finds. To add to the chronological problem the geological stratigraphy of the finds is very complex, and remains controversial.

Finds were made of a number of apparently different cultures from the early and middle Holocene. The first excavations by van Stein Callenfels, in northern Sumatra, were of kitchen middens with artifacts of the Hoabinhian stone industry. No dating has been done on these sites. While Hoabinhian-like stone tools were also found in West Kalimantan, in Java in Gua Lawa by van Stein Callenfels, in caves of Besuki by van Heekeren, and in other caves in Java, it is generally considered that the only true Hoabinhian sites in Indonesia are those in Sumatra. Numerous cave sites, apparently of this general time period, were investigated in East Java, Sulawesi, Timor, and Roti; several of those in East Java contained Hoabinhian-like tools but also glade and flake artifacts, a large number of shell tools, and bone implements. Some of these sites, including the Toalian sites of South Sulawesi excavated by van Stein Callenfels, had