had been very interested in Chinese porcelains and stonewares. During his surveying no sites in Sarawak had been found with Ming ceramics in any quantity so he had hypothesized a “Ming gap” for Sarawak. Two sites found inland in the First Division had Ming and Sawankhalok wares of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in some quantity, illustrating that the “Ming gap” did not exist. A third inland site excavated was the first open site found from which a large number of stone tools and earthenware pottery were recovered in association (Chin and Nyandoh 1975; Chin 1977). The best illustrations of artifacts recovered by the Sarawak Museum programs were published by Chin (1980).

A Seameo Regional Centre for Archaeology and Fine Arts (SPAFA) ceramic workshop held in Kuching in 1981 included Chinese ceramic specialists. Further examination of the ceramics from Santubong proved that rather than most of the porcelain and stoneware dating from the tenth to the twelfth centuries as reported by Harrisson (Harrisson and Harrisson 1957), it dated from the thirteenth to the fourteenth centuries with only a few shards of twelfth-century dating (Chin 1981). Solheim reported on the earthenware from this site (1965a) and later did a second report on this same pottery from other sites in Sarawak and Southeast Asia (1981).

Ipoi Datan was selected for advanced training in archaeology and for his master’s thesis he reported on excavations at Gua Sireh, in the First Division of Sarawak. Solheim had made an excavation here in 1959 but because of an agreement with Tom Harrisson to publish the final report together, no final report was written before Harrisson died. From this site came a secure calibrated date for rice of 2,334 b.c. (Bellwood et al. 1992, 167) and a date for the earliest level of 21,630±80 (ANU 7048) (Datan and Bellwood 1991, 391).

Sabah archaeological research was started by the Harrissons. Tom Harrisson apparently first started exploring in Sabah in 1952 (Harrisson, B., and Ungap 1964, 664, Note 2). Tom revisited Sabah in 1964 and selected the Tapadong Cave area, on the Segama River, for survey under Barbara’s supervision the same year. A number of rock shelters were discovered, many of them containing carved wooden coffins with associated porcelains suggesting use over the last 700 years. (For a map showing locations of the Sabah caves and rock shelters, see Harrisson and Harrisson 1971, 37.) In several of these shelters were remnants of wooden platforms on which the coffins had been placed. A few of these had notched or perforated boards associated with them, which may have been a form of writing boards (Barbara Harrisson 1966). Numerous other caves and rock shelters were later found and tested, both in interior and in eastern Sabah. Some of these had much earlier deposits beneath the late burials in wooden coffins (Harrisson, T. 1966a, 1966b; 1967a, 90–91; 1967b, 145–147). Much more detail on the sites and their contents is found in Tom and Barbara Harrisson’s book (1971). Tom remarked several times that the Sabah finds are quite different from the Niah materials and suggest close contact with neighboring Sulawesi.

Peter Bellwood started fieldwork in eastern Sabah in late 1979 with several major excavations, in cooperation with the Sabah Museum, in the same general area as the previous survey and testing done by the Harrissons. Three reports (1984, 1989, 1990) and a monograph (1988) edited by Bellwood present virtually a totally new understanding of eastern Sabah prehistory.

Bellwood’s first research (1984) was in two nearby areas and included the Lake Tingkayu sites and the Madai sites. Lake Tingkayu was a no-longer-existent lake that had been formed when a lava flow had dammed a river. The lava flow is dated to about 28,000 years ago and the dam was broken through about 17,000 years ago, which drained the lake. Several open sites were located on the shore of this old lake. Surprisingly the stone tools included a number of bifacially flaked, very well-made, small and large tools, unlike anything found later in Southeast Asia. A later site formed after the lake had drained and dated between 17,000 and 12,000 years ago had much more typical Southeast Asian style unretouched stone tools.

Some of the Madai caves had occupations dating between 11,000 and 7,000 years ago with stone flaking similar to the post-lake site, but lacking the blade-like flakes of the earlier