S41-10

Telling Stones. Archaeological Research on Sumatra and Nias

Department of History and Cultural Studies, Institute for Near Eastern Archaeology, Freie Universität, Germany

The "Telling Stones" Research Project focusses on the megalithic traditions of Sumatra and Nias in Indonesia. The aims of the project are to collect all available data on megaliths in the highland regions of Jambi, Tanah Datar and Lima Puluh Kota in West Sumatra, the Toba-Batak and Pakpak-Batak region of North Sumatra, the Pasemah Plateau in South Sumatra, and the only known cluster of megaliths in the lowlands, in Pugung Raharjo near Lampung, in the very south of Sumatra, and on the remote island of Nias, west of Sumatra. The project evaluates the collected data on a regional and supra-regional level in order to interpret the megaliths in in spatial and temporal context. The data are combined and interpreted against the background of historical and ethnographic sources to construct a heuristic framework to enable a social interpretation of megalithic cultures in Sumatra and Nias. The output of this project is an exemplary, web-based and database-supported documentation of the megaliths on Sumatra and Nias that, on the one hand, can be used to prepare the collected project data for scientific research (open access) and, on the other hand, serves the interests of cultural heritage protection (UNESCO / ICON standards and geographic norm data) and contributes to the protection of endangered stone monuments.