Recent Rock Art Research on East Seram, Maluku: A key site in the rock art of West Papua and South East Maluku

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Oktaviana, Adhi Agus
Lape, Peter Van
Ririmasse, Marlon NR
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2018
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Rock art in Indonesia has been investigated before the 20th century. A number of previous scientific publications noted the existence of rock art sites on Seram Island, Maluku Province, which was on the cliff of Sawai and Tala River. Recent archaeological surveys in the area of East Seram and Seram Laut conducted by a joint Indonesian-American Research Team discovered a new rock art site in the coast of East Seram. The rock art is painted on the cliff wall which is called by the locals as Watu Sika. Rock art on the Watu Sika Site is similar to a number of rock art at other sites in Eastern Indonesia which were mostly painted on karstic cliffs along the coast. This study used verbal and pictorial recording methods using the Dstretch application to clarify images to support identification. This study analyzed a number of figurative and non-figurative patterns of rock art motifs at Watu Sika Site. The results of the identification of a number of rock art motifs on this site show that there are several patterns including figures of human, animal, fish, boats, negative hand stencils, and geometric patterns. This study also discussed an analysis of the social context background of rock art tradition in the surrounding region, particularly at the Banda Sea region. Based on the distribution network of rock art findings in eastern Indonesia, new insights are generated that this interim data analysis show that Watu Sika Site is the key to connecting the distribution path of rock art originating from the western region into two lanes. The first lane to the Northeast, which is the Papua region and South Lane, expanding towards the Islands around the Banda Sea.

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Kapata Arkeologi

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14

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2

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© 2018 Kapata Arkeologi – Balai Arkeologi Maluku. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-SA license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical to this one.

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Archaeology

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Oktaviana, AA; Lape, PV; Ririmasse, MNR, Recent Rock Art Research on East Seram, Maluku: A key site in the rock art of West Papua and South East Maluku, Kapata Arkeologi, 14 (2), pp. 135-144

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