are relayed through objects made of stone and of metal, which represent solutions people produced long ago to the practical problems posed by Indonesian landscapes of rain forest and waterways. Stone axes, picks, and knives extended human strength for clearing a patch of forest to plant food crops, for felling trees to build a boat, for digging a shallow pit to get at metal ores, for skinning an animal, or for cutting into a tree for its resin or food starch. Polished axes, produced from stone distinctive to areas in south Sumatra and west Java, spread to faraway communities along a myriad of overlapping sailing circuits. From around 500 these circuits meshed with sailing routes that took archipelago peoples into the spheres of major civilizations developing in South and East Asia. An ancient history of human contact, of curiosity, desire, and
recognition of the significance of new objects took place at sites where land and sea paths joined. By the third century the Chinese had developed smelting techniques that allowed them to produce a metal tough enough for hoes, axes, and the tips of wooden plows. They produced iron goods for Chinese markets and for export overseas in big blast furnaces. In the last centuries before the Common Era, metal goods were percolating through trade networks that extended into the Indonesian archipelago and were becoming desired objects.

Knowledge of how to detect metal deposits and of how to mine and work in metal also spread along archipelago seaways. Iron ores are found in soils in west Sumatra and south Sulawesi, copper ores in Sumatran and south Java soils, tin in the Bangka and Belitung islands, and gold in west Sumatra’s highlands and the river banks of west Kalimantan. Extraction and working of ores
required the skills and labor of many men and women in a community: makers of hoes, shovels, and baskets; miners; collectors and cutters of firewood, charcoal makers for heating furnaces; metalworkers to melt and beat ores into bars, smiths to fashion tools, weapons, and bracelets; traders to put goods made from metal into networks of buying and selling. All depended on farmers of sea and land for food hunted, grown, preserved, prepared, and served. Archipelago metal industries developed at sites with ores, forest, water highway, and sizable settlements of people. In most of the archipelago there were no deposits of metals. Some communities
obtained bars of copper, iron, and other metals through long chains of exchange that ultimately led to China and Japan. Technologies, artistic designs, and items circulated among outward-oriented, seafaring communities scattered along the coasts of Sumatra, Java, Bali, Kalimantan, and the smaller islands of Talaud, Sumba, Sumbawa, Flores, and Selayar. Their metalworkers
made arrowheads, swords, armor, axes, knives, plowshares, and fish hooks, urns, incense holders, and dishes, rings, and bracelets. Metal objects for work, war, storage, and decoration were introduced into distant regions of the archipelago by Chinese imports and by local industries.
The curved blade of the dagger called kris, made by blacksmiths in Java, was shaped from bars of an iron-nickel alloy found only in the soils of Soroako in Sulawesi. Iron axes and knives, produced by mining communities in Belitung and Karimata in the western archipelago, traveled along water highways, passing through many hands. Some ended their journey as possessions of chiefs in settlements on the northwestern tip of New Guinea. Iron tools and weapons, vessels and jewelry made of bronze, silver, or gold were used by communities with developing social hierarchies of leaders, religious specialists, soldiers, artisans, farmers, and traders. For their new owners, in settlements far distant from communities which manufactured and used metal goods, the possession of an object made from metal might be a sign of elevated status, and the object used to display the wealth and self-importance of a ruler. For instance, large drums made of bronze, cast by metalworking communities in northern Vietnam between 500 and 300
, have been found in prehistoric sites in Sumatra, Java, and Bali. It is not possible to know if the owners of these drums valued them as musical instruments

for more info please visit http://satriawibawa.blogspot.com