Ethnographic and Archaeological Aspects of a Flaked Stone Collection from Seram, Eastern Indonesia

I IS ironic that a naturalist, G. E. Rumphius (1628-1702), first described prehistoric tools in Indonesia~ Rumphius, who lived and worked on Ambon in the central Moluccas (see Heine-Geldern 1945: 129), devoted a chapter in his D' Amboinische rariteitkamer (1741 : 207-217) to the description of stone implements. Van Heekeren (1972: 163, 169) gives references to other polished stone implements found on Seram and Ambon-Lease. During recent fieldwork among the N uaulu, a hunting, collecting, and swiddening community of south central Seram in the central Moluccas, one of the authors obtained a small collection of chert flakes and other pieces; These specimens are now dispersed among three museums (Table 1). The collection was assembled primarily as part of a systematic investigation of Nuaulu material culture, the specimens representing an actual or potential part of the equipment used to produce fire by percussion. Examination shows that many ate struck flakes, a few of which have secondary working, while some appear to have been used other than as strike-a-lights. The Nuaulu do not flake stone at the present time, and there are not historic or ethnographic descriptions of stone-flaking for this area. We believe, therefore, that we are justified in regarding this material as prehistoric in a rather general sense, without attributing a specific antiquity to it. Moreover, these are, as far as we are aware, the first non-polished stone artifacts to .be recovered from anywhere in the Moluccas, and for this reason alone they seemed to be of sufficient interest towarrant careful, detailed description and publication. Despite the fact that the collection is both small (containing few worked or utilized