ABSTRACT
Report on a project initiated after Peter Bellwood and Ipoi Data excavated sherds of pottery in the cave site of Gua Sireh in Sarawak, which contained a rice grain dated, by means of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS), to about 2300 B.C., a surprisingly early date for the equatorial and island part of Southeast Asia. The project sets out to look for other evidence of the early presence of rice in Sarawak. Preliminary macroscopic examination of the sediments found at the same level as the pottery has revealed abundant evidence of rice, which confirms the earlier find. Suggests, on the basis of information by Peter Bellwood, that the early date for rice at Gua Sireh may indicate Austro-Asiatic links with southern Thailand and the Malaysian peninsula. In a brief comment Peter Bellwood raises some questions related to this interpretation, [mk]
See: 1048
1048 Beavitt, Paul Confirmation of an early date for the presence of rice in Borneo / by Paul Beavitt, Edmund Kurui and Jill Thompson. The Sarawak Museum Journal : New Series 50/71 (1996): 67-72.
