Papers by Edmund Edwards McKinnon
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2019
Significance We demonstrate that a tsunami in the late 14th century CE destroyed coastal sites al... more Significance We demonstrate that a tsunami in the late 14th century CE destroyed coastal sites along a critical part of the maritime Silk Road and set in motion profound changes in the political economy of Southeast Asia. Our results provide a precise chronology of settlement and trade along a historically strategic section of the Sumatran coast and are robust physical evidence for the rise of the Aceh Sultanate. Tragically, coastal areas impacted by the late 14th century tsunami were devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. This makes our findings relevant to debates about hazard mitigation and risk reduction. This example shows that archaeological, historical, and geological data are relevant in discussions about the long-term sustainability of communities exposed to geological hazards.
Academia Letters, 2022
At the end of September 2021, a certain Pak Arun Rambe Rambe reported the discovery of an unusual... more At the end of September 2021, a certain Pak Arun Rambe Rambe reported the discovery of an unusually ferocious pengulubalang figure in the hamlet of Batu Sinanggar, part of Meranti Omas village in Na IX-X sub-district of Labuhan Utara Regency of North Sumatra Province. The image which had been buried in the soil came to light accidentally on the 29th September, and was discovered by the wife of the cultivator Pak Sarpin Ritonga, when she was clearing tree roots prior to planting a dry rice crop. In days gone by, a pangulubalang was essentially a guardian figure, set up outside a settlement to protect the inhabitants of a village from harm and to deter would-be attackers. Such images were considered to possess spiritual qualities. The image which is cut from greyish stone, stands approximately 1 metre in height. Its hair style displays a typical traditional top knot and it has a rounded face with large staring eyes. The ear lobes appear to be pierced and elongated. The ferocious appearance is due to its teeth which are all sharpened to a point. Tooth filing among the so-called Batak tribes of northern Sumatra was an erstwhile common feature of their culture. This, combined with the habit of betel nut chewing, which produces copious amounts of reddish saliva, is undertaken with a wad of sirih leaves, and gave them a most ferocious appearance which may, in part, have been responsible for their reputation for indulging in anthropophagy. Coincidentally, the Pardembanan call themselves Halak Pardembanan, "people of the betel-quid" and the name Pardembanan as a geographic name translates as "the place where betel chewers live!" (Bartlett 1952, 629)
Academia Letters, 2022
At the end of September 2021, a certain Pak Arun Rambe Rambe reported the discovery of an unusual... more At the end of September 2021, a certain Pak Arun Rambe Rambe reported the discovery of an unusually ferocious pengulubalang figure in the hamlet of Batu Sinanggar, part of Meranti Omas village in Na IX-X sub-district of Labuhan Utara Regency of North Sumatra Province. The image which had been buried in the soil came to light accidentally on the 29th September, and was discovered by the wife of the cultivator Pak Sarpin Ritonga, when she was clearing tree roots prior to planting a dry rice crop. In days gone by, a pangulubalang was essentially a guardian figure, set up outside a settlement to protect the inhabitants of a village from harm and to deter would-be attackers. Such images were considered to possess spiritual qualities. The image which is cut from greyish stone, stands approximately 1 metre in height. Its hair style displays a typical traditional top knot and it has a rounded face with large staring eyes. The ear lobes appear to be pierced and elongated. The ferocious appearance is due to its teeth which are all sharpened to a point. Tooth filing among the so-called Batak tribes of northern Sumatra was an erstwhile common feature of their culture. This, combined with the habit of betel nut chewing, which produces copious amounts of reddish saliva, is undertaken with a wad of sirih leaves, and gave them a most ferocious appearance which may, in part, have been responsible for their reputation for indulging in anthropophagy. Coincidentally, the Pardembanan call themselves Halak Pardembanan, "people of the betel-quid" and the name Pardembanan as a geographic name translates as "the place where betel chewers live!" (Bartlett 1952, 629)
This file contains the supplementary online material to: R. Michael Feener, et al. "ISLA... more This file contains the supplementary online material to: R. Michael Feener, et al. "ISLAMISATION AND THE FORMATION OF VERNACULAR MUSLIM MATERIAL CULTURE IN 15TH-CENTURY NORTHERN SUMATRA," Indonesia and the Malay World: https://doi.org/10.1080/13639811.2021.1873564
Indonesia and the Malay World
This study presents a distinctive type of Muslim gravestone found on the northern coast of Sumatr... more This study presents a distinctive type of Muslim gravestone found on the northern coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, that dates to the 15th century. These grave markers, locally known as plang-pleng, provide evidence for the formation and disappearance of an early form of vernacular Muslim material culture in Southeast Asia. We documented over 200 of these gravestones during a large-scale archaeological landscape survey. In this article, we present a typology of these gravestones based upon shape, morphology and ornamentation. We then discuss their geographical distribution and periodisation based on examples with dated Arabic inscriptions. Our results show that these gravestones were initially a cultural product of the historic trading settlement of Lamri dating from the early 15th century. By the middle of the 15th century, variations of these stones started to appear widely near the Aceh river. The plang-pleng tradition was displaced in the early 16th century by the batu Aceh gravestones associated with the Aceh sultanate, which became a standardised part of Muslim material culture in the region for the next two centuries.
Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 2015
We present stratigraphic, archeological and historical evidence for two closely timed predecessor... more We present stratigraphic, archeological and historical evidence for two closely timed predecessors of the giant 2004 tsunami on the northern coast of Aceh, northern Sumatra. This is the first direct evidence that a tsunami played a role in a fifteenth century cultural hiatus along the northern Sumatran portion of the maritime silk route. One seacliff exposure on the eastern side of the Lambaro headlands reveals two beds of tsunamigenic coral rubble within a small alluvial fan. Radiocarbon and Uranium-Thorium disequilibrium dates indicate emplacement of the coral rubble after 1344 ± 3 C.E. Another seacliff exposure, on the western side of the peninsula, contains evidence of nearly continuous settlement from~1240 C.E. to soon after 1366 ± 3 C.E., terminated by tsunami destruction. At both sites, the tsunamis are likely coincident with sudden uplift of coral reefs above the Sunda megathrust 1394 ± 2 C.E., evidence for which has been published previously. The tsunami (or tsunami pair) appears to have destroyed a vibrant port community and led to the temporary recentering of marine trade dominance to more protected locations farther east. The reestablishment of vibrant communities along the devastated coast by about 1500 CE set the stage for the 2004 disaster.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019
Significance We demonstrate that a tsunami in the late 14th century CE destroyed coastal sites al... more Significance We demonstrate that a tsunami in the late 14th century CE destroyed coastal sites along a critical part of the maritime Silk Road and set in motion profound changes in the political economy of Southeast Asia. Our results provide a precise chronology of settlement and trade along a historically strategic section of the Sumatran coast and are robust physical evidence for the rise of the Aceh Sultanate. Tragically, coastal areas impacted by the late 14th century tsunami were devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. This makes our findings relevant to debates about hazard mitigation and risk reduction. This example shows that archaeological, historical, and geological data are relevant in discussions about the long-term sustainability of communities exposed to geological hazards. Archaeological evidence shows that a predecessor of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami devastated nine distinct communities along a 40-km section of the northern coast of Sumatra in about 1394 CE. O...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2019
Archaeological evidence shows that a predecessor of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami devastated nine... more Archaeological evidence shows that a predecessor of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami devastated nine distinct communities along a 40-km section of the northern coast of Sumatra in about 1394 CE. Our evidence is the spatial and temporal distribution of tens of thousands of medieval ceramic sherds and over 5,000 carved gravestones, collected and recorded during a systematic landscape archaeology survey near the modern city of Banda Aceh. Only the trading settlement of Lamri, perched on a headland above the reach of the tsunami, survived into and through the subsequent 15th century. It is of historical and political interest that by the 16th century, however, Lamri was abandoned, while low-lying coastal sites destroyed by the 1394 tsunami were resettled as the population center of the new economically and politically ascen-dant Aceh Sultanate. Our evidence implies that the 1394 tsunami was large enough to impact severely many of the areas inundated by the 2004 tsunami and to provoke a sig...
EurASEAA14 Volume I: Ancient and Living Traditions
Indonesia and the Malay World, 2021
This study presents a distinctive type of Muslim gravestone found on the northern coast of Sumatr... more This study presents a distinctive type of Muslim gravestone found on the northern coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, that dates to the 15th century. These grave markers, locally known as plang-pleng, provide evidence for the formation and disappearance of an early form of vernacular Muslim material culture in Southeast Asia. We documented over 200 of these gravestones during a large-scale archaeological landscape survey. In this article, we present a typology of these gravestones based upon shape, morphology and ornamentation. We then discuss their geographical distribution and periodisation based on examples with dated Arabic inscriptions. Our results show that these gravestones were initially a cultural product of the historic trading settlement of Lamri dating from the early 15th century. By the middle of the 15th century, variations of these stones started to appear widely near the Aceh river. The plang-pleng tradition was displaced in the early 16th century by the batu Aceh graveston...
Archaeological Research in Asia, 2019
We review published literature and historical texts to propose that three periods of official Chi... more We review published literature and historical texts to propose that three periods of official Chinese maritime bans impacted the composition and circulation of trade ceramics along Asian trade routes: Ming Ban 1 (1371-1509), Ming Ban 2 (1521-1529), and Qing Ban (1654-1684). We use ceramics collected during a landscape archaeology survey along 40km of coast in Aceh, Indonesia to show how the three ban periods manifest in the ceramic record of settlements along an important stretch of the maritime silkroad. All three ban periods overlap with reductions in the quantity of Chinese ceramics. Within several decades of the start of Ming Ban 1, people in Aceh began importing ceramics from production centers in Burma and Thailand as a substitute for Chinese ceramics. Following Ming Ban 2, there is an increase in imports from Chinese production centers, albeit from new kilns sites. While brief, the Qing ban resulted in an almost immediate influx of ceramics from Japan and Vietnam, which maint...
We present stratigraphic, archeological and historical evidence for two closely timed predecessor... more We present stratigraphic, archeological and historical evidence for two closely timed predecessors of the giant 2004 tsunami on the northern coast of Aceh, northern Sumatra. This is the first direct evidence that a tsunami played a role in a fifteenth century cultural hiatus along the northern Sumatran portion of the maritime silk route. One seacliff exposure on the eastern side of the Lambaro headlands reveals two beds of tsunamigenic coral rubble within a small alluvial fan. Radiocarbon and Uranium-Thorium disequilibrium dates indicate emplacement of the coral rubble after 1344 ± 3 C.E. Another seacliff exposure, on the western side of the peninsula, contains evidence of nearly continuous settlement from~1240 C.E. to soon after 1366 ± 3 C.E., terminated by tsunami destruction. At both sites, the tsunamis are likely coincident with sudden uplift of coral reefs above the Sunda megathrust 1394 ± 2 C.E., evidence for which has been published previously. The tsunami (or tsunami pair) appears to have destroyed a vibrant port community and led to the temporary recentering of marine trade dominance to more protected locations farther east. The reestablishment of vibrant communities along the devastated coast by about 1500 CE set the stage for the 2004 disaster.
Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient
We present archaeological evidence for a trading settlement dating from the 13th to the mid-16th ... more We present archaeological evidence for a trading settlement dating from the 13th to the mid-16th century ce on an elevated headland in Lamreh village about 30 km east of Banda Aceh, on the northern coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. We propose this site was part of historic Lamri, known from documentary sources as an important node in the maritime "silk road" between the 9th to 16th centuries ce. Our landscape archaeological survey revealed large concentrations of ceramics on the headland that span from the early 13th through the mid-16th century, some of them of imperial quality. Several of the Muslim grave markers at this site are of a distinctive type and date across nearly the entire range of the 15th century. Geological evidence suggests low-lying parts of Lamri were destroyed by a major tsunami at the end of the 14th century. However, our data show that activity on the elevated headland continued until the site was abandoned in the mid-16th century. The lack of material culture dating from the 9th to 13th centuries suggests that earlier textual references to Lamri referred more generally to a broad stretch of the north Sumatran coast, with the headland in Lamreh village emerging as the geographic centre of historic Lamri after the turn of the 13th century.
Archaeological Research in Asia
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Papers by Edmund Edwards McKinnon