Book review: Megalithic Finds in Central Celebes by Walther Kaudern 1917-1920 Indonesia

Submitted by geo-org on Wednesday, 16 September 2020 Page Views: 4829

Country: Indonesia

**Megalithic Finds in Central Celebes Book** submitted by geo-org : The cover page of Megalithic Finds in Central Celebes: Results of the Author’s expedition to Celebes 1917-1920 by Walther Kaudern (Vote or comment on this photo)

With progress in digitization, the internet has enabled easy access to very old and unique books. This book review looks at the book: Megalithic Finds in the Central Celebes: Results of the Author’s expedition to Celebes 1917-1920 by Walther Kaudern. Mr Kaudern was a Swedish zoologist and ethnographer traveling Sulawesi (an Island now part of Indonesia) in the last century.

The book focuses on the exploration of Mr. Kaudern in the Lore Lindu landscape in Central Sulawesi, within the nowadays UNESCO biosphere heritage site Lore Lindu. The landscape surrounding the Lore Lindu lake has various megalithic sites with sculptured stones, stone mortars but also the curious giant stone jars, of similar design as they are found at the plain of jars in Laos. Walther Kaudern traveled the area in an expedition financed by the Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf from Sweden. He was in the area for 4 years and recorded many details about these megalithic sites.

Beside his own research and surveys, he systematically summarized previous research done in Central Sulawesi on megalithic structures. He provided detailed measurement and descriptions and included, where available, local stories and myths around the stones and sites. Of special interest to me was the quite detailed cartographic material, topographic maps and drawings along with some photos. While the quality of the digitized book is of medium quality (especially the black-and white photographs are not so good) the maps and drawings give detailed description of the stones and features at that time.

It is not an easy read, and he had an interesting style of quoting other research in the original language, but it is one of the few documents I am aware of giving a systematic overview of the megaliths in the Lore Lindu landscape.

An additional asset is that he was providing the old local names of the sculptured stones, making it easier to find the sites and getting directions from local people nowadays. I have been in the area and can recognize the descriptions of the major sites but also could identify several sites “off the beaten track”. The book is a fascinating historical account of the rich megalithic heritage in Sulawesi and might be very useful to be brought along for somebody exploring the beautiful Lore Lindu landscape, following in the footsteps of this Swedish explorer. I certainly will bring it along on my next trip 😊!

The book can be downloaded from the excellent website of the “Origins of Complex Society in Sulawes (OXIS)” web site https://oxis.org with many additional archaeological and historical online resources available at that link.

Here is the PDF:
https://oxis.org/resources-3/historic-publications/kaudern-1938.pdf

Contributor Bio for geo-org: Based in Indonesia, contributing since 2018. Favourite site: Gunung Padang. Occupation: Forester.

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