The art of metal casting was imported into Indonesia, but its peoples mastered the secrets of metallurgy, and applied these, in ways often original and unique, to create their own distinctive civilisation of the Bronze-Iron Age. In this handbook, which is a sequal to my The Stone Age of Indo nesia, I have endeavoured to assemble a comprehensive picture of the Indonesian Bronze-Iron Age from the results of excavations, innumerable stray finds in museums, and various studies scattered among numerous scientific journals and periodicals (often difficult to obtain). The resulting picture can, of course, be a tentative one only, valid until many more scientific excavations have taken place. I have added a bibliography, as complete as it was possible to assemble. The completion of this summary of the Prehistory of Indonesia has been assisted by a grant-in-aid from the Wenner Gren Foundation "The Viking Fund", New York. I am grateful to Mr. Basoeki and Mr. Soebokastowo for the drawings of Figures 1, 11, 12, 13, 22 and 16, 23, 24, 25 respectively. Figures 2-10 and 15 were drawn by the well-known artist, the late Mas Pirngadie, and are here published for the first time, with the generous permission of the Board of Directors of the "Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen", Djakarta. I am deeply grateful to my brother-in-law, Mr. J. H. Reiseger of Kempston, Bedfordshire, for so willingly undertaking the translation of the Dutch text into English.

An exploration of Indonesian megaliths based on scientific documents and field visits, this work highlights misunderstood—and sometimes threatened by destruction—aspects of Indonesian cultural heritage and offers a unique perspective on megalithic monuments abandoned for several centuries in the archipelago.

This comprehensive and absorbing book traces the cultural history of Southeast Asia from prehistoric (especially Neolithic, Bronze-Iron age) times through to the major Hindu and Buddhist civilizations, to around AD 1300. Southeast Asia has recently attracted archaeological attention as the locus for the first recorded sea crossings; as the region of origin for the Austronesian population dispersal across the Pacific from Neolithic times; as an arena for the development of archaeologically-rich Neolithic, and metal using communities, especially in Thailand and Vietnam, and as the backdrop for several unique and strikingly monumental Indic civilizations, such as the Khmer civilization centred around Angkor. Southeast Asia is invaluable to anyone interested in the full history of the region.