INDONESIA: Lene Hara Cave

Lene Hara Cave is a large limestone solution cave located on the island of East Timor in the Indonesian archipelago. Lene Hara has proven to contain several stacked occupations, the oldest between 30,000 and 35,000 years ago. The earliest evidence of pre-Lapita fishing has been found at Lene Hara, in the form of shell fish hooks, made of Trochus niloticus and recently dated between 9741+/- 60 years before the present.

Paintings at Lene Hara Cave

Rock art paintings are visible on the walls of the cave, mostly attributed to the post-pottery Neolithic occupation (ca 2000 years ago). Motifs of the rock art include boats, animals and birds; some combined human and animal forms; and, most frequently, geometric shapes such as sun bursts and star shapes.

Most of the art is monochrome, but pigments of black, yellow and brown and a few of red and green are also noted. Recent efforts to date the rock art using examination of the calcite laminations indicates that while the visible rock art is less than 6300 years old. There are remnants of art beneath the calcite art that extends back at least 30,000 years ago.
Petroglyphs at Lene Hara Cave

Two groups of petroglyphs pecked and carved into speleotherm columns were identified at Lene Hara cave in 2009. All of these petroglyphs are of highly stylized human faces, including eyes, noses and mouths. One face wears a circular headdress with rays. Some of the faces are triangular in shape; others oval to circular.

Uranium/Thorium dating of calcite deposits covering the petroglyphs at Lene Hara Cave produced a maximum age determination of 30-39,000 years ago for Group A, and of 10-13,000 years ago for Group B. O'Connor and associates reported in a 2010 article that stylized faces such as that at Lene Hara Cave have been identified throughout Melanesia, Australia and into the Pacific. Stylized faces are known from the Lapita culture.
Archaeology at Lene Hara Cave

Lene Hara was excavated in the early 1960s by Antonio de Almeida. The East Timor Archaeological Project was begun in 2000, led by Sue O'Connor, Matthew Spriggs and Peter Veth, and the first scientific excavations were conducted between 2000 and 2002.