Recent finds of more slab-graves in the Berman Valley, Peninsular, Malaysia

Abstract

Stone cist graves have long been known from a limited number of areas in Southeast Asia, especially from the Bernam Valley of Peninsular Malaysia, the Pasemah highlands of south Sumatra, and from central, west and east Java. Solitary finds of stone cist graves have also been reported from South Vietnam, at Sa Huynh and Xuan Loc, and the Philippines l. These cist graves are normally regarded as Late Metal Age antiquities from the early first millennium AD and are also considered to be one of the many manifestations of early Southeast Asian egalithic cultures. One scholar (Heine-Geldern, 1945), for instance, had grouped these stone monuments as belonging to a younger megalithic complex considered to be distinct from earlier megalithic cultures predating the Metal Age.