Analytical Framework: Iconographic analysis using the Panofsky method (pre-iconographic description → iconographic analysis → iconological interpretation). Motif clustering analysis (MCA) was applied to 1,240 individual motifs across 45 sites.
Tan, N. H. (2014). Rock art research in Southeast Asia: A synthesis. Arts , 3(1), 73-104. borneo schematic
For over a century, the caves and rock shelters of Borneo have been known to contain prehistoric images. However, systematic archaeological research since the 1990s—particularly the collaborative French-Indonesian project in the Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat karst of East Kalimantan—has refined our understanding of two distinct pictorial traditions. The earliest, the "Naturalistic" tradition, features exquisitely rendered large mammals (banteng, bearded pigs) and hand stencils in reddish mulberry hues. The later "Schematic" tradition, typically in black, dark purple, or hematite red, comprises small, stylized, often repetitive geometric designs. Arts , 3(1), 73-104
While early researchers dismissed these as crude "decadent" art, recent landscape archaeology and dating programs reveal a complex, regionally specific symbolic system. This paper defines the Borneo Schematic as a distinct horizon (c. 4000 BP to historic contact), analyzes its core iconographic repertoire, and proposes that its primary functions were territorial marking during Neolithic land clearance, ritual communication with ancestral/spirit beings, and the encoding of cosmological navigation knowledge. analyzes its core iconographic repertoire