History of the study of the stone age of Indonesia: early Holocene Toalean microindustry, Sulawesi island

The Stone Age of Southeast Asia-its continental and insular parts-is one of the most intriguing trends in the Eurasian archaeology, with a number of subjects of both regional and global significance. This publication is devoted to the history of the discovery and the main characteristics of one of the most studied local stone industries, the Toala industry, recorded at a series of cave and open sites in the southern part of Sulawesi, and dated in a fairly wide chronological range-8000-1500 ka. The greatest contribution to the discovery of the sites and their research in the first half of the 20th century belong to the European scholars: P. and F. Sarasin, P. V. van Stein Callenfels, and H. R. van Heekeren, and in the subsequent period and presently-Indonesian archaeologists and their colleagues from Australia and France. The Toala toolkit documents the culture of hunters-gatherers, appears earlier than 8000 ka, demonstrates the continuity of flake technology based on bipolar splitting, the manufacture of bone tools and scrapers from shells for a long time. The complex is complemented by lamellar flakes and bladelets with a blunted back, some of them conforming to geometric shapes, which allows them to be defined as “microliths”, and the industry as a whole to be determined as microlithic. In the period from 6000 to 4000 ka, the complex is supplemented with specific small arrowheads and darts of triangular or subtriangular shape with a concave base and serrated edges of the Maros type. Generally, the appeal to the materials of the Toala industry and other Early Holocene industries of the island part of Southeast Asia contributes not only to understanding the peculiarities and diversity of hunter-gatherer-angler cultures, but also to the opportunity to hold a substantive discussion about definition of this period using the term “Pre-Ceramic Neolithic”.