One defining characteristic of Homo sapiens is the production and use of personal ornamentation. Evidence from Africa and western Eurasia has dominated discussion, but a growing number of finds directs attention towards Island Southeast Asia. In this article, the authors report on an assemblage of Nautilus shell beads from the Indonesian cave site of Makpan, Alor Island. The highly standardised forms, mostly with two perforations, and evidence of use wear, indicate that these beads were utilised as appliqués. Dating to the terminal Pleistocene, these beads appear to form part of a wider tradition also attested on Timor and Kisar, suggesting an early inter-island network across southern Wallacea.

Found only in a restricted area of north-west Australia, the Australian boab (Adansonia gregorii) is recognisable by its massive, bottle-shaped trunk, and is an economically important species for Indigenous Australians, with the pith, seeds and young roots all eaten. Many of these trees are also culturally significant and are sometimes carved with images and symbols. The authors discuss the history of research into carved boabs in Australia, and present a recent survey to locate and record these trees in the remote Tanami Desert. Their results provide insight into the archaeological and anthropological significance of dendroglyphs in this region and add to a growing corpus of information on culturally modified trees globally.

Engraving sites are rare in mainland and Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) where painted art dominates the prehistoric artistic record. Here we report two new engraving sites from the Tutuala region of Timor-Leste comprising mostly humanoid forms carved into speleothem columns in rock-shelters. Engraved face motifs have previously been reported from Lene Hara Cave in this same region, and one was dated to the Pleistocene–Holocene transition using the Uranium–Thorium method. We discuss the engravings in relation to changes in technology and material culture that took place in the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene archaeological records in this region of Timor as well as neighbouring islands. We suggest that the engravings may have been produced as markers of territorial and social identity within the context of population expansion and greater inter-group contacts at this time.

Excavations of pre-pottery levels at Gua Talimbue and Gua Sambagowala in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, have yielded nearly 4kg of baked-clay fragments, half of which exhibit intentional patterning. The fragments appear to derive from clay hearths. Here, the authors link the patterning on Early Holocene (c. 9900–8800 cal BP) fragments with the intention to enhance the appearance of the hearths’ rims. During the Mid/Late Holocene (c. 4500–2000 cal BP), patterning shifts to the interior surfaces. The effort and specialised skills required to impress patterns on these hearths is, to date, unique in the archaeology of pre-Neolithic Island Southeast Asia.

Prehistoric copper and bronze objects are found throughout Island Southeast Asia, many of which were manufactured in Mainland Southeast Asia and exchanged over vast distances. The contexts of initial metal use and production across this maritime region are poorly known and rarely dated—particularly in the islands east of Wallace's Line. The authors report on two recent finds of bronze Dong Son drums in Timor-Leste, which, with their incised decoration, are examined in the context of elaborately shaped socketed axes depicted in the island's rock art, discussing their role and significance for understanding exchange networks and practices including raiding, headhunting and ceremonial activities.

Painted rock art occurs throughout the islands of the Western Pacific and has previously been argued to have motif and design elements in common, indicating that it was created within the context of a shared symbolic system. Here we report five new painted rock-art sites from Kisar Island in eastern Indonesia and investigate the commonalities between this art and the painted art corpus in Timor-Leste, the independent nation that forms the eastern part of the neighbouring island of Timor. We examine the motifs in the Kisar art and suggest that, rather than being Neolithic in age, some of the figurative motifs more likely have a Metal Age origin, which in this region places them within the last 2500 years.

Fish-hooks discovered among grave goods associated with an adult female burial at the Tron Bon Lei rockshelter on the island of Alor in Indonesia are the first of their kind from a Pleistocene mortuary context in Southeast Asia. Many of the hooks are of a circular rotating design. Parallels found in various other prehistoric contexts around the globe indicate widespread cultural convergence. The association of the fish-hooks with a human burial, combined with the lack of alternative protein sources on the island, suggest that fishing was an important part of the cosmology of this community. The Tron Bon Lei burial represents the earliest-known example of a culture for whom fishing was clearly an important activity among both the living and the dead.

The rock art of Southeast Asia has been less thoroughly studied than that of Europe or Australia, and it has generally been considered to be more recent in origin. New dating evidence from Mainland and Island Southeast Asia, however, demonstrates that the earliest motifs (hand stencils and naturalistic animals) are of late Pleistocene age and as early as those of Europe. The similar form of the earliest painted motifs in Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia suggests that they are the product of a shared underlying behaviour, but the difference in context (rockshelters) indicates that experiences in deep caves cannot have been their inspiration.

For one who is so intent on factual accuracy and precision in others, Anderson is surprisingly lenient on himself, and misrepresents our arguments. Some points of clarification are required before we proceed to address the more substantive issues regarding Pleistocene fishing and fishing technology. In the introduction to his critique, Anderson (above) states that "in regard to Wallacea, O'Connell et al. (2010: 60) cite" the evidence for fishing at Buang Merabak and Kilu Cave (Papua New Guinea), and Jerimalai (Timor-Leste) and that they conclude that "these data are best read to indicate angling from boats well offshore". Firstly, as outlined in O'Connor et al. (2011) Wallacea is a strictly defined biogeographic region which comprises the Indonesian Islands lying to the east of Sundaland and to the west of Sahul and Near Oceania. Kilu Cave and Buang Merabak are in Near Oceania, not in Wallacea, and while the two island regions share depauperate terrestrial faunas the biota of the two are very different.

Enhanced by recent survey, the authors define new kinds of rock art along the Lennard and Fitzroy rivers in Western Australia—black pigment and scratch-work images featuring anthropomorphic figures with elaborate head-dresses. These are shown to belong to the Contact period and represent the response of Indigenous artists to European land-taking by recalling and restating traditional themes from earlier times.