Beaten bark cloth (tapa)
Tela de corteza batida (tapa)
- Date
- c. 4000 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- South Sulawesi, Indonesia
- Credited to
- Neolithic populations of southern China and island Southeast Asia
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A loomless fabric made by beating the inner bark of paper mulberry or breadfruit trees into a flexible sheet. Stone beaters from Sulawesi and southern China attest the technique, which Austronesian voyagers carried as far as Polynesia as tapa.
The stone beaters are dated by context and are rare; the exact origin (southern China or Sulawesi) and absolute chronology are uncertain. Bark cloth also arose independently in central Africa and Mesoamerica (amate).
What it led to
- clothing and bedding in the Pacific without spinning or weaving
- support for ritual art (tapa, siapo, ngatu)
- spread of paper mulberry together with the Austronesian expansion