Indonesia Prepares to Make Liyangan Site in Temanggung a Heritage Site
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3 August 2023 06:17 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Liyangan site is being prepared as a national cultural heritage site. On the slopes of Mount Sindoro of Purbosari Village in Temanggung Regency, Central Java, archeologists found the remains of a temple estimated to have dated back from between the 7th and 9th centuries.
Junus Satrio Atmodjo, senior archaeologist from the National Cultural Heritage Team of Experts', said he and the team were given a special task to prepare this historic site to become a national-level preserved cultural and heritage area.
"Even though it is in Temanggung Regency, because it has important values, we [want] to make it national," he said in Temanggung, Tuesday, August 2.
Junus said that the Liyangan Site has valuable information about civilizations in the past which is stored in the site's stone terraces and there are remains of temples.
"We want to know why this area was chosen as a sacred or religious area that people from the 7th and 9th centuries built this complex. Surely they had strong reasons if we be associate it with the belief system at that time, especially Hinduism, which is devoted to the worship of the God Shiva," he said.
On the slopes of Mount Sindoro, remains of large buildings in a large complex were also found, meaning that there used to be quite a lot of people here.
Junus said that based on their findings so far, there was a strong relationship between the area and China. "We found ceramics that mostly came from around the 7th to 9th century, but there are also goods from China and glass shards from the Middle East," he said.
These findings suggested the existence of relationships between the outside maritime world and residents in the mountainous areas. "This is interesting for archaeological and historical studies—how there used to be a connection between coastal, lowland, mountain civilizations," he said.
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