ONE CAN ONLY imagine the lonely path Siti Zuraina Abdul Majid has travelled as Malaysia’s first archaeologist, and one with considerable academic gravitas under her belt. A returning graduate from the UK, she was only 24 years old when she excavated her first site in the late 1960s.
Initially, Zuraina Majid faced scepticism, and the lack of professional archaeologists in the country was disheartening. Yet, where others saw barren ground, she saw opportunity. Penang, with its rich history as a trading hub combined with the academic vigour provided by Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), became her base in 1988, when she established the first Archaeology Unit in Malaysia. The Centre for Global Archaeological Research was set up in 1995 at USM, paving the way for more young history buffs to dive into the past and setting the stage for the field of archaeology to be recognised as a discipline in Malaysia.
“It was a mission,” Zuraina Majid describes it. “Not an ambition. There were no archaeologists in Malaysia when I started. I had to build the discipline from the ground up.”
