Prior to a standardised chronology, three phases of Toalean culture have been roughly classified as: Neolithic-period, Post-Toalean changes in the archaeological assemblages, characterised by ceramics, ground-edge axes, and rice-farming are seen to represent the arrival of Austronesian-speaking or Nusantoa migrants.

Their work uncovered distinctive and finely crafted stone implements, arrowheads, and small tools fashioned from bone.

[17] Australian archaeologist Fred McCarthy continued excavations in the late 1930s with an interest in the typological similarities between the finely made, serrated Toalean Maros points, and Australia's broadly contemporary "small tool tradition".

Some 6,000 artefacts were given to Jakarta's National Museum with uncertain attributions to excavations at Panganreang Tudea and Batu Ejaya by Van Stein Callenfels and Willems.

In October 2023, the team discovered 7,000-year-old tiger shark-tooth knives, the earliest evidence of shark teeth being used in composite weapons worldwide.

[19][20]Known Toalean sites are largely concentrated in the southern third of the southwest peninsula of Sulawesi, in the caves of the limestone karst system, that runs through the lowland plains of the Maros and Pangkajene dan Kepulauan (or ‘Pangkep’) regencies, to the north-east of Makassar.

The Bulu’ Sipong sawlettes are tiny backed microliths with narrow denticulations that were carefully formed using a thin pressure flaker.

Archaeologists from the University of Hasanuddin in Makassar first discovered human remains at Leang Panninge in the Mallawa district of Maros.

Her discoverers named her Bessé’ (pronounced bur-sek), a nickname bestowed on newborn princesses among the Bugis people who now live in southern Sulawesi.

[11] Stone tools (including Maros points) and red ochre were found in her grave, along with the bones of animals known to be hunted.

She shares about half of her genetic makeup with present-day Indigenous Australians and people in New Guinea and the Western Pacific, along with a previously unknown divergent human lineage that branched off approximately 37,000 years ago (after Onge-related and Hòabìnhian-related lineages) including substantial DNA inherited from the now-extinct Denisovans.