the region and provided with all kinds of practical tips and especially encouraging words, before journeying on to the far, isolated island world. Andre Sol was more or less the gatekeeper of the Southeast Moluccas.
When we stayed in Ambon in the early 1980s in connection with our anthropological fieldwork on the Babar archipelago, we also had the pleasure of being "accompanied" by him. He casually expressed the wish that the cultures of Maluku Tenggara which, according to him, had been insufficiently investigated, would once get the attention they deserved, in the shape of a specific publication. It appeared to be one of his heart's desires. In 1987, during our next visit to the Moluccas, he once again brought the subject up for discussion and the plan was born to write a book about the region.
At the beginning of the 1990s this plan began to take concrete shape. In order to enable publication Andre Sol opened up all kinds of sources, both in the informative and the financial fields. At the same time we extended our research to the entire region of Maluku Tenggara and directed ourselves to the material culture, which seemed to be the best starting point for a description of the Southeast Moluccan peoples.
The result of the joint efforts is now at hand. Hopefully this book will contribute to more knowledge of the cultures of Maluku Tenggara in a wide reading public. For it does, after all, concern a region that has produced objects which can be counted among the most fascinating cultural manifestations of Indonesia.
Toos van Dijk and Nico de Jonge
Deventer/Alkmaar, the Netherlands, July 1995
INTRODUCTION
MALUKU TENGGARA: THE FORGOTTEN ISLANDS
Maluku Tenggara, the Southeast Moluccas, is the name of a chain of islands in the east of Indonesia which stretch in a gentle arc over a distance of almost a thousand kilometres between Timor and New Guinea. The islands he between the easterly longitudes of 125° 45' and 135° 10' and the southerly latitudes of 5" and 8°30' and have a total land surface area of 25,000 square kilometres. Administratively, the region is part of the province of Maluku, which consists of three districts (kabupaten); from south to north, Maluku Tenggara, Maluku Tengah (Central Moluccas) and Maluku Utara (North Moluccas).
Maluku Tenggara is a sparsely-populated, isolated area and in many respects it lies on the periphery of the Indonesian archipelago. It has 288,248 inhabitants (1990), which amounts to a population density of less than twelve inhabitants per square kilometre. Large parts of the region are very difficult to reach, notwithstanding improvements in the infrastructure in recent years. Only the eastern islands have airline links with the outside world (Ambon). The western islands can only be reached by boat and only then with difficulty.
Tourists seldom visit the area. It lies far from the beaten tourist paths. The only Westerners to have visited the islands for long periods of time during this century have been Dutch administrators and military personnel, scientists from all over the world and missionaries of various persuasions. In the last two decades western Maluku Tenggara has been practically cut off for long periods from the outside world as a result of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975 and the war which followed.
The isolation of Maluku Tenggara, however, is just as much an inheritance of Dutch involvement in the islands. Before the arrival of the Dutch in the 17th century, the Southeast Moluccans had lively trading links with places both inside and outside the region. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) put a violent end to that with disastrous consequences for the local economy. Despite a relaxation of the restrictive regulations during the latter period of colonial rule, the economy did not recover, nor were there improvements in external relations.
In fact, with the departure of the Dutch contact between the remote region and the outside world was reduced to almost nothing. Becoming part of the Republic of Indonesia, the government of which is situated in faraway Jakarta, did not substantially change the isolation of the "forgotten islands."
A tiny part of Maluku Tenggara: a coral island in the Banda Sea.
Disappearance of Cultural Objects
The Dutch presence in Maluku Tenggara also had far-reaching consequences in the cultural field. The pacification of the area and the introduction of Christianity at the beginning of this century went hand in hand with— among other things—forced resettlement of complete village communities and the suppression of the important cult of ancestor worship.
The collective exertions of the government and Christian missionaries had disastrous consequences for the traditional material culture. It was the Protestant missionaries, in particular, who proved to be fanatical in the destruction of ancestor statues. Those which survived were "appropriated" by art collectors, among them both Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries. Payment sometimes consisted of expensive goods such as axes or a priest's robe, but often nothing more than, for example, a little tobacco. These "exchanges" did not always enjoy the full endorsement of the population and were sometimes concluded under coercion.
Later this century, collectors came across other cultural manifestations which, like the wood carvings, were evidence of a unique artistic, appreciation. This particularly concerned the products of sophisticated goldsmiths and the rich weaving tradition of Maluku Tenggara which, in addition to the wooden statues, became highly-desired collectors' items. Even sacred heirlooms which, thanks to their ancestral powers, protected their owners from calamity and which traditionally only left the house in an exchange of gifts between families, found new owners. Though the export of such pieces is now forbidden, poverty still forces families to sell them.
Within the space of a century the population of Maluku Tenggara was robbed of a significant part of its cultural heritage. Nowadays, a great number of unique cultural objects can only be admired in museums and in private collections. In general, these are regarded as among the most fascinating to have come out of Indonesia. They are unknown, however, to a wider public, because an exhibition or a published work specifically directed at the culture of Maluku Tenggara has until now never been realized. In this respect, too, one can rightly speak of the "forgotten islands."
The Content and Arrangement of this Book
The void has now been filled by this book and by the special exhibition of the same name which opened in October, 1995 in the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde in Leiden in the Netherlands. The book is divided into three parts and offers a survey and description of the traditional culture of Maluku Tenggara. In addition to the objects which have almost wholly disappeared in the region itself, such as ancestor statues and jewellery, attention is paid to the products of the weaving, plaiting and pottery-making traditions which have always flourished in the islands.
In the descriptions, the traditional significance of the objects within the Southeast Moluccan culture is dwelt upon comprehensively, as far as possible, the pieces are set in their cultural context. Boat symbolism, which permeates practically all southeastern Moluccan cultures, and ancestor worship, which is at the heart of the traditional religions, function as important frameworks. The discussions of these, brought together in Part II, form the core of the book. In order to do justice to local differences, a distinction is made between the eastern and western islands. The cultures of the islands between Timor and Tanimbar, for example, were characterized by a great fertility ritual which did not take place in eastern Maluku Tenggara. Moreover, in order to measure the richness of the island cultures as broadly as possible, a separate line of approach is followed for each region. A thematic approach has been chosen for the western islands, while a more geographical oriented approach has been followed for the eastern islands.
In
