The island of Palu’é,[2] located off the north coast of Flores, covers seventy square kilometres and consists of a population of approximately 10,000. It is divided into fourteen separate territorial, political and ceremonial domains known as tana. One of the remarkable features of the island is the absence of accessible drinking water. During the long dry season its inhabitants rely mainly on the juice of the lontar palm (Borassus flabellifer or Sundaicus) for their daily intake of fluid. Water for cooking is tapped from banana trunks, bamboo and from a number of trees, and in some places volcanic steam is trapped in earth catchments and condensed in bamboo poles.[3] The circular island consists of an almost nine hundred metre high mountain and of a number of active volcanic vents which are slightly to one side of the mountain top. Everyday life on Palu’é is overshadowed by the constant threat of eruptions which can shower fields and settlements with rocks and hot ashes.[4]
Equally remarkable from a cultural standpoint are the ceremonial cycles of the island’s domains. Of the fourteen domains, seven maintain ceremonial cycles culminating in the sacrifice of water buffalo[5] whereas the other seven domains conduct cycles involving the sacrifice of pigs. At the opening of a new cycle water buffalo are purchased on the neighbouring island of Flores and brought back to Palu’é. There the animals are raised over a period of five years at the end of which they are sacrificed in a large-scale ceremony. Considering the lack of water on the island raising these animals represents a considerable achievement. More often than not water buffalo fail to adjust to the dry environment and die before the prescribed five-year period is up. In such a case another ceremonial purchase must be carried out in order to open up the cycle as soon as new resources are available.[6]
The individual ceremonial cycles of each domain provide an arena for the contestation of an order of precedence.[7] By employing specific strategies aimed at enhancing its prestige a given domain can emerge from a cycle in a new position of precedence among its allied domains. After the cycle has been completed this new position is often consolidated through warfare. In the following such a process will be illustrated by means of a case study of one complete ceremonial cycle. Precedence is invariably subject to contestation and understanding the dynamics of contestation is essential for understanding the social life of these societies. Some aspects of the process of contestation of an order of precedence at the level of traditional domains will be analysed here by applying a set of analytic tools[8] to a number of key events surrounding the cyclical ceremonies of the domain of Ko’a. In societies with a “hierarchical” use of dual categories, such as those found throughout eastern Indonesia, an order of precedence involves the conjunction of several analytical features, the most important of which are recursive complementarity, categorical asymmetry and categorical inversion.[9] These features are exemplified in this paper.
Before proceeding to the description and analysis of a number of key events that occurred during the last ceremonial cycle of the domain of Ko’a some general information on Palu’é categories of social order will be given as well as an outline of the ceremonial cycle and an overview of political and ceremonial alliance.
[1] This paper represents a revised version of a paper presented at the conference on “Hierarchy” of the Comparative Austronesian Project held in Canberra in 1989. As such it reflects the state of research at that point in time. Versions of this paper were presented at seminars in Melbourne and Leiden and a German translation of it in Göttingen and Mainz. I would like to thank the participants at these seminars as well as the editors of this volume for their useful comments. Of course the usual disclaimers apply.
The research upon which this paper is based was conducted during two field trips, from December 1984 to February 1987 and from December 1987 to March 1988. The projects were conducted under the auspices of the Indonesian Science Council LIPI and with the sponsorship of Universitas Nusa Cendana of Kupang/Timor and The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific Studies.
[2] The endonym is Nua Lu’a. The official Indonesian designation is “Perwakilan Pulau Palue”, “Subdistrict of Palue Island”.
[3] Recently a number rainwater tanks provided by the government, the Catholic church and by an Indonesian NGO allow for water storage during the rainy season. This water is mainly used at feasts and ceremonial occasions.
[4] A major eruption of the volcano Mutu (or Rokatenda as the volcano is referred to outside Palu’é) occurred in 1927. This has been followed by a series of relatively minor eruptions and gas explosions at almost regular intervals, the last of which took place in January and June 1985.
[5] There are some indications that these domains represent the oldest population of the island.
[6] Until recently the animals were left to roam about on their own every morning in order to lap up dew from leaves and grasses. Nowadays a limited amount of water from rainwater tanks is made available to them.
[7] Recently the usage of the term order of precedence has been traced back to Louis Dumont (Fox 1990:1) who in “Homo Hierarchicus” alludes to such a concept: “… la hiérarchie, ou plutôt l’existence d’un ordre de précéance …” (1966:104). I would like to add here another author to share this claim to anthropological ancestry, the Dutch scholar H.G. Schulte-Nordholt, in whose thesis on the political systems of the Atoni of Timor the term is used to characterize relations among Atoni lineages based on the categorical distinction between elder and younger sibling. The thesis was published in the same year as “Homo Hierarchicus”. In his original version Schulte-Nordholt employed the term “sociale rangorde” (1966:47). According to Jansonius (1971) the primary meaning is order of rank, the secondary meaning order of precedence. The English translation of his thesis (1971:104) actually employs the term order of precedence. Since Dumont and Schulte-Nordholt a number of authors working on eastern Indonesian material have employed the term in various ways in the analytical description of specific processes of social differentiation in the societies in which they had conducted fieldwork (Forth 1981; Lewis 1988; McWilliam 1989; Vischer 1992). However, none of these authors has found it appropriate to define the concept at a more abstract level. It is not the aim of this paper to do so either, mainly because I feel that an abstract definition at this stage may well have an adverse effect on the further experimental development of the concept.
[8] My analysis here is informed by the ongoing discussion of the concept of precedence in the “Eastern Indonesia Seminar” chaired by James J. Fox at the Australian National University of which I have been a long-term member.
[9] For a more general assessment see Fox (1989).