Construction Sacrifice,Kidnapping and Head-hunting Rumors on Flores and Elsewhere in Indonesia

Three recent articles have examined head-hunting and kidnapping rumors in connection with construction sacrifice on Borneo and Flores. This paper presents further information on such rumors on Flores and elsewhere in Indonesia which largely confirms their interpretations. However, the argument is made that rather than being a new phenomenon and a product of the colonial era, these rumors may well have been characteristic of Indonesia from ancient times and have typically been associated with offices of political and military potency. Policies and activities of the Dutch near the Solor islands since the seventeenth century may have strongly reinforced suspicions that they were capable of taking heads through local agents.     

Preliminary U-series and Thermoluminescence dating of excavated deposits in Liang Bua sub-chamber,Flores, Indonesia

We report the results of a test excavation of deposits in a limestone cave sub-chamber located beneath the main chamber of Liang Bua, Flores, Indonesia; the discovery site of the small hominin species, Homo floresiensis. Well-preserved remains of extinct Pleistocene fauna and stone artefacts have previously been identified on the surface of a sediment cone within the sub-chamber. Our excavation of the deposits, at the base of the sediment cone in the sub-chamber (to 130 cm depth) yielded only a few fragmentary bones of extant fauna. Uranium/Thorium (U-series or U/Th) dating of soda straw stalactites excavated from 20 to 130 cm in depth demonstrates that the excavated sediments were deposited during the Holocene. Red Thermoluminescence (TL) dating of the sediments at the base of the excavation (130 cm depth) indicates these sediments were last exposed to sunlight at 84 ± 15 ka (thousand years), similar to red TL ages of cave sediments from the main chamber. Together, these results indicate that the surface faunal remains, which are morphologically analogous to Pleistocene finds from the main chamber excavations, were transported to the sub-chamber relatively recently from the main chamber of Liang Bua and probably originated from conglomerate deposits at the rear of the cave and from deposits around the front entrance. There is no evidence for hominin occupation of the sub-chamber, instead it seems to have acted as a sink for cultural materials and fossil remains transported from the surface via sinkholes. Despite the small number of finds from the test excavation, it is possible that more extensive excavations may yield additional transported cultural and faunal evidence at greater depths.     

宗族村落中姻亲关系的建立、维护与重组——以鲁东小姚格庄为个案

一、前言 非洲的世系理论（lineage theory）甫一出现,立即被汉学人类学家应用在中国亲属制度的研究上。弗里德曼（Maurice Freedman）首先把对中国宗族制度的研究发展成了宗族范式,并构造出从宗族组织认识中国社会的理论模式。弗氏的这一范式为后来的学者们提供了基本模式和出发点,后来学者不断追随他的研究,     

Styling the revolution: masculinities, youth, and street politics in Jakarta, Indonesia

This article explores the changes to urban political culture in Jakarta, Indonesia, from 1998 to the present. By tracing the contributions of youth activists, and middle-class university students in particular, to the production of the street as a political and public space, the author demonstrates to what extent the democratized post-Suharto era naturalizes the place of youth in nationalist politics. Central to this inquiry of youth identity formation is the elision of class and gender as analytical categories. Student movements in 1998 and after have relied on a specific masculine style that draws on both the authenticity of nationalist historical narratives and the street as the domain of the People, and in the process masks potentially contentious class and gender differences among progressive activists.     

Tree Totems and the Tamarind People: Implications of Clan Plant Taboos in Central Flores

ABSTRACT Among the Nage of eastern Indonesia, a sizeable minority of clans maintain totemic attitudes towards trees and other plants whose names they share. Tree totemism is mostly expressed in taboos on burning the wood and using the timber in construction. In addition, there is the idea that all Nage people should not burn wood of the Tamarind (Nage) tree. Comparative evidence and local historical narrative locate the source of phytonymic clan names in an earlier use of such names as toponyms and settlement names. Insofar as this is their origin, Nage plant totemism can thus be understood as a residue of a naming practice relating to places rather than to people, either human ancestors or groups. As the use of ‘Nage’ as the formal name of an inclusive ethnic, socio‐political, and territorial entity is relatively recent, and indeed largely a function of a colonial administration introduced barely a century ago, this case further demonstrates how taboos and totemic relations can develop rapidly in contexts of major social change.     

Stigmatized Spaces: Gender and Mobility under crisis in South Sulawesi,Indonesia

The economic downturn in Indonesia (1997‐99) has changed the context of gendered spatial mobility in South Sulawesi. For low-income migrants in the region, the monetary crisis has not only reorganized the labor market, but it has also brought about an intensification of the stigma placed on young women's independent residence in an export processing zone. Household surveys and in-depth interviews with migrants and members of their origin and destination site neighborhoods, both before and during the economic retrenchment, illustrate that ideas about women's sexual morality are a key part of the context within which migration decisions are gendered. The article situates survey and interview findings within an overview of Indonesia's recent development history, economic crisis, and official state gender ideology. The article argues that migrants and their communities have identified the ‘prostitute’ as a female-gendered metaphor for the crisis, and finds that post-1997 narratives of women's mobility increasingly revolve around normative judgements regarding young women's independent mobility and sexual behavior.     

Poverty,School and Work: Children during the Economic Crisis in Indonesia

The problem of child labour in Indonesia, although generally less prevalent than in other developing countries at a similar stage of development, is significant. As in other countries, this study finds a strong link between the child labour phenomenon and poverty, with the profile of child labour largely mirroring the profile of poverty. Furthermore, poverty is found to be an important determinant of whether children work. However, working does not always completely eliminate a child's opportunity to obtain formal education: children from poor households can still go to school by undertaking part‐time work to pay for their education, implying that banning these children from working may force them to drop out of school instead. Since the phenomenon of child labour is strongly associated with and determined by poverty, the most effective policy for eliminating child labour is through poverty alleviation. Other policies that can foster the rate of reduction in child labour are those which make it easier for children from poor families to access education and increase the opportunity cost of working by improving the quality of education. Such policies will increase the rate of return to education.