Conserving the Past, Mobilizing the Indonesian Future Archaeological Sites, Regime Change and Heritage Politics in Indonesia in the 1950S
Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde Vol. 167, no. 4 (2011), pp. 405-436 URL: http://www.kitlv-journals.nl/index.php/btlv URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-101399 Copyright: content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License ISSN: 0006-2294 MARIEKE BLOEMBERGEN AND MARTIJN EICKHOFF Conserving the past, mobilizing the Indonesian future Archaeological sites, regime change and heritage politics in Indonesia in the 1950s Sites were not my problem1 On 20 December 1953, during a festive ceremony with more than a thousand spectators, and with hundreds of children waving their red and white flags, President Soekarno officially inaugurated the temple of Śiwa, the largest tem- ple of the immense Loro Jonggrang complex at Prambanan, near Yogyakarta. This ninth-century Hindu temple complex, which since 1991 has been listed as a world heritage site, was a professional archaeological reconstruction. The method employed for the reconstruction was anastylosis,2 however, when it came to the roof top, a bit of fantasy was also employed. For a long time the site had been not much more than a pile of stones. But now, to a new 1 The historian Sunario, a former Indonesian ambassador to England, in an interview with Jacques Leclerc on 23-10-1974, quoted in Leclerc 2000:43. 2 Anastylosis, first developed in Greece, proceeds on the principle that reconstruction is only possible with the use of original elements, which by three-dimensional deduction on the site have to be replaced in their original position. The Dutch East Indies’ Archaeological Service – which never employed the term – developed this method in an Asian setting by trial and error (for the first time systematically at Candi Panataran in 1917-1918).
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