Austronesian in ... Sulawesi

AUSTRONESIAN IN ... SULAWESI Editor Truman Simanjuntak CENTER FOR PREHISTORIC AND AUSTRONESIAN STUDIES http: / / www.cpasindonesia.com Austronesian in Sulawesi Editor: Truman Simanjuntak Cover Design: Levi Simanjuntak Layout: Mirza Ansyor First Published, 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright owner Published by: Center For Prehistoric And Austronesian Studies (CPAS) Jin. A. Dahlan IV/20, Kukusan, Depok 16425, Indonesia Telp. 021-708881968; Fax. 021-78881968 Perpustakaan Nasional (Indonesian National Library) Katalog Dalam Terbitan (KDT) Austronesian in Sulawesi CPAS Depok; First Published, 2008; 175 x 230 mm; vi + 269 Halaman ISBN: 978-602-8174-07-7 I. Archaeology II. Title III. Simanjuntak, Truman 3 A CENTURY OF ARCHAEOLOGY IN SULAWESI David Bulbeck During the history of archaeological research on Sulawesi, there have been five major publications on the topic. The first of these was the monograph by two cousins from Basel in Switzerland, Paul Sarasin and Fritz Sarasin, on their excavations undertaken in 1903 on rock shelters at Lamoncong, Bone Regency, South Sulawesi. Sarasin and Sarasin (1905) had been attracted to these sites by reports of a local "cave dwelling" population, the Toala' or "forest people" (not to be confused with the Toala' of Luwu Regency, who speak a language related to Toraja-Sa'dan), and gave us the name "Toalean" with their choice of a name for the assemblages of flaked lithics recovered from the Lamoncong rock shelters. The second and third major publication events for Sulawesi archaeology are due to Robert van Heekeren (1958, 1972). Although these books address the Bronze-Iron Age (or Paleometallic) and the Stone Age (including the Neolithic) for Indonesia as a whole, van Heekeren pursued research very actively in South Sulawesi, and these two books stand out as indispensable summaries of the archaeological work undertaken in Sulawesi by himself, and other European scholars, during Indonesia's colonial period. The fourth major publication event is the eighteenth and last volume of Quaternary Research in Indonesia, a monograph series initiated by Gert-Jen Bartstra who continued van Heekeren's interest in the archaeology of Indonesia, including South Sulawesi. Edited by Susan Keates and JuUette Pasveer (2004), this volume includes no less than eight articles on the archaeology of South Sulawesi, covering the period from the Late Pleistocene to the Paleometallic. The fifth major publication is the present volume, which brings us fuU circle in the sense that, like the Sarasins' 1905 monograph, it is dedicated entirely to a specific topic in Sulawesi archaeology. That topic is the study of Austronesian 4 archaeology (and related background) in Sulawesi, and it is noteworthy in its inclusion of an emphasis on the archaeology of North Sulawesi, which has been researched with nearly the same fervor as South Sulawesi's archaeology. One major theme of the present volume is the peculiar location, shape and natural history of the island of Sulawesi. Sulawesi lies between the two great continental plates of Eurasia and Australia-New Guinea, between the Sunda and Sahul shelves which, during Pleistocene intervals of low sea levels, had joined together many of the islands of Indonesia now isolated by shallow seas. Sulawesi is literally an amalgamation of blocks of continental crust from both Sunda and Sahul. Sulawesi's unique geological formation, and the question of whether there had ever been a landbridge which connected Sulawesi to the Philippines and other islands to the north, are explored in the contributions by Fadhlan S. Intan, Harry Widianto, and Truman Simanjuntak (in his closing paper). These issues are important background for understanding the arrival of Austronesian speakers to Sulawesi. Although debate still continues on the ultimate homeland of the Austronesians, as discussed in Simanjuntak's closing paper and in more depth by Daud Tanudirjo's first paper, all of the contributors to the present volume toe the line championed by Blust (e.g. 1984- 85), Howells (1973), and especially Bellwood (e.g., 1997), that Taiwan was the immediate homeland of the Austronesians, including the Malayo-Polynesians who set sail from Taiwan to make Austronesian the most widely spoken, indigenous language family in the world. Considerable debate however still accompanies the processes by which the Malayo-Polynesians dispersed across Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and this is reflected in the different points of view expressed by contributors to this volume. Tanudirjo, in his contribution referred to above, presents a very interesting scenario which, in a sense, can be viewed as an adaptation of Bellwood's (1997, 2005) position in the face of the emerging archaeological evidence, along with a healthy dose of globalization theory. This scenario retains the sense that the expansion of agricultural populations was a prime mover for the major Malayo-Polynesian dispersal (Tanudirjo's third stage), whereas Simanjuntak's contributions, and my own article, relegate agriculture to second place, and highlight the original and fundamental importance of sailing and maritime trade to the Malayo-Polynesian dispersal. Indeed, Widianto and Simanjuntak both address the conundrum of a "Neolithic" enhancement of the Sulawesi forager economy (as in those sites which remained under occupation with little change except the addition of pottery) by suggesting that the Austronesian immigrants often "went native" and adopted the local MesoUthic (or Pre-NeoHthic) lifestyle. My contribution offers a different solution, which proposes mutually beneficial 5 interactions between the Mesolithic aborigines and Austronesian immigrants during the Neolittdc. In this regard, where Widianto urges a detailed comparative study of the human remains extracted from South Sulawesi sites, I would recommend to readers my recent paper (Bulbeck 2004) which summarizes previous work by Hooijer and Boedhisampurno as well as Teuku Jacob, re-describes the Upper Cakondo skeleton (the main skeletal assemblage recovered by the Sarasins), and describes new material from Leang Burung 1 and Batu Ejaya. Chapter Two presents accounts of the archaeological fieldwork performed in South Sulawesi in association with Professor Simanjuntak's project, along with a summary (by Simanjuntak and Siswanto) of current knowledge on the archaeology of North Sulawesi. Simanjuntak and colleagues describe the pottery, stone artifacts, bone tools, faunal and floral remains, and personal adornments recovered from five test pits at Minanga Sipakko, a site located at the farthest upstream navigable point along the Karama River. The assemblage from this site would be one of the most important Neolithic assemblages in aU of Indonesia, in terms of its quantity, variety, secure Neolithic dating, and clear stams as the habitation debris from a permanent settiement. It is particularly valuable as it is accompanied by a pollen record, detailed in the contribution by Vita, which would seem to indicate no change to the local Pinus forest ecosystem throughout the period of occupation (Layer 2). The contribution by Bagyo Prasetyo lists the decorative motifs recorded on the pottery from Minanga Sipakko, and from its "twin site" Kamassi, as well as from the Lattibung and Sikendeng sites, which lie near the mouth of the Karama River. Prasetyo also reviews the literature on the Sa-Huynh-Kalanay tradition to which the Neolithic and PaleometaUic decorated pottery associated with early Malayo-Polynesians can be assigned. Irfan Mahmud provides two contributions which recount the results of archaeological reconnaissance in the hilly Enrekang area, and the current project's test pit at the well-studied site complex of Mallawa, in the Maros uplands (Hasyim 2001), respectively. Irfan makes a valuable point where he argues that the archaeological record recovered from the Enrekang rock shelters demonstrates the long-term independence of the local Masenrempulu-speaking people, and that this finding should dismiss any ideas to the effect that the Enrekang people are simply a Bugis sub-culmre. Chapter Three picks up the theme of relating South Sulawesi's Neolithic to the ethnic groups recorded ethnographicaUy in the province, albeit from a different set of perspectives. Irfan Mahmud teams up with Retno Handini in providing valuable ethnographic summaries of the Kajang and Sa'dan Toraja people, two of the more distinctive and interesting ethnic groups of South Sulawesi. Personally I am uneasy about depicting these two groups as somehow more "Austronesian" than Bugis, 6 AUSTRONESIAN IN SULAWESI Makasars, or indeed Malays, Sundanese and Javanese or any other people whose native language belongs to the Austronesian family. Particularly in view of Truman Simanjuntak's account (in his concluding chapter) on the broad periods of change that postdate Indonesia's Neolithic, it would not seem likely that observations made today on any Austronesian-speaking group would somehow transport the observer back to the Neolithic. Instead, it would seem to be more productive to use ethnographic observations, particularly those that emerge from a comparative anthropological analysis, as the basis to develop hypotheses which can be tested against the archaeological record as a vehicle to explore the nuances of Sulawesi's NeoUthic archaeology. The contributions in Chapter Three by Daud Tanudirjo and the present writer

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