From Distant Tales. From Distant Tales: Archaeology and Ethnohistory in the Highlands of Sumatra . Edited by Dominik Bonatz, John Miksic, J. David Neidel, Mai Lin Tjoa~Bonatz CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS. __,, ____ ,, ___ .. , .. PUBLISHING TABLE OF CONTENTS List of lllustrations .. ,..... ,, ....... ,.... ,,,,,,,, .. ,,,, .. ,,,,, ..... ,,,,, ........ ,:.. ,, .. ,, ... ,,, ...... viii Fro~ Di:iil&l\t T~l~s: Archaeology an51 ~thnohlst~ry in the Highlands of Sumatra, List of Tables,,,,, ......... ,............................. ,,, ...... ,........ ,...... ,.......... ,........... xiv Edited by Dommtk Honatz, J<:1hn M1ksic, J. David Neidel, Mai Lin Tjoa~Bonatz Introduction,., ...... , ..... ,.... ,........................ ,............... ,........ ,........................ , I Th~s t'llJOk first published 2009 C(lmbridg.; &holar,i Publishing Part I: General I 2 8a!',':k Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne. NE6 2XX. UK The Dawn of Humanity in Sumatra: Arrival and Dispersal from the Human Remains Perspective .................................................... 28 British l)bni.ry Ciitaloguing in Publication IJatu Harry Widianto A (,':atalogue record lbt thfs book is avai\abl,~ from the British J.,ibnuy The Neolithic in the Highlands of Sumatra: Problems of Definition ......... 43 Copyright !J;l Z009 by Dominik 13onal:l, John Miksic. J. David Neidcl, M~i t~n 'Jjoa-Hqnatz Dominik Bonatz ~nd contributors ' Highland-Lowland Connections in Jambi, South Sumatra, and West All rights to~ this ~ook reserved. No purl of this book may be r~produ~ed. stored in a retrieval system. Sumatra, 11'" to 14'" Centuries .................................................................. 75 or tran~m1tted, many form or by any means, clci;:tn:mic, mechanical, pholocopying. recording or John Miksic otherwise. without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISON (10): 1·4438·0497·0. l~HN (IJ): 978-14438-04974 Part II: Northern Sumatra Is there a Balak History? ................. :....................................................... I 04 Anthony Reid Ceramics, Cloth, Iron and Salt: Coastal Hinterland Interaction in the Karo Region of Northeastern Sumatra ........................................... 120 E. Edwards McKinnon Ethnicity and Colonization in Northeast Sumatra: Bataks and Malays ... 143 Daniel Perret The Role ofl,ocal Informants in the Making of the Image of"Cannibalism" in North Sumatra ........................................................ 169 Masashi Hirosue vi Table nt" (.:(1ntcnt!il vii Part Ill: C•ntral Sumatra Southeast Sumatra in Protohistoric and Srivijaya Times: Upstream· The Megaliths and the Pottery: Studying the Early Material Culture Downstream Relations and the Settlement of the Pencplain ................... 434 of Highland Jambi ... ., .............................................................................. 196 Pierre· Yves Manguin Mai Lin Tjoa-Bonatz From Sukit Scguntang to Lahat: Challenges Facing Gumay Origin Adityavam1an's Highland Kingdom ....................................................... 229 Ritual Practice in the Highlands of South Sumatra ................................ 48S Hermann Kulke Minako Sakai Contributors. ............................................................................................. 501 Tamho Kerinci . ............. ........................................................... 253 C. W. Watson Index .................................................. ........................................... 504 Piagam Serampas: Malay Documents from Highland Jam bi .................. 272 Annabel Teh Gallop Settlement Histories ofSerampas: Multiple Sources, Contlicting Data, and the Proble1n of Historical Reconstruction ............................... , ......... 323 J. David Neidel Social Structure and Mobility in Historical Perspective: Sungai Tcnang in Highland Jambi ............. : ...................................................................... 347 Heinzpeter Znoj Kerinci's Living Past: Stones, Tales, and Tigers .................................... 367 Jet Bakels Kerinci ·rraditional Architecture ........... __ ................................................ 383 Reimar Schcfold The Meaning of Rainforest for the Existence ofSuku Anak Dalam in Jambi ................................................................................................... 402 Reino Handini Part IV: Southern Sumatra Mounds, Tombs, and Tales: Archaeology and Oral Tradition in the South Sumatra Highlands .............................................................. 416 Dominique Guillaud, Hubert Foresticr, Truman Simanjuntak .: Anthony Reid I 05 .•. , IS THERE A BATAK HISTORY? Srivijaya, thought to have ruled a large area from its scat in Palembang between the 7"' and the IO" centuries. Concrete evidence on the ground 'I 1 about this stale and its people is as scarce as what we know about highland ANTHONY REID societies in a similar period. Yet because Srivijaya appeared as a state in Chinese and Arab records, it alone is celebrated in the history books. Introduction The 6-8 million Bataks of northern Sumalra arc one of Indonesia's most important and intriguing groups (fig. 5-1 ). Their anceslors have clearly been on Sumatra for thousands of years. They have attracted a large number of studies of religion and missiology, and a few good ethnological and language studies. Yet they remain a people without history. It seems a classic case of Eric Wolrs argument, in EUrope and the Pet•ple without History, that the neglect of the history of such stateless people was not just an absence but a distortion (Wolf 1982: 3). Ethnographers and colonial officials of the 19'' and 20"' centuries created such categories as ·highlanders, primitives, proto-Malays, and indeed Bataks as ethnic categories, and assumed their unchanging isolation from the currents of world history. But the Bataks, who were forcibly brought into the scholarly world's consciousness at that stage were, to follow Wolrs argument, already wholly transformed by international influences - their "isolation" was itself a historical process. Ashis Nandy makes the more specific charge that it is the statelessness of precmodern non-Europeans that has denied them a history. In his view, • Likoty 1illl!:li Of lr'tdi$ri my profession - modem secular history !IS practised in the academies - is inlh.11!tr"tee p!'t•1500 inextricably linked as.a mode ofana!ysis with the modem nation state and its rise. History traces the lineage and legitimacy of modern states, and Fig. 5-1: Sites of Indian (pre-Islamic) influence in northern Sumatra and distorts our understanding of the past by doing so (Nandy 1995). modern ethnic subdivisions of the Batak homeland Highland Sumatra does appear to support his case. Until the 20'' century, the great mojority of Sumatra's people, and its complex, irrigated· Of course I could not resist testing the coupling of"Batak" with "History" rice-growing, literate societies, were in the highlands. Yet these are never in a Google search. Sure enough, the p0pular items at the top of the Googling mentioned in the historical record. Virtually the only way in which process revealed no books or articles on lhe subject. but rather items such as a Sumatra appears in histories of either Indonesia or the wider world before new keep-fit training apparatus called a Balak (and which seems already to 1500 (except"' a visiting-point of travellers like Marco Polo) is through have a history), as well as a village in Bulgaria. "forever 11Ssociated with the April Uprising of 1876, one ofthe,most heroic events in Bulgarian history." Ii 1 This paper was initially delivered as a Public Lecture in the Museen in Dnhle1n, The Batak of Bulgaria have a history, it appears, but not those ofSumatra. Groller Vortragsraum, Berlin, 22 September 21)06. !06 ls there a llatak I listory'I Anthony Reid 107 Historiography 1961). Among a plethora of speculative works which followed. the book of Bonar Sidjabat (1982) of the Jakarta Theological Seminary sought to The curious absence of Batak history does indeed apply chiefly to the establish Singamangaraja's credentials in the Indonesian amdemic.world. history as written by academics, as Ashis Nandy might have expected. To The increasing role of Singamangaraja XII in Toba Batak popular self­ my knowledge only three professional historians have written dissertations identification was based largely on this success on elevating him lo the in English on Balak history. All wrote exclusively about the 20'" century, official national pantheon, and therefore into the national textbooks read and all regrettably remain unpublished in the original English (Castles by all Indonesian school-children. For later generations educated in 1972; van Langenberg 1976; Hirosue 1988). In French there was a unique Indonesian national schools, he becan10 the sole Batak historical figure. attempt by Daniel Perret (1985) al a more comprehensive history, albeit of His lineage, although historically shadowy before the 19'" century, could the North Sumatra region rather than Bataks per se. Fortunately church or also represent a sin1ulacrum of a state, a key for later Batak intellectuals to mission history is better served, especially in German. The publications try to read the "state" back into their earlier history. · here include one extremely detailed history of the early Karo mission written by anthropologist Rita Kipp ( 1990). The general dearth of histories of any highland people in Indonesia is reflected in the national histories of Indonesia and regional histories of