Roy F. Ellen

An Evolutionary Approach to the Southeast Asian Cultural Sequence [and Comments and Reply]

Recent archaelogical work has directed attention toward Southeast Asia. However, while the substantive results of this research are significant for tracing worldwide prehistoric developments, the integration of these findings into a regional archaeological framework continues to be a problem. Most traditional chronological-developmental frameworks of Southeast Asian prehistory were patterned after the European paradigm of five prehistoric ages. It was implied that cultural developments occurred in several major stages and were relatively uniform throughout the region. The results of several recent excavations as well as ethnographic evidence contradict these assumptions. It is argued here that an explanation for these contradictions can be found in the ecology of Southeast Asia. Much of the region falls within the zone of the perhumid tropics. Resource distribution and a number of other ecological conditions of that zone are responsible for a high degree of geographical discontinuity of the human ecology and an ever increasing cultural diversity over time.

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE AND MANAGEMENT OF SAGO PALM (Metroxylon sagu ROTTBOELL) DIVERSITY IN SOUTH CENTRAL SERAM, MALUKU, EASTERN INDONESIA

ABSTRACT Given the cultural importance of palms it might be assumed that, like other starch staples, they would be internally diverse genetically, yielding large numbers of cultivars reflected in lexical polytypy. This article explores why this does not appear to be so for sago palms (Metroxylon sagu), managed by the Nuaulu of Seram, eastern Indonesia. The economic and cultural significance of the sago palm for the Nuaulu, as for much of Maluku and lowland New Guinea, is immense; but the extent to which humans have managed it has been underestimated, it once being widely accepted that reliance on sago was inversely correlated to the development of conventional agriculture. Nuaulu spend about 32 percent of their total subsistence effort engaged in sago extraction. However, given its overall significance as food, in work budgets, as a multi-purpose natural product, and in cultural imagery, the level of formally codified genetic diversity is low. The hypothesis is examined that managed sago palms do not readily lend themselves to the generation of a large number of stable cultivars, and that this is related to modes of reproduction, longevity and single lifetime flowering, and to extensive reliance on vegetative propagation and forms of tenure and husbandry.

Understanding witchcraft and sorcery in Southeast Asia

Ten papers from a September 1989 symposium, Manipulation of Mystical Agency and Explanations of Personal Misfortune, held in Kent, England, and an introduction to the collection. Anthropologists describe the witches and sorcerers they have met in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sumatra, and elsewhere

Persistence and change in the relationship between anthropology and human geography

Scientific disciplines, as cultural activities conducted through social relationships (rather than as sets of abstract idealized values or prescriptions), can ultimately only be identified in terms of the practices of those who identify with the label. This is quintessentially so for both geography and anthropology, and gives rise to some obvious problems in exploring the overlapping borderlands between them. Nevertheless, it may help to structure the discussion which follows by saying that for present purposes I understand geography as that discipline which concerns itself with the spatial distribution and relationships of natural and artefactual (including human) entities; and anthropology as the study of the biology, culture and social structure of human populations. I am, however, here concerned more specifically with connections between those aspects of geography which shed light on the human condition (though not necessarily human geography in its strict sense) and the anthropology of human social and cultural organization. Moreover, rather than providing a bibliographically exhaustive review, I have elected to discuss a number of key areas of interfertility and coincidence

The contribution of Paraserianthes (Albizia) falcataria to sustainable swidden management practices among the Baduy of West Java

There is a prohibition on the use of modern external inputs, such as chemical fertilizers, in Baduy swidden farming. Ordinarily, the consequence of this in a situation of acute forest pressure would be a decrease in fallow times, and an inevitable depletion of soil fertility. The Baduy (particularly Outer Baduy) have several ways of alleviating this problem, one of which is the introduction of Paraserianthes (Albizia) falcataria. By alternating this commercially valuable perennial leguminous tree with rice, soil fertility is maintained and the socio-economic position of the Baduy improved. As a result, swidden farming, which is considered by the Baduy to be central to their cultural identity, continues to be viable, despite increasing population density and the continuing depletion of mature forest.

Ethnomycology Among the Nuaulu of the Moluccas: Putting Berlin’s “General Principles” of Ethnobiological Classification to the Test

Ethnomycology among the Nuaulu of the Moluccas: Putting Berlin’s “General Principles” of Ethnobiological Classification to the Test. Berlins (Ethnobiological Classification: Principles of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies. Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1992) universal theories of ethnobiological classification have provided an indispensable common rubric to compare data from diverse sources. This paper examines these principles with respect to the naming of mushrooms by the Nuaulu on the eastern Indonesian island of Seram, a people for whom mushrooms have only marginal significance. Concordance to Berlin’s principles is noted in some respects, but the small proportion of overall mycological diversity that is treated, the lack of consistently labeled intermediate rankings, the conflation between specific and generic levels, and the importance of utilitarian considerations challenge Berlins hierarchically ranked “general purpose” (i.e., natural) model of folk biological taxonomy. A comparative review of the literature on other, mostly tropical ethnomycological classifications, is also included.

Processing Metroxylon Sagu Rottboell (Arecaceae) as a Technological Complex: A Case Study from South Central Seram, Indonesia

Presented here is an examination of the technological process whereby the stem pith ofMetroxylon sagu Rottboell is transformed into edible starch by the Nuaulu people of south central Seram, Maluku, Indonesia. The analysis seeks to describe the underlying local knowledge and practices involved, with a view to refuting the assertion that sago extractionis an intuitively and technically simple solution to food provision for those reluctant to adopt ‘proper’ agriculture. In the light of this demonstration, I reconsider how palm starch dependency works as an adaptive strategy.

Non-domesticated resources in Nuaulu ecological relations:

resources by the Nuaulu, a small group of some 500 hunters, collecters and swidden cultivators of south central Seram, eastern Indonesia (see Figure 1)’. It is hoped that it will demonstrate that consideration of such matters can have important (sometimes unforeseen) consequences for analysing the economies and social organization of what are ostensibly communities based on swidden agriculture as their primary mode of subsistence. On the other

Putting plants in their place: Anthropological approaches to understanding the ethnobotanical knowledge of rainforest populations

Over the last decade or so ethnobotany has assumed a scientific prominence previously denied it. It is endorsed by institutions with a high international profile (Kew, the Royal Geographical Society, WWF, UNDP, UNESCO), has a market value placed upon it by foresters, agronomists, development advisers and pharmacologists, and has become pivotal in preserving the cultural identity and knowledge of indigenous peoples whose traditional way of life is under threat (Posey 1990). Ethnobotanical knowledge has, therefore, become both economic commodity and political slogan. This is particularly true with respect to the plant knowledge of rainforest peoples, as these peoples are often those with the highest media profile. However, in our eagerness to exploit a product and to demonstrate its usefulness, there has been a tendency to oversimplify what ethnobotany entails and just how it can be useful. I argue in this paper that we must not be narrow-minded or simplistic in our conception of ethnobotanical knowledge, and that to take anything less than a broad culturally-contextualised approach may miss the point of the relevance of indigenous knowledge altogether.

Variation and Uniformity in the Construction of Biological Knowledge Across Cultures

This chapter examines the extent to which knowledge of biological entities and processes varies according to different human life experiences and cultural traditions.1 It attempts to relate this to global, transmodern, scientific biology, with its origins in Western cultural history. What connects the first with the second is the increasingly well-documented recognition that all peoples share a basic way of apprehending the natural world, grounded in a common evolutionary history, even though this cognitive underpinning is everywhere filtered through the local particularities of environmental and cultural experience. Such a shared infrastructure of perception and cognition has been termed “natural history intelligence” and is linked to modular theories of the mind. What this means usually includes (1) a shared concept of basic natural kind (a species-like concept) reflecting a view of the biological world as a series of discontinuous entities; (2) an ability to recognise and respond to things as living matter, and more specifically an “algorithm for animacy” (Bulmer, 1970; Reed, 1988; Atran, 1998; Ellen, 1996; Boster, 1996); (3) a capacity to intuit certain kinds of behaviour based on expectations derived in part from common experiences linked to phylogenetic similarities or observations of human behaviour, and (4) strategies for classifying biological diversity (Atran, 1990; Boster, 1996; Keil, 1994; Mithen, 1996: 52–54). Because none of this is accessible other than through its local cultural versions, distinguishing what are shared human universals from what are simply culturally widespread is problematic. This has given rise to some lively debates.