CERAMIC SAGO OVENS AND THE HISTORY OF REGIONAL TRADING PATTERNS IN EASTERN INDONESIA AND THE PAPUAN COAST

Abstract

The extraction and processing of palm starch is an ancient technology in island Southeast Asia and New Guinea, but its archaeological signature is weak. This article outlines the evidence for the distribution of ceramic ovens used for cooking sago flour, a possible diagnostic marker in archaeological deposits. In relation to available archaeological evidence (including new radiocarbon dates), we examine the hypothesis that the origin of this distinctive equipment predated the European period. We confirm the existence of sago ovens from pre-European contexts, and suggest an endogenous protohistoric origin rather than an exogenous historic origin. We conclude that the growth and dispersal of ceramic ovens were linked to changes in local trading patterns associated with the increase in the production of cloves, nutmeg and other commodities for European and Asian markets, and expansion along the Papuan coasts by Moluccan traders.

Notes

*The fieldwork by Ellen reported here for south central Seram and Ambon-Lease has been undertaken during numerous visits between 1969 and 1996. Fieldwork in Kei was conducted in 1981, in Banda, East Seram and Gorom in 1981 and 1986, on Ternate in 1990 and on Biak, Papua/Irian Jaya in 1996. On all occasions research in Indonesia has been sponsored by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI: Lembaga llmu Pengetahuan Indonesia), and in the Moluccas latterly also by Pattimura University Ambon, specifically the Pusat Studi Maluku. Financial support between 1969 and 1992 has come from a combination of the former UK Social Science Research Council, the London-Cornell Project for East and Southeast Asian Studies, the British Council, the Central Research Fund of the University of London, the Galton Foundation and the Hayter Travel Awards Scheme. Work in 1996 was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grant R000 236082 for work on ‘Deforestation and forest knowledge in south central Seram, eastern Indonesia’. The final analysis and writing-up was supported by ESRC RES 000 22 1106, ‘The ethnography, ethnobotany and dispersal of palm starch extraction technology’. For access to collections, and advice on data we are personally grateful to James Hamill of the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the British Museum, to various staff at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, and at the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde in Leiden (particularly Dr Pieter ter Keurs and Sijbrand de Rooij). For original photographic work we are indebted to Spencer Scott in the UKC photographic unit, and to Heather Locke and Sonia Vougioukalou for digitalisation and enhancement. The maps were drawn by Lesley Farr in the UKC Graphics unit and modified by Sonia Vougioukalou. Kyle Latinis conducted intensive fieldwork in Ambon, Seram, Buru, Saparua and Gorom in central Maluku between 1992 and 1998 and would like to acknowledge the support of the University of Hawaii, the National Science Foundation, and the Henry Luce Foundation channelled through Professor and Dean P. Bion Griffin, emeritus, University of Hawaii. The radiocarbon dates for Hatusua were determined by Beta Analytic.

¹The catalogue of the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde in Leiden generally describes these objects as vorm, bakvorm, gebakvorm or koekvorm (that is, moulds), and this is the case for most Dutch descriptions. In early Portuguese descriptions they are called forna (‘ffornos’ in Galvão 1971: 134–5), meaning ‘oven’, and ‘oven’ is also the word used by Wallace (1962: 291). Ellen and Glover (1974: 362) use the term mould, as does Höpfner (1977), Spriggs and Miller (1979) and Latinis (2002). Functionally, they serve both to cook the starch through the application of direct encompassing heat (and are therefore ovens) and to ensure that the product takes on a particular form (making them moulds). More accurately, they might be better described as ‘oven-moulds’, though to simplify matters here we call them ovens.

²Abbreviations referring to the location of museum specimens are as follows: RMV – Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden, the Netherlands; MPJ – Museum Pusat Jakarta, Indonesia.

³Spriggs and Miller (1979: 31) suggest that the division between solid lump and building up walls technique reflects a religious dichotomy (ibid. p. 31) between Christian and Muslim, pointing to a more recent introduction of ovens as a pottery type, the techniques having passed within the same religious community after the division had occurred. We can find no support for this in the enhanced data set available to us.

⁴Although we might wish to rule out the ceramic oven as a European introduction, the elaborated forms of more recent ovens, as described above in the section on ethnographic distribution, might well have been influenced by European culinary styles and methods of food preparation, particularly with respect to the use of wheat flour and the making of cakes. The very characteristic cake moulds of the central Moluccas have already been mentioned.