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PREFACE

Every western scientific researcher travelling to Indonesia for research in Maluku Tenggara during the past decades, sooner or later encountered Andre P. C. Sol, who was bishop of the diocese of Amboina from February 1964 until October 1994.

In Keuskupan Amboina, the episcopal residence, one was not only warmly welcomed, but also informed about the most recent developments in the region and provided with all kinds of practical tips and especially encouraging words, before journeying on to the far, isolated island world. Andre Sol was more or less the gatekeeper of the Southeast Moluccas.

When we stayed in Ambon in the early 1980s in connection with our anthropological fieldwork on the Babar archipelago, we also had the pleasure of being "accompanied" by him. He casually expressed the wish that the cultures of Maluku Tenggara which, according to him, had been insufficiently investigated, would once get the attention they deserved, in the shape of a specific publication. It appeared to be one of his heart's desires. In 1987, during our next visit to the Moluccas, he once again brought the subject up for discussion and the plan was born to write a book about the region.

At the beginning of the 1990s this plan began to take concrete shape. In order to enable publication Andre Sol opened up all kinds of sources, both in the informative and the financial fields. At the same time we extended our research to the entire region of Maluku Tenggara and directed ourselves to the material culture, which seemed to be the best starting point for a description of the Southeast Moluccan peoples.

The result of the joint efforts is now at hand. Hopefully this book will contribute to more knowledge of the cultures of Maluku Tenggara in a wide reading public. For it does, after all, concern a region that has produced objects which can be counted among the most fascinating cultural manifestations of Indonesia.

Toos van Dijk and Nico de Jonge

Deventer/Alkmaar, the Netherlands, July 1995