Dissertation Research: The Archaeology of Trade, Settlement, and Islam in the Banda Islands

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*** Under the direction of Dr. Douglas Anderson, Mr. Peter Lape will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. At the close of his current fieldwork in the Banda Islands of Indonesia he will visit colonial archives in Amsterdam, London and Lisbon to supplement archaeological data he has collected. The goal of the research is to reconstruct the social and political organization of the Banda Islands in the period immediately preceding European contact. Early European colonists described a situation in which an Islamic tradition prevailed and they believed that the inhabitants of the islands had been incorporated into an expanding Islamic sphere of influence before Western arrival. Mr. Lape believes that this oversimplifies reality and that the error results from the fact that European traders had most in common with and interacted most with Islamic Banda inhabitants. To test this hypothesis he will conduct extensive surface survey for archaeological remains and carry out selective excavation. In pre-Islamic times pig was a widely eaten food and this practice terminated with conversion to Islam. Thus examination of excavated faunal remains provides an excellent indicator of religion. Mr. Lape will look at the distribution of Islamic and non-Islamic groups and attempt, on the basis of ceramics and trade objects, to determine the interaction spheres of each. Archival research will compliment the archaeological data and set it into a broader context. Anthropologists long ago realized that most of the primitive cultures studied in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were in fact far from untouched and that their behavior had in fact been strongly influenced by contact which in some cases extended over hundreds of years. Models of cultural interaction, most importantly Wallerstein s world systems theory were based on this assumption. However, Mr. Lape believes, they focused too strongly on colonial interaction and domination by Western and Islamic societies and underestimate d that complexity of exchange and economic systems among indigenous groups. The Banda Islands, he believes provide just such an example and the ethnographic and historical complexities of the region can not be understood solely through recourse to Islamic and European contact. The purpose of this research is to examine this proposition. The work is important for several reasons. Anthropologists wish to examine and understand the patterns of behavior they observe in the world around them. These behaviors are affected by both history and adaptation and it is likely that the complexity of historical input is underestimated. In this context, the Banda Islands provide a useful case study. The project will also assist in training a promising young researcher. ***