The goals of the project is to assemble an ethno-historical picture of a region in northwestern Borneo that was for centuries a small but integral part of the Asian world economy. It is a region of remarkable ethnic complexity. Moreover, communities are not fixed features of the social landscape, but have changed constantly over the last century in response to internal and external trade, warfare, and colonial annexation. This project is designed to furnish the missing pieces of an ethnic puzzle which is of interest because it allows the researcher to take up a new issue in an on-going study of the significance of ritual. The complexity of communal interrelations over time is matched by the great diversity of ritual within which similar notions of life and death are expressed. Innovation in ritual is related not to deep meanings but to community dynamics. Leaders can utilize to their own political ends, but they can not control its diversity, which is shaped by larger historical forces. By relating ritual diversity to community dynamics, this project sheds fresh light on the relationship between ritual and politics.
