8 th Euroseas conference Vienna, 11–14 August 2015

— When Differences are Down-Played: Multi-Religious Encounters at Gunung Rinjani on Lombok, Indonesia
Volker Gottowik (Frankfurt and Heidelberg University)
Muslim-Sasak and Hindu-Balinese pilgrims, who climb Gunung Rinjani on Lombok, are in pursuit of the same aim: 
to come as close as possible to the gods. Regardless of creed, culture, gender and age, they are wrapped in the same 
white clothes when they reach their final destination – the crater lake of this volcano, which they consider to be the 
sacred center of their island. Status differences largely disappear on the spot, as nobles and commoners, priests and 
pilgrims, mix on nearly equal terms, and even women bathe with men in the same pond. Essential for the consensual 
sharing of this sacred site is not only the downplaying of social differences, but also the observance of an unwritten 
code of conduct that prohibits irreversible interventions in nature. In addition, any claims to exclusivity are avoided, 
just as the establishment of specific places of worship at this sacred site is banned. All the social groups involved are 
aware that the construction of a mosque or a temple, or any other form of permanent place-making, would end the 
consensual coexistence of Sasak and Balinese on Lombok. In this respect, the pilgrimage to Gunung Rinjani forms a 
counterpoint to the daily display of cultural and religious peculiarities on Lombok. Instead, similarities between Sasak 
and Balinese are stressed that admittedly contribute to the social coherence of this multi-ethnic and multi-religious 
society, but are inconsistent with a modern concept of religion.
— Socio-religious Display in Processions at the Lingsar Temple Festival in Lombok
David Harnish (University of San Diego)
Processions are moving theatres and serve myriad purposes, often transforming space, time and location and working 
to promote or subvert the social order. The visual element may represent status (e.g., royal processions), martial power 
(military processions), orientation and historic narratives or be juxtaposed to express parody, religious or political 
positions. The sound element – marching or other loud processional music to activate political or spiritual indices - 
moves groups forward, defines their missions and announces their significance; a general rule is that the more instru-
ments and ensembles and the louder the music, the more important the procession.
This paper discusses the multiple processions, social and religious meanings, and musics at the Lingsar Festival on 
Bali’s neighbor isle of Lombok. The actors in Lombok are migrant Hindu Balinese and Muslim Sasak (the indigenous 
inhabitants). Underlying the social dynamic is the fact that Hindu Balinese ruled over Lombok for 200 years while Is-
lam became the inspiration for Sasak resistance, and both Hindu and Islamic reform movements have been forces for 
change in processions and all other ritual events. The festival processions, once intended to create and sustain ethnic 
unity (conflated as agricultural fertility) through music and ritual implements, now also embody counter narratives 
and sociopolitical tensions over ownership. These processions, like most worldwide are public barometers for measur-
ing socio-religious and political change.

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Panel: Unveilling Head Taking and Decorated Trophy Skulls in Southeast Asia  
(with a Special Focus on Borneo) 
convener: Antonio Guerreiro (IrAsia CNRS/AIX-Marseille University)
panel abstract
In looking at ‘headhunting’ or ’head taking’ practices and ideas found in the continental and insular areas of Southeast 
Asia, - and especially in the great island of Borneo at the center of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago -, one is struck by 
the persistance of this multi-layered complex. It can be remarked that it links the social, religious and esthetic dimen-
sions among the peoples following this custom until colonial times. Conversely, the approach advocated here stresses 
that it should be studied as a ‘total social phenomenon’. Then, head taking can be best approached from several points 
of view. In order to define the practice of head taking more clearly, we suggest that it can be considered as part of a rit-
ual complex in which the killed individual’s head (or one of its parts, e.g. skull, jaw, hair, skin, tooth) was conserved as 
a ‘trophy’ or a ‘relic’ and used in various ways by the community (Coiffier & Guerreiro 1999; Hoskins 1996 ; Schefold 
2007). During the 19th century, in the Western part of the archipelago, the rich forms of ornamentation of skulls in 
Western Borneo (Sarawak and the neighbouring Province of West Kalimantan) should be noted. They include engrav-
ing and the application of metal sheets to the crania, besides the insertion of wooden pieces in the cavities of the nose 
and cowries or nassa shells in the eyes sockets. In short, the objectivated human trophy becomes thus a ‘spirit’, either a 
servant or a protector, belonging to the longhouse or village of his murderers. As a pusaka, an inherited prestige good, 
the skull housing the spirit was also supposed to be a source of luck and fertility for the whole community, and not 
only for the head takers themselves. It is noticeable that some groups, e.g. the Kayan, disposed of old skulls as they lost 
their positive features and became malevolant (Hose and Mac Dougall, 1912; Mac Kinley 1976; Guerreiro 2012). From 
another angle, the panel will look at the questions relating to the display of such objects as human and animal trophy 
skulls deposited in Western Museums. The distinction of human trophy skulls and ancestor skulls is also relevant in 
the museographical context. What are the criteria used in the displays according to the type of Museum concerned 
(Natural History, Art, Anthropology, Culture…)?
— Objects of Value: Human and Animal Trophy Skulls in Borneo in a Comparative Perspective   
Antonio J. Guerreiro (IrAsia CNRS/AIX-Marseille University)
Beliefs and practices relating to head taking have been mostly recorded during colonial times in Borneo. However, 
decapitation proper and the preservation of skulls by different means, was described in broad terms only. That is a 
relevant question for the study of skulls trophies found in Museums’ collections. These enigmatic objects showing a 
peculiar aesthetic elaboration, are located somehow in between nature and culture. They have been rarely exhibited 
to the public in contrast to those of Melanesia. However, the variations in the ornamentation of skulls from West to 
South and Central Borneo and the meanings attached to the skulls trophies among different groups, as the relations 
between human and animal skulls in ritual, remain little known. Besides the engraving and over modeling of the hu-
man skull trophies, the paper will consider the elements that are used on the skulls (painting, tin-foil, cowries, conus 
shells, beads, wooden parts…) and how the skulls trophies are presented among different ethnic groups (on shelfs 
and in racks, or wicker works). The conceptualization of the skull trophies as objects of value and heirlooms (pusaka) 
will be explored in the paper. The correlation between specific patterns and ethnicity according to the main culture 
areas on the Island is also a topic that would need more clarification. Obviously patterns can be copied and modified 
in the details, keeping an overall similarity in shape. Floral and foliate patterns are widespread while others are very 
localized; the same can be remarked about the ornaments or charms attached on the skulls : do they represent distinct 
ethnic beliefs or are they ‘creations’ of individual villagers ? On the same line are the vegetal or mineral elements used 
in the coloring of the trophies specific to these objects? 
— Decorated Human Trophy Skulls in Borneo – Masterpieces of Ritual Art
Markus Mally (private researcher)
Trophy heads and skull trophies played an important role in the social organization, animistic belief system and 
worldview of the indigenous populations of Borneo. Although headhunting was practiced with varying intensity by 

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the overwhelming majority of ethnic groups only a few of them, particularly the Bidayuh and Barito-group in West 
Kalimantan and adjacent areas, embellished their trophies in highly artistic ways. However, our current knowledge 
about such decorated skulls is still surprisingly incomplete. What makes these skull decorations so outstanding on a 
nearly worldwide basis is the variety of techniques that were applied within this geographically confined area. The per-
fect craftsmanship of bone carving, overmodeling and overlaying skulls with tin-foil created unique masterpieces of 
ritual art. Aim of this study is (i) to focus on the different artisanal techniques which were applied for skull decoration, 
and (ii) to link these with the range of individual motifs which were combined to form the complex decoration of the 
individual skulls (Beyond the scope of this investigation are further measures to embellish such trophies, e.g. attached 
pieces of wood carved as noses/ears/teeth/mandibles or circular discs which served to seal the eye sockets, snail shells 
to mimic eyes, hairs/feathers to replace eyebrows, palm leaves to decorate the zygomatic arches, etc.). 
The different techniques which were used by the above mentioned ethnic groups to decorate their headhunting tro-
phies can be grouped in five categories which were often combined on one skull: (i) incisions/engravings, (ii) relief 
carvings, (iii) overmodeling of the facial area, (iv) painting, and (v) attachment of a tin-foil either on the facial area 
(with/without overmodeling) or the entire skull; different motifs were cut out from this foil which obviously added 
value to ritual (and artistic) aspects of the craft. 
— From Headhunting to Riots: Discussion of a Documentary on the Outbreak of Ethnic Violence in West and 
Central Kalimantan, Indonesia (2000-2001)
Aron Xantus (Cluj Napoca, Romania) 
  
Focusing on the tragic events that unfolded in West and Central Kalimantan Provinces in the late 1990s and early 
2000s at the end of Suharto’s Orde Baru regime and the beginning of the Reformasi Period, the paper considers the 
cultural background and heritage of head taking among Dayak peoples. The discussion will be centered on the ‘re-
vival’ of head taking and the disposal, or not, of the skulls trophies, the lack of ornamentation and related topics  - be-
liefs connected to war and head trophies - which are mentioned by the actors themselves (with excerpts of the film : 
interviews of Dayak and Madurese people and archive footage, about 30mn). 
Panel: Local Participation in Tangible and Intangible Heritage in Southeast Asia 
convener: Roberto Gozzoli (Mahidol University International College)
panel abstract
Up to very recent times, cultural heritage in Southeast Asia was substantially limited to expression of “national cul-
tural heritage”. This was particular evident for tangible cultural heritage for instance: places like Ayutthaya in Thailand 
and Angkor Wat in Cambodia were restored and registered in the UNESCO World Heritage List as symbols of “one 
nation, one heritage”. As part of the Archaeological Heritage Discourse, they sustained both a Disneyfication of the 
sites, as well as a rigid exclusion of the local population in any decision making process relevant to the heritage site. 
Before listing, those sites were part of a living heritage fabric, but after registration, those sites became source of con-
flict and exclusion.
“National sites”,are usually untouchable, as they are more strictly controlled by centrally based entities – Fine Arts De-
partments or Culture Ministries as it might be. At the same time, there has been a quite interesting growing up of local 
projects, both for tangible and intangible heritage. Those projects are usually representative of a “minority” group, but 
due to the fact that local participation is searched for, they are certainly an interesting development from the top down 
approach kept until recent times.
Thus, the panel will focus more on the modalities local participation is actually implemented. Among the possible 
lines of research, the panel will look to both governments as well as NGOs actually involved in such projects and the 
relation between local participation and local governance.
Another aspect is the analysis of the relation between these projects within the more generalized spectrum of de-
centralization and how these heritage sites developed through local involvement can be considered within the more 
general picture of national heritage discourse.

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— NGO’s and the Heritage-Making: The Case of the Mindanao Garden of Peace
Rommel A. Curaming (University Brunei Darussalam)
The Mindanao Garden of Peace (MGP) is an ongoing project to monumentalize the memory of a tragic event called 
Jabidah Massacre. This episode which happened on 18 March 1968 involved the killing of Muslim recruits to a clan-
destine militia operation to sabotage Sabah. One person survived to tell a story which sparked not only diplomatic 
crisis between the Philippines and Malaysia, but more importantly, the bloody and disruptive rebellion in Mindanao, 
which continues up to the present.
 The establishment of MGP on Corregidor Island, the place where the killings happened, was a remarkable develop-
ment in the evolution of the memory and politics of this tragic episode. For so long the government of the Philippines 
was among those who cast doubt or even deny the massacre. In various phases in over four decades, this event had 
gone through vicissitudes of fortune depending on the prevailing political context--sensationalized, distorted, denied, 
forgotten, resurrected only to be marginalized again, and finally a monument is being built in its name. 
This paper seeks to demonstrate the roles played by various NGO’s in making this remarkable development happen. 
It will explain the changing political contexts and the various technique they employed that contributed to this de-
velopment. It argues that the NGOs’ combined anxiety and optimism toward the ongoing peace process between the 
government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) had prompted them to resort to various strategies that 
resulted, among others, in the formalization of the erstwhile informal and spontaneous heritage-making process.
— Ban Chiang and the Local Dimension: A Preliminary Study from a Heritage Management Perspective
Roberto Gozzoli (Mahidol University International College)
The World Heritage site of Ban Chiang in Thailand is a quite particular case within the cultural heritage sites regis-
tered in Thailand. It was registered in 1992, the year after both Sukhothai and its satellite sites as well Ayutthaya were 
registered into the World Heritage List.
Its registration was certainly a fruit of different timing in the application process, its push toward a WHS listing was 
mostly denoted by the fact of being a “first” - for iron smelting, rice cultivation - or at least that was the major point of 
it. While more recent discoveries have modified such a primacy - mostly due to erroneous dating of the Ban Chiang 
material - the site was also subjected to looting and illegal digging of the renowned painted pottery coming from the 
site itself.
For UNESCO standards of the period, Ban Chiang was also a very particular site, as it did not have any outstanding ar-
chitecture, but simply tombs. Its registration was therefore conceived in a different perspective than the two previous 
sites of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya, which were part of the Thai Archaeological Heritage Discourse, while Ban Chiang 
was reputedly to be included as a “first” only. Fruit of repeated onsite visits at Ban Chiang, this paper will analyse the 
site itself, and the differences between the management of its heritage, as well as its interaction with both local and 
national stakeholders.
— Yangon Heritage Trust and the Armenian Church: Whom Does the Church Belong to?
Marja-Leena Heikkilä-Horn (Mahidol University International College)
This paper looks into the ongoing process to try to preserve the colonial architecture of Rangoon/Yangon after many 
years of deplorable neglect. Nearly 200 buildings are on the list of the Yangon City Heritage List from 2010. Yangon 
Heritage Trust (YHT), run by Dr. Thant Myint-U, attaches blue heritage plaques to the buildings it aims to preserve 
and restore to their former glory. One of these buildings is the Armenian church – officially St. John the Baptist – 
which was granted the Yangon heritage status by YHT in October 2014. The same day, the Armenian Patriarch Karen-
kin II from Yerevan arrived in Yangon and unceremoniously sacked the South Indian Anglican priest who followed 
his father’s steps to preach in the Armenian church to the dwindling Armenian congregation. At the moment, there 
are no ethnic Armenians left and the fate of the Armenian church, its priest and the property owned by the church are 
at risk. The paper is based on several years of participant observation in the church, interviews with the last Armenian 
and his priest as well as on printed sources and comparative studies on the status of the other Armenian churches in 
the region with no local Armenian participation.

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— Embodied Archives: A Visual, Sensory and Experiential Approach to Museum Photographs
Christine Horn (Swinburne University of Technology)
In this paper, In this paper I discuss how museums photographs, whose relevance is usually framed in terms of their 
visual content rather than their materiality, can connect visual and sensory, experiential and embodied approaches to 
knowledge based on the return of 1500 museum photographs from the Sarawak Museum in Malaysia between 2010 
and 2013.
Museum practices have in the past been focused on Western models of creating and disseminating knowledge, while 
alternative or Indigenous curatorial practices were often not recognised as such. Senses beyond the visual were ex-
cluded through the “visualist” models that governed the creation of knowledge in Western culture. At first glance, 
photographs seem to fit neatly into this “visualist” approach. However, a close connection exists between photographs 
and oral history, which includes the re-telling of stories and legends as well as social exchanges such as debates and. 
The social interactions that constitute the performance of oral history are not only oral versions of textual information 
but include other embodied and sensory experiences. During my research with the Sarawak Museum photographs 
participants from the source communities provided embodied interpretations of the museum photographs through 
performative and experiential means that exceeded textual and verbal descriptions. Although museums have had 
little room for such performative contexts and the embodied and experiential methods through which knowledge can 
be created and transferred, these are part of the social context of their artifacts and collections. These different kinds 
of embodied knowledge have the potential to provide additional layers of knowledge about museum collections and 
their social contexts. Photographs, which can be considered to be among the visualist methodologies employed in sci-
entific disciplines such as anthropology, can provide a method of engaging with these sensory and embodied cultural 
contexts of museum artifacts.
— Participatory Cultural Mapping: The Pachit-Oraphim Cultural Routes of Northeast Thailand, Laos, and Cam-
bodia
Rungsima Kullapat (Independent Scholar) 
This paper explores the relationship between place and movement as expressed in the literature of early Siam. It 
expands the idea of “map” as an imaginative construct and legitimates cultural routes as ways to understand “other” 
concepts of people and place. Pachit-Oraphim cultural routes provide links between local people and their nations in a 
differently understood Southeast Asia. These routes and their settings relate different landscapes and historic layers to 
natural and cultural diversity. As living cultural routes, the places of the past remain in the present. Thus, these routes 
show the authenticity and integrity of real sites and local people’s knowledge of their place’s legends.
The project’s research methods were interdisciplinary: surveys, in-depth interviews, focus groups, site visits in three 
countries and three Thai provinces, and comparisons with similar European, American, and Asian cases. Cultural 
mapping information came from stakeholder participation: 10 Buddhist abbots, 25 local scholars, 30 local govern-
ment employees, 250 students, and other local people.
Five Pachit-Oraphim sub-routes were identified. These are part of an international body of local legends stretching 
from Phimai, Thailand, to Angkor, Cambodia, to Wat Phu, Champassak, Laos. Altogether, these routes total more 
than 2500 kilometers and consist of three World Heritage sites and at least 29 other sites related to the route, including 
sanctuaries, relics, monuments, temples, historic towns and villages, ponds, etc. Local people use these place names 
as blueprints to communicate from past to present. Participatory Cultural Mapping produced a map and handout 
as interpretative tools which local people use to illustrate the meanings of sites for visitors. The designation for the 
brochure and map as Pachit-Oraphim routes enhances the meaning and knowledge of villages and towns otherwise 
hidden by urban development.
— Creating a New Heritage for ASEAN? Imagining Transboundary Love in Thai Novels
Morakot Meyer (Mahidol University)
 
This paper examines four Thai novels recently written in the framework of ‘The Literature for ASEAN Project’ under 
the patronage of the ASEAN Association-Thailand (AAT), a body founded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2008. 
Penned by Prapatsorn Sewikul, a celebrated novelist and diplomat, ‘Chafanthungthoethookkheuntheemeesangdaow’, 
‘Meemekbangnaibangwan’, ‘Raknaimanphon’ and ‘Kritmalaga’ are the first outcomes of AAT’s effort at promoting 

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awareness of ASEAN among the Thai public and at enhancing the Thais’ friendship and understanding of other 
ASEAN countries. 
‘The Literature for ASEAN Project’ forms part of a wider initiative for ‘learning to know our ASEAN counterparts,’ 
which Thai authorities and business organizations have undertaken in preparation of the launch of ASEAN Economic 
Community (AEC) in 2015. The campaign includes advertisements in public spaces as well as TV programs and nu-
merous publications featuring stories about the cultures and customs of the other ASEAN member states. 
Among these varied cultural products, Prapatsorn Sewikul’s novels are unique in focusing on love and intimate rela-
tions between Thais and other ASEAN citizens as well as love and intimacy of others in ASEAN. Prapatsorn’s themes 
breaks with the patterns of the genre prevalent in Thai literature. Novels have long served as a space in which Thai 
national identity is reproduced, reinterpreted and reimagined. But tales of love across boundaries usually involve all-
Thai couples. Transnational intimacy between Thai and foreign lovers is rare and often ends in tragedy or separation. 
This paper draws on theories in cultural studies to analyze such imaginations of transboundary love presented in the 
four AAT novels by Prapatsorn. It will also discuss to which extent these works of fiction can be considered emergent 
form of ASEAN heritage.