Nuaulu Settlement and Ecology

This book is about the pattern of settlement and ecology of the Nuaulu, a group of sedentary swidden cultivators and hunters of southcentral Seram (Eastern Indonesia). It has three inter-related aims: to describe and account for nuaulu settlement; to outline and exemplify a suitable method of assessing the fine inter-action of cultural and ecological variables in small scale communities; and to explore the usefulness of a generative form of analysis in this respect. The fieldwork among the Nuaulu was undertaken between December 1969 and May 1971, and again for three months in 1973. After some basic introductory information, the analysis proceeds by first examining the residential component of the settlement patterns in terms of the processes which determine its location, form and composition. Next, the role of non-domesticated resources in local ecology and the processes of settlement generation in the domesticated component of the Nuaulu environment is investigated. In the final section the general theoretical and methodological issues raised in the introduction are examined in the light of the preceeding analysis.