For two centuries, travellers were amazed at the massive buildings found along the rivers that flow from the mountainous interior of Borneo. They concentrated hundreds of people under one roof, in the middle of empty rainforests. There was no practical necessity for this arrangement, and it remains a mystery. In this book Peter Metcalf provides an answer by showing the historical context, using both oral histories and colonial records. The key factor was a pre-modern trading system that funneled rare and exotic jungle products to China via the ancient coastal city of Brunei. Meanwhile the elite manufactured goods traded upriver shaped the political and religious institutions of longhouse society. However, the apparent permanence of longhouses was an illusion. In historical terms, longhouse communities were both mobile and labile, and the patterns of ethnicity they created more closely resemble the contemporary world than any stereotype of 'tribal' societies.

The remarkable longhouses of Borneo remain mysterious. This book describes life within them, and puts them in their historical and ethnographic context.

About the Author
Peter Metcalf is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Virginia. His research in Borneo spans thirty years, and he is the author of many books and articles.


Book Information
ISBN 9780521110983
Author Peter Metcalf
Format Hardback
Page Count 358
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 610g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 23mm