The edited volume Textiles of Timor: Island in the Woven Sea is the first publication to deal equally with the textile traditions of people from both West Timor, which remains under Indonesian jurisdiction, and the newly independent nation of Timor-Leste, or East Timor. Its publication corresponds with a 2015 exhibit of fifty Timorese textiles at the UCLA Fowler Museum. In 1975 Indonesia seized the former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Political turmoil led the Indonesian government to restrict foreign travel and refuse to issue research permits. With the fall Suharto in 1998 and the establishment of an independent Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste in East Timor in 2002, travel and research restrictions eased in West Timor (Indonesia) and the new nation of Timor Leste began to welcome international scholars making research for this book and exhibit possible.

Roy Hamilton’s “Culture, History and Weaving in Timor,” briefly sketches the linguistic, cultural, and political diversity of the island of Timor, and describes the importance of weaving for the entire island. The majority of cloth handwoven in Timor is intended to be a garment for the living or a shroud for the dead. The crocodile motif appears more within Timor weaving patterns than any other representational form. Several Timor origin stories claim that the island of Timor sprung from the body of a crocodile, regarded by many as the ultimate ancestor and source of life. Another origin story tells of a queen weaving the sea, using fleecy clouds for yarn. Distracted by boisterous children, she raises a shuttle from her loom and tears a rent in sea, creating the island of Timor. Hamilton also describes how narratives in Timor link weaving with lines of succession and political legitimacy.

In “Textile Style Areas in Timor,” Roy Hamilton, Joanna Barrkman, and Rosalia Elisa Maderia Soares describe how the histories woven into the fabric of Timor textiles can be specific representations of the identity of a particular family or household. Hamilton, Barrkman, and Soares then detail how particular combinations of dyeing, ikat, weaving technique, use of color blocking, and particular motifs delineate twenty distinct textile style areas of Timor. Each description of a textile style area is illustrated with photos of textiles in museum collections and in ethnographic context.

In “Plants as the Pivot: The Ethnobotany of Timorese Textiles,” Anthony Cunningham, et al, document the importance of plants for the creation of Timorese textiles. Cunningham, et al, note that in the last forty years the use of natural dyes and handspun cotton has declined dramatically in the creation of Timor textiles, arguing that the loss of knowledge of the use of traditional plants has led to a loss of linguistic terms to describe both the plants and their properties. This loss of knowledge has also compromised the ability of modern weavers to safely negotiate the ritually charged locales where plants were once collected.

In “Early Textiles from Timor,” Ruth Barnes examines evidence for early Timorese textiles. Radiocarbon dates of Timor textiles in the Kahalenberg collection and the Yale University Art Gallery range from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century and the seventeenth to the eighteenth century, respectively. These textiles also include silk, a fiber that could have been brought to Timor as early as the fifteenth century by Chinese traders seeking sandalwood. Barnes then compares these Timor textiles to later examples collected in 1828 and 1829 during the Triton expedition. Barnes concludes that the first set of textiles dates to the period of arrival of the Portuguese and Dutch on Timor and argues that despite the strong evidence of Indian patola influences on design, these textiles do not suggest links between Timor and other parts of the Indonesian archipelago.

In “Textiles of Oecusse: A Personal Account,” Willy Daos Kadati and Anne Finch describe the complex identities of many Timorese due to migration, rival colonial presences, and ultimately the division of the island into two nation states. Kadati and Finch note that while many in Timor are devout Catholics, they retain local beliefs that venerate ancestral spirits, sacred land, and sacred water. Even as people were forced to flee ancestral land due to political violence, their core sense of self remains tied to the region of their sacred land and water. Kadati and Finch note that while in Western Timor the links between origin, identity, and textile motifs are endorsed by local villages and government policies, many weavers in Oecusse are adopting newer patterns developed from European cross-stich patterns that include Western and Catholic motifs.

According to Joanna Barrkman, the expression “she comes with a spindle in her hand” announced the birth of a baby girl and underscored the importance of spinning and weaving in Biboki society. Barrkman notes that the art of spinning cotton is disappearing in Biboki, but that weaving cooperatives like Yaysaan Tafean Pah have begun to commission the creation of their textiles from senior weavers and to create texts on the significance and importance of local textile traditions. Timor weaving cooperatives have thus become advocates for indigenous curatorship of local textiles. These efforts also acknowledge that textiles that once were a part of Biboki everyday and ceremonial life are being reimagined as a form of heritage in need of preservation.

Roy Hamilton and Yohannes Nakah Taromi provide a compelling ethnographic description of the importance of wearing traditional textiles in Malaka Regency during the removal of the Wehali regalia in preparation for the repair of Uma Metan, a ceremonial structure that was once the seat of the Maromak Oan. They conclude that traditional textiles continue to play a crucial role in ceremonial events in Malaka Regency, serving as visually prominent symbols in ritual and political contexts.

In the next two chapters, Joanna Barrkman provides a detailed examination of the textiles of Suai Loro, Camenaça, and the Kemak textiles of Marobo. Barrkman examines the importance of horse blankets in the Suai-Camenaça region as well as the gendered and social symbolism of specific textile motifs and the importance of warp-ikat designs. She also describes the retention of classic textile designs through implementation of strict protocols of production in Marobo. Marobo is divided into an inner sacred domain and an outer secular domain. The inner domain is the hub of ritual activity and the continuity of tradition, while innovation and change are accepted in the outer domain.

Marie-Louise Nabholz-Kartaschoff examines the 1935 collection of ethnographer Alfred Bühler, which provides a temporal snapshot of textile production in Baguia, while cultural anthropologist Jill Forshee poignantly explores the narratives of Fataluku weavers who tell tales linking textiles to origins, social order, and place. Froshee also documents how weavers explore issues like political violence, rupture, loss, change, and regeneration through tales of the loss of heritage textiles and creation of new work.

The publication of such a comprehensive visual and ethnographic documentation of Timorese textiles could only be possible through the collaboration of scholars, institutions, and museums based in Timor, North America, Europe, Australia, and Indonesia. Authors incorporated research data, photographs, and guidance from more than fifty scholars and Timor textile experts, and personally consulted with five private collectors, pairing this material with detailed ethnographic research. Contributors Roy Hamilton, Joanna Barrkman, Willy Daos Kadati, Anne Finch, and Jill Forshee directly address how the recent political violence in Timor contributed to the destruction, theft, and undocumented sale of many heritage textiles. They also examine how despite this disruption, handwoven textiles continue as an important part of the social fabric of the cultures of Timor. The relevance of textiles to Timorese bridewealth practices, funerary protocol, lineage histories, political prominence, and ancestral devotion, as well as an embodiment of ties to ancestors, sacred land, and sacred water, are examined in depth in this volume. Readers are left with an understanding of Timorese textiles as dense social, historical, and ritual texts that should be valued not just by Western collectors for their beauty or laborious production, but also for what they continue to mean to the people who produce, wear, and preserve them in Timor.

--------

[Review length: 1333 words • Review posted on January 18, 2017]