“The Bronze Standard” by Deborah Jowitt & Steven G. Alpert
The Bronze Standard
by Deborah Jowitt
In the mid-1970s, I traveled to the Indonesian island of Roti with my Australian friend Suzie Startin, a ceramic and multimedia artist, to explore the techniques used by local women to weave traditional sarongs and cloths decorated with distinctive ikat-dyed figurative and geometric motifs.
At the time, tourism was all but non-existent on Roti. Most people relied on subsistence farming and seasonal tapping of the lontar (palmyra) palm to survive. With just one vehicle on the island, we made our way on foot from the main town of Baa to the coastal village of Nemberala, some two days walk. Vivid impressions of the landscape and the people we met have stayed with me, including our first sighting of a lanky Rotinese man in a ti’I langga (a traditional palm-leaf hat with a glorious horn-like extension) astride a diminutive Timorese pony. We ate the local food, slept on iron-framed beds from the Dutch colonial era, all the while making notes on dyeing and weaving methods.
Our return journey to Kupang, the capital of West Timor, was by sail. Journeys by sailboat or perahu were commonplace between the Indonesian islands then – what takes two hours by motorized ferry now was an overnight journey in those days. Live goats were loaded aboard with an astonishing number of bags and people who seemed terrified of the open sea, most spending the night clinging to the cabin housing with their bleating livestock.
At dawn, the perahu dropped anchor. A young deckhand prepared rice porridge and black tea over a cooking fire in a cut-down oil drum. As we sailed into Kupang harbor, we contemplated a timeless scene: houses clinging to the cliffs like those of a medieval town, myriad boats making their way back and forth, and simple huts where fishermen were repairing their nets.
On the beach, as we moved among the morning crowd, we saw a young Rotinese man sitting on the sand beside a long, flat, metal object. He had a strange tale to tell: his family had barely been making ends meet when he and the members of his family had fallen gravely ill. In a feverish sleep, his father had dreamt that a curious antiquity of great value was buried on their land. As soon as he could, the old man dug in the prescribed spot, exactly as his dream had indicated, and uncovered a long thin intact bronze standard with mysterious markings. According to his son, with this discovery, everyone who had been severely ill suddenly and quite miraculously recovered.
The young man offered it to us for a sum. We were intrigued - the evident age of the object and the symbolic nature of the curvilinear designs incised below the stylized face suggested it had archaeological importance. It was an impressive piece of metallurgy, unlike any contemporary work we had seen, but we were also aware we lacked the qualifications or expertise to assess its provenance or value. Not only that, but we were feeling the pinch – our dwindling funds would not extend to the asking price or even close to it. We thanked the man and walked on.
— Deborah Jowitt
Post Script by Steven G. Alpert
Not long afterward, Deb sent me a snapshot of this standard, but by then, it was too late to locate it. What she had come across was a late Bronze Age, or most likely an intact early Iron Age Janus-faced standard of exceptional size and length (59 x 11 ¾ inches). I later heard that it was sold to the Museum Mpu Tantular in Surabaya. While it is noted in the museum’s Mengenai Koleksi: 1978-79, knowledge of its discovery remained largely obscure until its inclusion in the publication of the classic volume, The Sculpture of Indonesia in 1990 (Jan Fontein: 119) Fontein chronicles the item as described by the local art dealer who sold it to the Mpu Tantular as coming from Roti, which is in fact correct.
Two standards, or “tablets” that are very similar to the one described by Fontein, have also been found on the nearby island of Savu. One was discovered in the hamlet of Kabila, part of the village of Rai Dewa in the island’s Seba district, and has been illustrated by D. D. Bintarti: 1981: 8, B. Kempers: 1988: 591: Plate 22 13a-b, and by Genevieve Duggan: 1997-2020.
Duggan recorded that the Savu standard was found still embedded and encrusted within its original mold, noting that that fact helped to account for its excellent state of preservation. This piece is currently in the Provincial Museum in Kupang. (For an illustration: See Duggan, History of Savu)
The upper half of another standard, also found on Savu and perhaps the second piece alluded to by Duggan, and whose image was unavailable for this article, is now in a private collection. A fourth directly related fragment of a finely cast Janus-faced portion, most likely the central medallion of another standard, is said to have been found on the island of Timor. It is now housed in Yale University’s Art Gallery and is illustrated in our Timor gallery.
That three of the four known standards were found on three different islands only lends to their mystery. Several of Indonesia’s most notable Bronze Age pieces that are not kettledrums were also discovered on the island of Roti. Many of our readers are familiar with the iconic bronze axe with a curving handle from Roti that was found in the kingdom of Landu in 1875, or a bronze axe head that features a human face and whose bit and heel form a delicately curving torso with extended arms. The former is in the Museum Nasional in Jakarta, while the latter is on permanent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was formerly in the collection of Dr. Samuel Eilenberg.
As the mold from Savu suggests, these items may have been part of a regional casting tradition from one central location, or they may have been involved in ritual exchanges or ancient trade patterns. One can perhaps even speculate that may have been the work of a special class of artisans steeped in the knowledge of metallurgy, not unlike the renowned metalsmiths of Ndao, a small island lying between Savu and Roti, whose skills were much in demand in historical times as they worked as itinerant seasonal metalsmiths creating items for other nearby island cultures.
Fontein wrote that the Rotinese standard in Surabaya was given the appellation of “Surya Stambha, or the Standard of the Sun God, Surya.” D. D. Bintarti (SPAFA Digest, Vol. 3, No. 2: 1982) described the Savu standard as being composed of “eight rays” or “spokes” emanating from a “circle which is shaped like a human face or mask” and the decorative patterning of lines, repeated concentric circles and “mask designs which symbolize the sun.” Duggan further describes the central motif as an “anthropomorphic figure'' with “two confronting crocodiles” on each side.
My own interpretation differs slightly from those offered by Fontein and Duggan. I would posit that the central visage on the Roti standard depict demon-like faces with barred, fanged teeth and staring oblong tear-shaped eyes. As someone long acquainted with the art of Borneo, this sort of face is reminiscent of those routinely encountered on the painted shields (kelbit,/kelempit/kilau/talawang) and in the wood carving traditions of some Dayak peoples, notably the Punan Bah’, Kenyah, Kayan, and other artistically related groups.
The concentric circles on the tablet’s body are tattoo-like patterns. When they appear in the superstructure surrounding the demon’s face, they can be interpreted as the “eyes” of multiple stylized creatures. Where the superstructure’s spokes, rays, or radial lines bifurcate around a circular “eye’, one can imagine a creature forming, contracting, and expanding with its mouth agape. As stylized animals, they are, on the one hand, ornamental, but they also suggest the sort of supernatural and protective guise that is conceptually similar to, say, the complex interlinking array of aso often seen in Dayak art. Such supernatural creatures often described as ‘dragon-dogs’ are said to herald, assist, mediate, and protect their owners. This motif is still widely used in Borneo to decorate a wide variety of ceremonial and everyday items. Variants of protective animals surrounding or accompanying a central figure are commonly encountered in many of Indonesia’s local art traditions.
The actual function of these bronze standards remains unknown. Speculations aside, there is one curious note to the discovery of at least two of these bronze tablets. Bintarti describes the Savu standard as being found by a villager named Ama Biddo Padji, where he normally planted sweet potatoes. The night before, Ama Biddo Padji dreamt of an old man who indicated to him where an object of a special account could be found. The next day he dug in his garden plot as the dream indicated and unearthed it. The Roti tablet was also discovered under similar dream-inspired circumstances, as related to Deborah Jowitt in 1974, with the added twist that the old man and his family were all inexplicably cured after that bronze standard was discovered.
Wishing our readership — and the descendants of the makers of the inspiring and qualitatively definitive items that we enjoy on this website — A Merry Christmas, good health, and a return to normalcy in 2021.
— Deborah Jowitt & Steven G. Alpert
Deborah Jowitt is a writer and researcher living in Northland, New Zealand. She has a Ph.D. in History from the University of Auckland.
She met Steven Alpert during his first visit to New Zealand as a Wesleyan University scholar studying Maori Art and Technology. He introduced her to the people and weaving arts of Indonesia and has remained a firm friend for the past five decades.