Some matriarchic aspects of the social structure of the southern Tetun of middle Timor

Abstract

A research scholarship of the Australian National University, Canberra, has made possible the preparation and execution of field work, and the completion of this dissertation to be submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Timor is not among the favoured fields of the students of Australia; they have at their disposal a large choice of places and people who are, if not closer than Timor, at least much easier access. Except during the tragic years of World War II, Timor has never been a much heard-of place. About one half of the literature, moreover, is in Dutch, most of the remainder being Portuguese. Insufficiently studied societies to our North are many; even those which have been much studied have problems yet to be solved which are equally many. Timor, and particularly the region known as Belu , has been chosen for its theoretical interest, namely, its alleged prescriptive alliance system. The existence of such a system was probable according to H. J. Grijzen, a ‘controleur’ of the Dutch administration who published a short monograph in 1904. Professor B. A. G. Vroklage, on the other hand who conducted an extensive ethnographical survey of the whole of Belu in 1937 was of the contrary opinion and denied most contemptuously the existence of any form of circulating connubium , although the kinship terminologies which he recorded were not categorically against it.