Fruit Trees Associated with Settlement Sites in The Upper Kelapang Area, Kelabit Highlands: A Preliminary Study.

THE SARAWAK MUSEUM JOURNAL
VOL LXXI NO.92 DECEMBER 2013

Title :
Fruit Trees Associated with Settlement Sites in The Upper Kelapang Area, Kelabit Highlands: A Preliminary Study.

Author :
K.G. Pearce

Abstract:

Fruit trees have been an integral part of the life of the Kelabits who have lived for generations in the Upper Kelapang area. A wide variety of wild fruit trees occurs at Pa Dalih, as documented by Christensen (2002). The Cultured Rainforest: Long-term human ecological histories in the highlands of Borneo is a project running from 2007 to 2010 and headed by Professor Graeme Barker of the University of Cambridge. The project aims to investigate long-term and present-day interactions between people and rainforest in the Kelabit Highlands of central Borneo, so as to better understand past and present agricultural and hunter-gatherer lifestyles and landscapes. It has been established that the Kelapang River area consists of a patchwork of sites formerly occupied by the Kelabit (and associated ethnic groups) who moved around the area and established new settlements governed by factors that included availability of land for subsistence agriculture, intertribal warfare, marriage affiliation, population size and superstitions. The study on fruit trees reported here is a component of The Cultured Rainforest project. The objective of the study was to investigate fruit trees as signifiers of social relationships and more specifically to determine the identity and distribution of selected fruit tree entities (and in some cases, who planted them) in the Upper Kelapang area of the Kelabit Highlands in order to establish which were, and are, important to the Kelabit communities who had occupied this area till today.

DOI:
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How to cite:
K.G. Pearce. (2013). Fruit Trees Associated with Settlement Sites in The Upper Kelapang Area, Kelabit Highlands: A Preliminary Study. The Sarawak Museum Journal, LXXI (92) : 271-302

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