Pannell’s paper, which is also focused on a society in eastern Indonesia — the population of the village of Amaya on the island of Damer — examines the politics of precedence within the village structures of a modernizing bureaucratic administration. The focus in this paper, as Pannell phrases it, is on “the conjunction of local origin narratives with the logic and practices of the Indonesian state”. Features discussed in other papers — the multiple origins of groups, their social categorization as indigenous versus immigrant groups, and the contestation of precedence — are also discussed in this paper but they are given new significance in the efforts of local officials to appropriate these traditions to support their authority. The paper is a salient reminder that such appropriations have been a continuing process among the Austronesians.

The three concluding papers in the volume take up these historical themes directly. Biersack’s essay is an extended examination of the Tongan origin structure that has as its “root” the Tu‘i Tonga, covering succession within this title system over a period of more than 150 years. Biersack distinguishes between two ranking schemes and carefully analyses the way in which rivals strove to gain precedence resulting in the eventual ascendancy of juniors over seniors. As another appropriate historical case, Bulbeck presents a meticulous analysis of the politics of marriage in the Makassar kingdom of Gowa during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and of the political manoeuvring based on marriage that ultimately determined succession to positions within the interrelated title systems of Gowa and Tallok. The two cases can be usefully compared since sociologically they both involve processes of apical demotion combined with competition for succession by agnatic legitimation that remains open to alternative forms of succession through cognatic relationships.

Where historical records are available, it is evident that Austronesian origin structures are by no means timeless nor are they as transparent as their justifying narratives purport to claim. The final paper in the volume makes this abundantly clear in its analysis of another area of status complexity within the Austronesian world, that of the Sulu Archipelago. Frake compares the perceptions and pretensions of the Tausug of Jolo Island and of the Subanum of the mountains of Zamboanga with those of various Samalan-speakers, some of whom have distinguished themselves, generally by their reputations for banditry or piracy or by being land-based cultivators, as not part of the general boat-dwelling Sama population. In this complex mix of differently identified ethnic groups, the Tausug claim pre-eminence as the original inhabitants of Jolo Island who have attracted the Sama population as immigrants. Yet linguistically, Tausug appears to be the intrusive group whose language is most closely related to the languages of the central Philippines whereas the Samalan language would appear to have greater antiquity within the Sulu Archipelago. The case makes a valuable conclusion by pointing, once again, to the need to differentiate between the study of indigenous ideas of origin and how they are used in the structuring of Austronesian societies and the study of Austronesian origins that are gradually being pieced together through historical and linguistic research. Both have a part to play in our understanding of the Austronesians.