With the noro as the highest form of traditional political organisation and fena as the most inclusive territorial unit, at its most encompassing level Buru society is a multiplicity of localised networks of affinity. Noro are exogamous and, with high value placed on the symmetrical exchange of women between two patrilineal noro, sister exchange is an ideal marriage arrangement. It is desirable for a noro to have affinal relations with numerous other noro, but this does not mean every noro has such relations with every other noro, for in reality, marriage relations correlate highly with place. Clans who live near each other, frequently intermarry, while clans who live far from each other do so with far less frequency. This correlation is acknowledged openly such that places are, at least in part, defined by the marriages that occur there. A common way to explain a distant unfamiliar place is to contextualise it as the place where two specific noro ‘marry each other’.

The correlation between place and marriage relations can be seen by taking an example from the Gebhain noro. Around the territory of the Gebhain noro in south Buru are two villages a day’s walk apart, Wae Katin and Wae Loo. Each village has approximately 200 inhabitants or 40 households. In the village of Wae Katin, 50per cent (24/48) of the households are affiliated with the Gebhain noro and in the village of Wae Loo 65 per cent (28/43). In many of the other households there are wives who came from the Gebhain noro, so that in total, 83 per cent (40/48) of the households in Wae Katin and 88 per cent (38/43) of the households in Wae Loo have one Gebhain spouse. Yet in these two villages, the main Gebhain marriage exchange partners are not the same noro.

The best way to see the relation between place and the frequency of marriage relations is to interpret these figures with reference to local geography (see Map 1). Wae Loo is further north than Wae Katin, and thus closer to Lake Rana. More than half of the marriages in Wae Loo are with noro whose origin places are around Lake Rana: Nalbessy, Wae Dupa, Wae Eno and Wae Kolo. The village associated with the Hangwasit noro, called Unet (a migration from the former village located at Ena Biloro), is located roughly equidistant from Wae Katin and Wae Loo. Correspondingly, there are equal numbers of Hangwasit spouses in Wae Katin and Wae Loo. The village of Wae Katin is near the ‘ancestral stream’ (wae moyang) of the Mual noro, at Wae Brapa, as well as being near Mngeswaen, a village associated with the Muals. Wae Katin is also near Fakal, a village associated with the Masbait noro. The numerous marriages with the Gewagit noro in Wae Katin can be explained with reference to the Gewagit origin place, a stream called Erwagit, which is near the (now former) village of Wang Karang Fatan. Between Wang Karang Fatan and the Wae Brapa River, there are several small Gewagit settlements as well.

From the perspective of Buru people, there is thus a strong correlation between place and marriage relations of noro. Even larger areas are conceived of in terms of the fena land of a noro. When I asked people in the interior of Buru about the meaning of Masarete, there was no attempt to identify it as a former regentschap or as a territory with a raja. To them, Masarete was a large area but an area defined as ‘seven villages/lands, seven clans’ (fenar pito noro pito).