Migration and Its Alternatives among the Iban of Sarawak

Chapter 2. A History of Migrations

1. Iban migration: An overview

2. Iban migration: The Engkari basin

3. Iban migration: The Kemena basin

4. Iban migration: The Upper Ensebang basin

Chapter 3. Land Use and Land Tenure

1. Research sites: Physical and biotic characteristics 2. Research sites: Land tenure patterns

3. Research sites: Land use patterns

Chapter 4. Agricultural Methods, Labor and Yields 1. Agricultural methods: Dry land cultivation

2. Agricultural methods: Swamp padi cultivation 3. Agricultural methods: Input and output

Chapter 5. Human Fertility and Population Growth 1. | Demographic characteristics of censused populations

2. Behavioral patterns affecting fertility Chapter 6. Trade and Sources of Income Chapter 7. Summary and Conclusions

VII

Foreword

Writing a few years ago about the Tsimihety people of Madagascar, the anthropologist, Peter Wilson, noted that they did not seem to have a distinctive way of “going about things, at least not a way so well defined that it could constitute a sort of ethnographic trademark”. Instead, how these people acted and thought was “simple and straightforward, devoid of flourish and subtlety, and suited to personal situations”. These observations led Wilson to speculate that many other peoples of the world may in actuality be like the Tsimihety, with unspectacular, flexible, pragmatic, and utilitarian responses to the problems of their existence, and that even some peoples with the trademarks have them only because selected features of their ways and thoughts have been blown up as a result of the esthetic and intellectual predilections of ethnographers and their readers.' If Wilson is right, programs of demystifying many of the peoples of the world and a general overhaul of our ethnographic knowledge are in order. Suggestions along these lines have been made in some of my own recent writings, in which the need for greater attention to people’s responsiveness to changing circumstances is emphasized.”

In Christine Padoch’s monograph on the Iban of Sarawak, that attention is paid. The Iban are a people with whom two trademarks have been associated: inveterate headhunting and prodigal, forest-destroying shifting cultivation. Their headhunting effectively ceased more than half a century ago, but the assumptions made by many scholars are that continual expansion into primary forest and the reckless cutting of it for rice swiddens not only have been but also remain standard Iban practices.

Dr. Padoch’s monograph effectively refutes these assumptions. It does this by showing that various responses other than migration to areas of primary forest are made by Iban when land or other resources available to them become limited. Among the responses described in detail in separate chapters of the monograph are recourse to more conservative cropping-fallow regimes and more labor-intensive farming; increase in rates of borrowing land for swiddens and of temporary wage-labor migration; and decrease in rates of population growth and fertility.

The Iban emerging from the pages of the monograph are accordingly

VIII Migration among the Iban demystified. Like the Tsimihety described by Wilson, they can be seen as pragmatically varying their behavior and responding effectively to the different conditions in which they find themselves. As a result of Dr. Padoch’s field work and her able exposition here, they refute not only the assumptions about expansive forest destruction as an Iban trademark but also the more general, underlying assumptions that have been made about the Iban as well as other shifting cultivators to the effect that their behavior, regardless of whether it contributes to maintaining the environment or to degrading it, is fixed in a static or repetitive pattern. Dr. Padoch’s monograph is one which can be read with interest and profit not only by specialists in Borneo ethnography or the study of shifting cultivation but also by all concerned with developing more dynamic and thereby more accurate models of behavior and change among rural and tribal peoples.

Jakarta, July 1982 ANDREW P. VAYDA

NOTES

1. Peter J. Wilson, “The Problem with Simple Folk”, Natural History 86(10):26-28, 30-32 (1977).

2. A.P. Vayda, C.J.P. Colfer, and M. Brotokusumo, “Interactions between People and Forests in East Kalimantan”, Impact of Science on Society 30:179-190 (1980); A.P. Vayda, “Progressive Contextualization: A Method for Integrated Social and Biological Research in the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Program”, in Proceedings, Workshop on Ecological Bases for Rational Resource Utilization in the Humid Tropics, January 1982, Faculty of Forestry, Universiti Pertanian Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia, in press.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The field research on which this monograph is largely based, was supported by a research grant from the United States National Institute of Mental Health. While it is easy to single out the source of financial support for this project, the debts which I owe for inspiration, information, encouragement and other kinds of aid are indeed very many, and my creditors cannot all be named. I wish to mention a few persons and institutions to whom I am particularly grateful.

For his very valuable and unfailing guidance and support I wish to thank Professor Andrew P. Vayda. It was his suggestion that directed me to conduct research in Sarawak, and his advice and encouragement helped me throughout the many months of preparation, field research, and finally, of data analysis and writing. In preparing for field research I also received great help from Professor Derek Freeman and from Dr. George N. Appell; I wish to thank them both.

For immeasurable help in getting my field work started and successfully completed, I am very deeply indebted to the staff of the Sarawak Museum. The Museum sponsored my research in the State, but the kindness and help of many of the staff far exceeded their official duties. I particularly wish to thank Mr. Lucas Chin, the Curator, Mr. Peter Mulok Kedit, the Government Ethnologist, and Mr. Tuton Kaboy, the Research Assistant. Others of the staff to whom I owe special thanks include Messrs. Joseph Ingai, Loh Chee Yin, Robert Naen and Jameson Buau. I am also grateful to Mr. Benedict Sandin, former Curator of the Sarawak Museum, for his valuable information and advice. |

While in Sarawak I was aided frequently by members of other government departments, particularly by the staffs of the District Offices in Lubok Antu, Serian and Bintulu. Among the very many individuals who gave me help, I especially wish to thank Mr. Joseph Manggie, the Community Development Officer in Serian.

For their valuable assistance I also thank many officers of the Forest Department of Sarawak. I wish particularly to thank Mr. Paul Chai, Forest Botanist, and his staff, whose insights and advice taught me far more about Sarawak’s forests than just the scientific names of the plant specimens that I

X Migration among the Iban brought in for identification. My thanks go also to Mr. Philip Ngau Jalong, District Forest Officer in Bintulu during the period of my research there, and to his family for their kind hospitality and for much advice which I value highly.

Many members of the Agriculture Department also offered help and advice, among them I wish to thank Mr. Chin Thian Hon, the Rice Botanist. My thanks go also to members of the Medical Department, including the staffs of the Dispensary at Lubok Antu and the General Hospital in Simanggang, as well as to officers of the Department of Land and Survey in Kuching.

For their great hospitality and support I am very grateful to Albert and Mary Kedit, to other members of their families in Kuching, Miri, and Singapore, as well as to other members of their household and to their many kind friends. I have missed their company and advice greatly. For their hospitality in Kuching, Simanggang and Kuala Lumpur I also wish to thank D. Leake, S. Bjorge, A. Deissinger, M. Primiani, G. Meschede, and J. Hungate. And for his innumerable kindnesses I thank Capt. Armit Tilchner.

My greatest debts for help, advice, hospitality, inspiration, and instruction are due the many people with whom I spent the longest and most pleasant part of my time in Sarawak, that is, the residents of the many Iban longhouses where I lived and which I visited. My very closest associate during those years was Patricia Limau anak Pantau, my assistant, companion and friend. She participated in every phase of field data collection, including a few very trying, exhausting and disheartening times. My debt to her is immeasurable. I am indeed very greatly indebted to all the residents of the longhouses at Nanga Jela and at Sungai Pelai and many other communities along the Engkari River and its tributaries, along the Batang Ai, Undup, Kemena, Sebauh, and Labang Rivers. Neither the names of all my neighbors, teachers and friends nor the many instances and kinds of help I received from them can be enumerated. My debt to them all is immense; I hope that they found my residence among them amusing, and that they will find these results of my research not displeasing.

I wish also to thank many friends and colleagues who at various times read and commented on parts of this monograph. Among them are: William M. Denevan, Michael Chibnik, Alexander Alland, Jr., Paul Heikkila, Steven Romanoff, John J. Ewel, Kathleen McArdle, Thomas Rudel, and Michael Richards.

And finally I wish to thank my parents, Jaroslaw and Irene Padoch, whose understanding, good advice and support have always been and are without measure or equal.

Prefatory Note

Several of the units of measure used in the following chapters may be unfamiliar to some readers and may require some explanation. These units —man-days of labor, gantang (gallons), and acres — are used, in preference to other measures, in order to make the data presented in this monograph easily comparable to the data given in Derek Freeman’s Report on the Iban, and other works.

These units may be converted as follows: a man-day of labor is rather variable, but generally seven to eight hours of work can be considered a day. A gantang or gallon equals 4.04 liters; a gantang of unhusked rice or padi weighs approximately 2.4 kilograms. An acre is in area about two-fifths of a hectare.

Introduction

Rapid change typifies not only advanced industrial countries but even many of the recent ‘‘backwaters” of the Earth. These dramatic transformations, often socially disastrous and environmentally destructive, are frequently contrasted with a pre-industrial past when human populations presumably lived for millenia in unchanging, equilibrated relations with their environments.

While change in pre-modern societies obviously did occur, most accounts of such changes have focussed on the description and explanation of broad evolutionary shifts in population size and resource use. Apart from such major “revolutions” in human adaptations, an equilibrium in man-environment relations, maintained by sensitive, finely-tuned homeostatic mechanisms is widely assumed to have prevailed. The examination and explication of how such equilibrating mechanisms and processes kept ecosystems functioning smoothly has preoccupied many students of the human ecology of traditional peoples.

That rates of societal and environmental change have varied with time and place is patently true, and that in contrast to industrial societies, the resource use patterns maintained by many pre-modern populations allowed for a continued existence in a relatively stable ecosystem is equally indisputable. However, the prevalence of truly unchanging, balanced relationships of populations with their environments has been increasingly questioned.

Following or paralleling similar shifts in emphasis in biological ecology (see Holling 1973; Slobodkin 1968), it has been suggested that constant change and disequilibrium may be far more usual in small-scale societies than is a state of delicate balance. Recent works have argued that even populations which in the long view appear to have been demographically and technologically stagnant, have in all probability experienced significant oscillations and variation in size and demographic structure (Kunstadter 1972; Ammerman 1975); and the existence of any permanently balanced, unchanging agricultural systems has been questioned (Clarke 1971:71). Therefore, it is argued, change rather than the lack of it has tended to be more constant in the history even of pre-modern populations, and patterns of flexibility and change, and processes of adjustment, deserve greater atten-

SS E, eisauopuy]

(10/8 ‘$) buogasuz bug Lanao 189

BOdWe

Asepunog

(euossjaig

Asepunog jeuosjeuseyuy —--——

= uossjata Yina

YOSIN yisid ?

tion and study (Padoch and Vayda n.d.; Vayda and McCay 1975; Grossman 1977; Orlove 1980; Salisbury 1975).

This monograph is an attempt to describe some of the technological, demographic and other adjustments made by groups of shifting cultivators in response to changing environmental conditions, in particular, to variations in resource availability. These changes are neither dramatic shifts from one major “type” of resource exploitation to another, nor are they evidence of a “breakdown” of a system occasioned by overpowering economic or political forces. The descriptions to be given are of several communities of Iban (or Sea Dayak) resident in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. The changes that these communities have apparently undergone and are undergoing are, Iban history suggests, changes that they have repeatedly, with some variation, experienced. And while the environmental changes which are dealt with are influenced by outside events, they are also in large measure effects of the Iban’s own actions. The Iban’s system of resource use, particularly their agriculture, will be described in the following chapters as an example of a system that is “‘self-maintaining but [is] self-transforming too” (Clarke 1971:202).

1. Shifting cultivation: Stasis and change

Although the anthropological and geographical literature abounds in descriptions of the many variants of shifting cultivation, discussions of gradual change in shifting cultivation systems are still rare. With a few notable exceptions (Clarke 1966; Boserup 1965; Brookfield 1962; Brookfield and Hart 1971; Waddell 1972; Seavoy 1973a; Pelzer 1978; Vayda, Colfer and Brotokusumo 1980), discussions of systems of extensive agriculture tend to present them as unchanging; numerous typologies have been proposed marking important differences that are found among shifting cultivators (see Conklin 1957; Watters 1971; Spencer 1966; Miracle 1967), but few suggestions have been made as to whether and how any of the types are ever transformed into any others.

The generally static nature of most descriptions of shifting cultivation systems, however, is one of the few similarities among the descriptions and assessments that have been presented. Shifting cultivation in all areas and in all its variants was until recently (and in some quarters still is) condemned as always wasteful of human, biotic and land resources. Most critical of the practice have been foresters, who decry what they regard as invariably a concomitant of shifting cultivation, the wanton destruction of valuable timbers; they have called shifting cultivation “the greatest obstacle in humid tropical countries... to the conservation of the production potential for the future, in the form of soils and forests” (FAO Staff 1957:9). Agronomists and developers have often echoed these strong condemnations,

VISANOQNT š L >, eS \ om]! Yo, °° P æ. m, S N. o OSNA old 's gnpun eh a S

Asopunog [OU0ISIAIG

SVFIHV ININIOLGV ONY NOISIAIG GNOIIS HVMVYVS labelling the practice of shifting cultivation a “robber economy” (a Dutch colonial epithet quoted in Pelzer 1945:21), and stating that “necessarily, responsible governments look with disfavor on this destruction and have attempted to suppress it” (Grist 1965:164).

In this literature, it is the low and unexpandable level of production of such systems, as well as the accompanying destruction of lands that is reported and emphasized; evolution of shifting cultivation technologies is not discussed.

It has largely been in only the last three decades that researchers, principally anthropologists and geographers, have quarrelled with these long-held absolutely negative opinions, and have presented the practice as, in most cases, a sound and non-destructive way of exploiting resources of a particular type and in particular areas. Ethnographers of several groups of shifting agriculturists, among them the Philippines’ Hanunoo (Conklin 1957), New Guinea’s Tsembaga Maring (Rappaport 1968) and the Kuikuru of the Amazon basin (Carneiro 1961), have stated or implied that the farming practices employed by these populations are not leading to long-term degradation of their physical and biotic environments.

Arguing the case for the basically conservative nature of shifting cultivation systems more broadly, some scholars have suggested that “‘when local populations possess adequate land ranges, their shift cycles usually are ecologically sound and constructive rather than destructive” (Spencer 1966:3). This defense of shifting cultivation implies that neither severe soil erosion nor irreversible successional deflection to grassland usually result from the practice, effects that have often been imputed to it by critics. Furthermore, many recent commentators have suggested that the waste of commercially valuable timbers is also not one of the common results of shifting cultivation. Most shifting farmers, it is alleged, prefer to fell and farm areas of secondary, that is, previously felled, vegetation (Conklin 1954; Goodenough 1959), which contain few scarce or valuable marketable species. In addition, they tend to reuse fields that they have previously farmed. Therefore, not only do most shifting cultivators not destroy the areas they use, they tend to refarm them cyclically, and largely avoid disturbing virgin areas.

The defenders of shifting cultivation as a usually conservative exploitation pattern with ecological effects “no more malignant than those of the more ‘advanced’ alien agricultural technologies” (Ruddle 1974:9), are certainly in most cases correct in their judgements. There has been a tendency, however, for the observations of relative non-destructiveness to be transformed into questionable allegations of the agriculturists’ state of complete equilibrium with the environment, and into implications of changelessness in practices, inputs, outputs, and effects. Spencer describes most groups as “ecologically in balance with tropical environments” (1966:3), and Geertz agrees that

SARAWAK

FOURTH DIVISION j 9 BINTULU AREA J G or? nen Labang NE 9 Bintulu gto f Ng. Sebauh, ® Pandan ae Ss N & 3 <e h y Tatau e, "9, Jorg, Hops.

aot”

when conditions allow for sufficiently long fallows, shifting cultivation is “an equilibrated, non-deteriorating and reasonably productive farming regime” (1966:23). Watters, using every possible term to denote stability states that the shifting cultivator, left alone, will be in a ‘“‘stable state of balanced equilibrium within his ecological environment” (1971:8).

All students of shifting cultivation systems recognize that not all groups maintain balanced relations with their environments: not cutting new forests, not degrading old lands. However, many commentators attribute almost all instances of obviously unstable agricultural situations to modern “outside pressures” which force, supposedly “stable” farmers to “shorten the interval between crops, or to clear unsuitable soils in drier climates” (Bennett 1973:29). Also blamed for upsetting previous equilibria between shifting cultivators and their land resources are “crowding” (also considered an effect of outside forces) and the involvement of such populations in a market economy (Spencer 1966:3). Apart from such examples of “‘breakdowns” of systems allegedly balanced in the past, instances of destructive behavior by shifting cultivators are often attributed to the ignorance of proper practices on the part of former intensive cultivators forced, by land shortages in their home territories, to migrate to previously unexploited lands and become shifting agriculturists (Watters 1971:11; Conklin 1957:3).

The other instances of ‘‘non-equilibrated” farming practices among shifting cultivators are quite few; they include several groups in Southeast Asia who are now, or until recently were, pioneering new territories, and allegedly destroying the lands that they used (Lafont 1959; Freeman 1955, 1970; Geddes 1976). The best documented case of such “integral pioneering” shifting cultivators (Conklin 1957) or “‘lateral-shift” (Spencer 1966) farmers are the Iban of Sarawak, the subjects of the rest of this monograph. Here, I will only point out that such unstable cultivators are commonly considered unusual and aberrant; the Iban’s behavior has been attributed to a ‘“‘warrior’s view of natural resources as plunder to be taken” as well as to a “superior indifference toward agricultural proficiency” (Geertz 1963:27). The Iban have been called “less shifting cultivators than mangeurs de bois” (Geertz 1963:27).

The implication of all the above statements that “real” shifting cultivators are almost invariably in a state of perfect balance with their important resources, has been questioned by a number of scholars. Not only have views of unchanging agricultural systems been attacked as ecologically (Clarke 1971:71) and demographically (Kunstadter 1972) unlikely, but the accusation has been made (see Street 1969; Bennett 1973; Brush 1975) that anthropological and geographical studies of shifting cultivation have not included assessments of environmental variables nor of the effects of historical events (Salisbury 1975) adequate to ascertain whether significant change is going on. Therefore, argue the critics, no convincing statements concerning the stability of these agricultural systems have been made. Among studies so criticized are some of the classics of the literature on shifting cultivation in anthropology and geography (Conklin 1957; Brookfield and Brown 1963; Carneiro 1961; Rappaport 1968). Indeed, having neither accurate historical accounts of past variations in population, agriculture or environmental configurations, nor the time or expertise to detect ongoing, often subtle, biotic, pedological or nutritional changes, many students of shifting cultivation have merely assumed that no significant changes have been or are occurring.

The geographer Street suggests that this essentially static and often erroneous view of shifting cultivation systems arises not only from the limited capacity of most investigators to gather all pertinent information, but also from those investigators’ “tendency to become enamoured of the object of their scrutiny; the [shifting cultivators] appear to be so selfsustaining, so well-integrated into their environment, so in harmony with nature it is hard to believe that they may be damaging the resource base” (1969: 106).

However, even when static, equilibrated relations with the environment are not attributed to shifting cultivators, the description of the resource use patterns that results is often still an essentially static one. For instance, Freeman’s monographs on the pioneering Iban (1955, 1970), as well as descriptions of other pioneering shifting cultivators (Geddes 1976; Lafont 1959), acknowledge that change is occurring in the landscape: virgin forests are transformed into farms, and the fields are then, through overfarming, purportedly reduced to grass-infested wastes. However, the descriptions of the techniques of land use by pioneers tend to suggest that these techniques are immutable; no changes or adjustments other than further migration ever occur. Not only are farmers like the Iban prodigal in their use of their abundant forests, but they are alleged to be addicted to these prodigal methods (Freeman 1955:141); an end of freely available land for Iban, for Miao, and for Djarais, according to their ethnographers, is sure to result in disaster.

I have argued that studies of shifting cultivation have, with a few exceptions, tended to give a static view of the practice; categorizations and typologies of tools, technologies and crops have been forthcoming, descriptions of processes of change and adjustment largely have not. In the case of studies of supposedly stable or established shifting agriculturists the static quality extends to both the human and non-human components of the system: the people using unchanging techniques live within the available resources and the resources renew themselves indefinitely. In the case of pioneering shifting cultivators, it is the destructive agricultural techniques and reliance on migration that have been presented as immutable.

It is certainly the limitations of time and information in the investigations of shifting cultivation that have led to this static emphasis. Neither the tropical grasslands and other evidences of past “unequilibrated” agricultural activity, nor the existence in many parts of the tropics of land and labor-intensive agriculture support views of technological and demographic stagnation. Physical and biotic characteristics of areas obviously change constantly, as do agricultural techniques, labor patterns, crop assemblages, land tenure codes and sizes of populations of shifting cultivators.

Few discussions of these topics in any but the most general terms have been presented. The present study is an attempt to add to these few investigations of variation and change in resource use of particular populations of shifting cultivators.

2. Change in Iban resource use

The discussion of change in behavioral patterns closely affecting resource use of a group of shifting cultivators, which will be presented in the following chapters, is based on data gathered during over two and one-half years of research in several Iban communities in Sarawak, as well as on data found in published sources.

The Iban are not an unstudied group. Their proclivity for head hunting and rapid migration, and their fame as the recalcitrant subjects of an equally colorful ruling family, the Brookes (“White Rajahs of Sarawak”), brought them considerable attention which in turn resulted in a number of historical and ethnographical accounts. These include one of the finest studies of shifting cultivation in the anthropological literature, Freeman’s Report on the Iban (1970) — largely the same as the earlier [ban Agriculture (1955) — detailed accounts of Iban history (Sandin 1967a, b; Pringle 1970), religion (Jensen 1974), warfare (Wagner 1972; Vayda 1976), and of recent changes among urban-oriented Iban (Sutlive 1978), as well as many shorter scholarly works, reminiscenses of colonial officers, journals of expeditions into Iban territory and numerous hardly believable tales of Bornean horrors and heroics.

The picture of the Iban that emerges from the major works (particularly those of Freeman and Pringle) is of a population of aggressive, expanding shifting cultivators and warriors, successfully intimidating and displacing other Bornean groups, and over-farming and destroying the lands they took over. As warriors they have been called “the wickedest headhunters... perhaps in the whole world” (MacDonald 1956:10), and as farmers, ‘‘the prototypical mangeurs de bois” (Bronson 1972:193).

This picture, although accurate for particular periods and areas of Iban occupation, must be now modified considerably. Headhunting effectively ended over a half century ago; pioneering and migration continue, but many

Iban are not the wasteful shifting cultivators of hill rice continually advancing into neighboring high forests that Freeman described (1955, 1970). While I will not attempt to present a discussion of Iban which will faithfully describe all the approximately 300,000 of them in Sarawak (among them today some town dwellers and intensive cash croppers; see Sutlive 1977, 1978), the picture given in this monograph will introduce some variation to the usual description of Iban shifting cultivators of hill rice.

Freeman, in his earlier monograph on Iban agriculture, cautions the reader that his report “is primarily an account of Iban methods of shifting hill rice cultivation in pioneer areas... this means that proper safeguards must be observed before applying any of the findings of this report to other Iban areas” (1955:vii). Nevertheless, his descriptions and conclusions have been heedlessly applied to all Iban in innumerable discussions concerning the group. Even in studies that purport to discuss the agricultural techniques of non-pioneering Iban, the descriptions seem unduly influenced by Freeman’s findings. For instance, Jensen’s summary of the land use of Iban in the long-settled Lemanak river valley: “having exhausted the natural resources of soil, game, and timber of one district [they migrate] to fresh jungle” (1966:7), is hardly plausible as a description of an area which has been continuously settled for over three hundred years.

An indeed unchanging picture of Iban agricultural methods is conveyed by such particularly inappropriate repetitions of Freeman’s observations as that quoted above, together with Freeman’s previously noted contention that Iban are “addicted” to their wasteful methods, and his statement that: ...the action of confining the Iban will — in due course — only aggravate the spoliation it is designed to curtail. As we have seen, Iban methods of land usage are adapted to a system of constant expansion. When the possibility of further expansion is ruled out, the deleterious effects of Iban prodigality become an even greater threat (1955:137).

Although occasional mention has been made in the literature of other farming practices employed by Iban (Freeman 1955:vii; Pringle 1970:26; Leach 1950:64; Sutlive 1978) these are invariably references to exploitation methods used in areas of topography unlike that of Freeman’s research sites, that is, lowlying swampy regions.

However, familiarity with Sarawak’s history and geography leads to the realization that the cultivation of hill rice among all Iban cannot be done as Freeman described it, nor among any Iban as Jensen reported. The fact that there are numerous river valleys in Sarawak which have been continuously settled by Iban for over three hundred years, immediately suggests that land use among all groups is not predicated on constant migration. The further observation that no extensive area of Sarawak colonized by Iban in the past has been voluntarily completely abandoned by them, and all such areas continue to be exploited by shifting cultivation, points to the fact that the natural resources of these areas have not been “exhausted”.

The field research that I carried out had as its principal task the determination of whether and what significant changes appear in Iban patterns of land use as the length of settlement of an area increases, the supply of unexploited land dwindles, and as the frontier recedes. The method elected for studying such changes was the comparison of several Iban communities differing in little but the span of time they had existed in their approximate present locations, and therefore also in the amount of previously unfarmed land they possessed within their territories.

Chapters 2 and 3 describe some of my difficulties in finding research sites where all variables other than the date of first settlement and access to unclaimed land were indeed constant. The intrusion of other variables causes, of course, some difficulties in interpreting the differences in resource use that were detected, and limits the generalizations that can be made. (The unplanned variations that existed in the physiography of the various sites led, however, to my gathering unexpected information on land use among Iban settling lowlying regions, which considerably broadened the generalizations that could be made concerning field site selection in pioneering areas.)

The sites that were chosen for field research included one which had long been settled and farmed by Iban, one that had only recently been invaded, and one area which still included some virgin areas, but had been first colonized by Iban over half a century ago. This last area was added to my research sites primarily as a region where the demographic concomitants of pioneering might be observed; the effects of migration to a virgin area would not have been detectable in the newly settled site as many of its residents had arrived only two years before my research began. Freeman’s research sites comprised several communities (longhouses) in a region largely settled by Iban for about twenty-five years.