Toraja highlands, South Sulawesi
Kande Api: a nominated site that is quietly changing
One of the ten nominated Torajan settlements, and the one where the tension between preservation and use has been documented most closely.
Kande Api is in Kampung Kande Api Utara, Desa Buntu Barana, in Kecamatan Tikala, north of Rantepao, at around 871 metres. It's one of the ten properties in Indonesia's UNESCO tentative-list nomination, and almost nobody writing about Toraja in English mentions it.
What the nomination describes
A compound of houses and granaries standing in two facing rows, the tongkonan to the south-east and the alang to the north-west, with an open space around twenty metres wide running between them. The ceremonial ground is a raised piece of land about seventy-five metres to the south-west. Limestone cliffs rise twenty-five to fifty metres north of the compound, and their feet were used in the past as the burial place for the Kande Api people.
There's also a church, built in the north-eastern corner of the compound and standing among a considerable number of menhirs.
That detail is worth sitting with. A church surrounded by standing stones, on a site nominated for its representation of an ancestral belief system, inside a compound people still live in. It's the whole argument about continuity and change in one corner of one field. Tongkonan and alang in a compound explains why the arrangement of houses and granaries is meaningful rather than incidental.
What archaeologists found, and it isn't comfortable
This is the part that makes Kande Api worth a page rather than a line.
A study by archaeologists from Universitas Gadjah Mada, published in 2012 by the Indonesian archaeological association, used Kande Api as a case study in the gap between preservation as intended and preservation as practised. What they recorded:
- Residents had moved out into modern houses elsewhere.
- Granaries had been converted from rice storage into guest bedrooms with attached bathrooms, apparently for visitors.
- Three houses and seven granaries had been repaired with corrugated metal replacing bamboo roofing, concrete foundations, and ceramic ornament imitating Torajan motifs.
- One tongkonan, in poor condition, was standing on one field visit and gone by the next, between 2010 and 2011.
Their conclusion was that the repairs had proceeded without regard to authenticity of form, material, technique or layout.
We're not repeating that to scold anyone. Families own these buildings, a tongkonan is ruinously expensive to maintain in traditional materials, and a metal roof keeps the rain out. The study is useful precisely because it refuses to pretend that heritage listing and ordinary life point the same way.
It also explains the count discrepancy on this page: the nomination says eleven granaries, the archaeologists counted twelve, and one house that existed in 2010 does not exist now.
If you go
Kande Api is not set up as an attraction, and that's the point of visiting it. For a compound presented and maintained for visitors, go to the Palawa tongkonan and granary rows instead, and compare.
The cliffs north of the compound held liang, rock-cut burial chambers, and the usual standards apply there: liang burial chambers in Toraja covers them.
People live here. Ask before entering the compound and before photographing anything, and accept that a granary someone sleeps in isn't an exhibit.
We give no fee or opening hours, and we have no photograph of the site we're able to publish, so this page runs without one.
Questions
- Where is Kande Api?
- In Kampung Kande Api Utara, Desa Buntu Barana, Kecamatan Tikala, Kabupaten Toraja Utara, at about 871 metres above sea level. It lies north of Rantepao.
- What is at the site?
- A compound of tongkonan houses and alang granaries facing each other across an open space, a raised ceremonial ground to the south-west, and limestone cliffs to the north whose feet were formerly used for burial. A church stands in one corner of the compound, surrounded by standing stones.
- How many houses and granaries are there?
- The UNESCO entry records 4 houses and 11 granaries. Archaeologists surveying the site recorded 4 tongkonan and 12 alang. The counts were taken at different times and the site has demonstrably changed.
- Is Kande Api well preserved?
- Not entirely. A published archaeological study recorded traditional bamboo roofing replaced with corrugated metal, concrete foundations added, granaries converted into guest bedrooms, and one deteriorated tongkonan demolished between field visits in 2010 and 2011.