Space, Orientation, and Religion: Austronesian Cultural Heritage in Salem Community, Brebes, Central Java

Nanang Saptono1*, Endang Widyastuti2, and Nurul Laili1

The waves of migration of Austronesians community in the early of AD brought the culture of worshipping the ancestral spirits. Remains of this activity were in the form of big stone structures and buildings which often called as megalithic culture. Megalithic monuments are often functioned in a ritual. The elements in the ritual concept developed and mixed with a new religion system. Salem, a subdistrict in Brebes Regency, Central Java Province, Indonesia, is culturally a border for Javanese and Sundanese. Archaeological objects in the form of megalithic structures and buildings widely found in this area and still included in today’s cultural system. This study discusses space and orientation of Tembongraja and Cungging Village settlement, in the Salem Subdistrict. The megalithic traditional rites are still carried out by the community. Megalithic objects are in the settlement spaces that orientated to certain directions. As in the Hindu-Buddhist culture in Indonesia, temples are a place where the gods reside, the megaliths in Tembongraja and Cungging Village believed as a residence for local deities. Through the spatial archaeology approach, anthropology, and history will be discussed the relation of settlement space, megalith, orientation, and religion. The settlements following the slopes, meanwhile megaliths have its own certain orientation. This study starts from the assumption that space is not just topographic adaptation, but a manifestation of a structured cosmos conception. In the Austronesians tradition linked to the ancestor worship and orientation to the mountain as Axis Mundi. Settlement and megaliths in Salem can be understood as a representation of religious landscape which showcasing sustainability and adaptation to local cosmology in the community practices until today.