Agricultural Landscape Model Based on the Culture of the Indigenous People of Tana Toraja, South Sulawesi

Abstract

Abstract The interaction between humans and their environment forms cultural landscape. One of the cultural landscape in Indonesia is Tana Toraja. The Tana Toraja indigenous people’s way of life refers to the Aluk Todolo religion which regulates the relationships of between human-human, human-God (Puang Matua), and human-environment. The regulation influences their environment, settlement, and agriculture management. Agriculture in Tana Toraja is managed by the community not only for the economic sector but also to ensure food security and preserve traditional cultural activities. This study aims to identify and analyze the elements that make up the agricultural landscape of the Tana Toraja indigenous people, as well as develop a local culture-based agricultural landscape model. The method using in this research was spatial descriptive method by tracing customary manuscripts (literature review), interviewing traditional leaders, and field observations. This research has identified the elements that make up the Tana Toraja agricultural landscape were hills, rivers and springs, forests, rice fields, dryland fields, gardens, fish ponds (gusean), yards, and cattle pens. Integrated agriculture that is carried out based on local customs is paddy-fish integrative farming, rice-livestock integrative farming, agroforestry, and crop-livestock integrative farming. The form of integrated agriculture can be seen at the macro and micro levels and consists of spatial concepts, vegetation concepts, and circulation concepts. At the macro level, which consists of four landform hierarchies in the settlement landscape, which indicates their philosophy of life, they are successively a sacred place (hill), their ancestral home, the general settlement and agricultural areas, and development area for their subsequent offspring.