Indonesia has historically been one of the world’s most dynamic sites of cultural interaction along the cross-currents of maritime circulations between the East Asia and the Indian Ocean world. While today it is the world’s most populous Muslim nation, its internally diverse heritage produced out of the historical interactions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Chinese traditions, Christianity, and indigenous cultures provides an incredible wealth of material that has the potential to serve as a particularly rich resource for comparative study to deepen our understanding of the complex heritage of maritime Southern Asia in a broader context.
The modern nation of Indonesia spans the world’s largest archipelago and sits astride some of the world’s most dynamic maritime routes. Historical circulations of commerce and culture from all around the region and beyond to China, India, and the Middle East have shaped the development of myriad local cultural traditions across the islands. The MAHS works to systematically inventory and document the tangible cultural heritage of the country to produce an open access on-line dataset to inform academic studies on the history and culture of the Indonesia, support heritage management plans, and to produce permanent archive of digital resources to preserve historical material that would otherwise be at risk of being lost to future generations.
View our collections of 3D digital models generated from our field documentation and collaborations with museums and private collections across the archipelago – including visualizations of traditional mosques, churches and adat ritual sites as well as stone carvings, wooden statuary, and other artefacts representing a diverse range of Indonesian material cultures.
Browse our library of digitized manuscripts in Malay, Arabic, and local languages from across the Indonesian archipelago.
Read from manuscript collections in Indonesia with texts IIIF processed for deep zoom on our Universal Viewer interface.
Follow the MAHS Indonesia Field Team on their survey documenting the complex history and culture of the ‘Spice Islands’ of Banda in Maluku, Indonesia.
Explore the full dataset of records generated by the MAHS Indonesia Field Team (2020- present) alongside thousands of records incorporated from the Indonesian government’s National Registry of Cultural Heritage.
Explore the Muslim architectural traditions of Indonesia bia a virtual visit to Galeri Kaitetu, established with the support of Aliph in collaboration with the École Française d’Extrême-Orient and the MAHS on the grounds of the Wapauwe Mosque in Kaitetu on the island of Ambon in Maluku, Indonesia.
〒606-8501 京都市左京区吉田下阿達町46 京都大学東南アジア地域研究研究所
