Mamboru: History and Structure in a Domain of Northwestern Sumba

Mamboru is a domain on the eastern Indonesian island of Sumba, which over the past two centuries has become well known both as a source of slaves and for its practice of asymmetric prescriptive alliance. After describing the region's history since 1845, Needham draws on his own ethnographic field research to examine the villages and their dependencies, the clans and their segmentation, rank, relationship terminology, and marriage practices.