Authentic/Adulterated Artifacts: Material Culture and Ethnicity in Contemporary Java and Ifugao

The role of artifacts as ethnic markers has become particularly problematic as the worldhas become a realm of interconnected communities, where the constant intrusion of externalforces and the almost unavoidable need to deal with the outside world could determineinternal affairs and modify the contours of cultural expression. If the artifacts of a cultureare not resistant to change especially in societies subjected to strong external influences, itis proper to ask how changing material culture re-constitutes the ethnicity of its makers. Thisarticle considers how the material culture of people in post-contact societies (Philippines andIndonesia) and the ethnic identity it represents are modified as these people submit to therequirements of external groups while making adjustments in their internal needs. In suchinstances, as I shall try to show, the representation of ethnicity is modulated both by externalintervention and native complicity.