Sacred places in Ussu and Cerekang, South Sulawesi, Indonesia: Their history, ecology and pre-Islamic relation with the Bugis kingdom of Luwuq

This contribution describes and analyses the sacred places in the environs of the ‘land where the gods descended’ (Reid 1990)—the twin villages of Ussu and Cerekang in East Luwu, South Sulawesi. Ussu and Cerekang were the focus of several months of fieldwork for the ‘Origin of Complex Society in South Sulawesi’ (OXIS) project undertaken by anthropologists, archaeologists and historians (Darmawan et al 1999; Bulbeck and Caldwell 2000; Fadillah and Sumantri 2000). OXIS project members documented the setting and vegetation of the Ussu and Cerekang sacred places, archaeological sites and landscape use in their vicinity, and local understanding of how these places related to stories in the cycle of epic Bugis poetry known as La Galigo. The information additionally allows an empirical assessment of the widespread belief (Andaya 1981:17–19; Pelras 1996, 2006) that the sacred places of Ussu and Cerekang encapsulate the origins of the Bugis kingdom of Luwuq1 during the ‘Age of La Galigo’ at the dawn of South Sulawesi’s history.