Precedence in the Formation of the Domain of Wai Brama and the Rajadom of Sikka

The regency of Sikka in east central Flores is an ethnological laboratory in miniature for the study of differentiation in Austronesian societies. Except for an enclave of Lamaholot-speakers in north-eastern Sikka, a Lionese population in the district’s west and small communities of immigrants from Sulawesi on the shore of Maumere Bay, all of the peoples of the regency of Sikka speak dialects of a single language, Sara Sikka, and possess a common cultural heritage. Nevertheless, the district’s Sikkanese population includes communities whose patterns of social organization are quite distinctively different from one another. The most striking differences are those between