Iron Ancestors: Kris Sajen, Kris Majapahit and Related Objects

This book is about the iron ancestors, these remarkable objects, amulets rather than weapons, material witnesses of an ancestor cult that permeates many phases of Indonesian culture from the earliest times to the present.

The main group and the relatively best-known embodies the all-iron kris with a stylized human being as its hilt. But this book includes other objects, even less known, most of which have found only scant mention in difficult to obtain specialized publications or have been ignored all together. What they have in common is that they are all-iron with an ancestor hilt. That is why the author calls them iron ancestors.