Paper short abstract:

Our paper will focus on how the Dutch architect, Henri Maclaine Pont’s (1884-1971), ‘hypotheses’ (1924-7) have affected professional research in Majapahit-Trowulan archaeology up to the present day.

Paper long abstract:

In 1924-6, the Dutch architect, Henri Maclaine Pont (1884-1971), published his reconstructive plans of the vanished fourteenth-century royal capital of Majapahit based on Prapañca’s description in the Old Javanese text Nāgarakĕrtāgama (1365), literally presenting them as ‘hypotheses’. In 1925-6, the Dutch colonial sugar industry commissioned the architect for a reconnaissance survey on potential irrigation reservoirs in the Mojokĕrto regency. In 1927, Maclaine Pont forwarded this study as his archaeological ‘hypothesis’ on Majapahit hydrology. Despite the Dutch archaeologist, W.F. Stutterheim’s, earlier warnings (1932, 1948), mainstream archaeology continues to laud the architect’s ‘hypotheses’ up to the present day, building on his hydrological theory in a highly irrational manner. In reference to Garrett G. Fagan’s 2006 edited volume «Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public», we analysed Maclaine Pont’s ‘hypotheses’ and their legacy in contemporary Indonesian archaeology. The five themes, which eclipsed the progress in Majapahit-Trowulan archaeology during the past thirty-five years, can all be traced back to the architect’s ‘hypotheses’: namely, (i) his denial of Kĕdaton as the site of the fourteenth-century Majapahit royal palace, (ii) his megalomaniac evocation of Majapahit’s urban sprawl in Prapañca’s description, (iii) his fake identification of irrigation reservoirs, (iv) his anti-Islamic catastrophist theories and (v) his tendency to fight controversial archaeological debates via the media rather than being prepared to defend them in the normal scholarly manner in front of his academic peers.