Atjeh rotan shields — Dutch rotanschilden van Atjeh, “rotan shields of Atjeh” — are, in F. A. Wagner’s Sierkunst in Indonesië (1949), the rotan (rattan) shields that the Atjehers and the Batacks produce as one of the applications of plaiting (vlechtwerk) to military equipment. Wagner mentions the Atjeh rotan shields in the chapter “Vlechtwerk” (Plaiting), in the course of his enumeration of the many uses of plaiting in Indonesian material culture. The Atjeh shields are paired, in Wagner’s text, with the rotan shields of the Bataklanden, and the two together are placed alongside a wide range of other plaited military and personal equipment.
The passage in Wagner
In the section on the applications of plaiting, Wagner writes: “Gevlochten hoofdbanden van Nias en Mentawei, arm- en beenbanden der Papoea’s, sandalen van Java, rotanschilden van Atjeh en de Bataklanden, rotan zaaimandjes der Daya’s, versierd met kralen en munststukken, draagmanden voor allerlei doeleinden, gevlochten vistuig enz. enz. getuigen van de grote plaats, die het vlechtwerk inneemt in het leven der Indonesische volkeren.”
The Atjeh rotan shields appear in this list alongside plaited headbands from Nias and Mentawei, arm- and leg-bands from New Guinea, sandals from Java, rotan seed-baskets from the Dayas (decorated with beads and coins), carrying-baskets for many purposes, and plaited fishing-equipment. The list is, in itself, Wagner’s catalogue of the applications of plaiting to personal and military equipment, and the Atjeh rotan shields are the Atjeh entry in that catalogue — paired with the Batak rotan shields as the Sumatran contribution to the shield-plaiting tradition.
The shields and the plaiting tradition
The Atjeh rotan shields are, in Wagner’s account, a product of the same plaiting tradition that produces the Atjeh *trawang* mats and the Atjeh *koepiah*. The plaiting chapter groups the Atjehers with the Minangkabauers and the Batacks as the principal Sumatran producers of fine plaiting: “Vooral op Sumatra — de Minangkabauers, de Bataks en de Atjehers leveren zeer mooi werk.” The Atjeh rotan shields are thus a Sumatran plaited military equipment, produced by the same plaiting tradition that produces the trawang mats and the koepiah, and distinguished within the Sumatran group by their function — as defensive military equipment, not as clothing or furnishing.
Rotan (rattan) is, in Wagner’s account, one of the principal plaiting materials of the archipelago, used especially in the Buitengewesten (Outer Territories) and on Borneo. The rotan’s hard, glossy outer skin is used for plaiting, while the softer inner pith is removed. The preparation of rotan for plaiting is, Wagner writes, “nog eenvoudiger” (even simpler) than the preparation of bamboo: the nodes are smoothed, the stem is split lengthwise, the strips are scraped clean, sometimes soaked, and dried. The Atjeh rotan shield is thus a product of a simple preparation and a sophisticated plaiting technique — the same combination that produces the trawang mat.
The shields and the Atjeh warrior tradition
The rotan shield is, in itself, a defensive weapon — a piece of military equipment used to ward off blows. In the Atjehnese context, the rotan shield is thus an artefact of the same warrior tradition that produced the reuntjong (the Atjeh dagger) and the Atjeh powder horn. The Atjeh warrior’s kit — the reuntjong for offence, the rotan shield for defence, the powder horn for the musket — is, in this sense, the kit of a warrior who fights both with blade and with firearm, and who carries, alongside his weapons, the plaited defensive equipment that the plaiting tradition supplies.
The pairing of the Atjeh and Batak rotan shields in Wagner’s text is, again, a marker of the northern-Sumatran craft region: the same pairing appears in Wagner’s account of powder-horn carving and silver-wire work, and it confirms that the Atjeh and Batak lands shared, in Wagner’s catalogue, a cluster of craft techniques — plaiting, horn-carving, silver-work — that the rest of Sumatra did not share with them. The rotan shield is, in this sense, the plaiting counterpart of the powder horn and the silver-wire work: a northern-Sumatran craft, shared between Atjeh and the Batak lands.
Significance
The Atjeh rotan shields are, in Wagner’s account, the principal example of Atjeh plaited military equipment — and the only Atjeh object he records in the list of plaited personal and military equipment. Their significance in the larger history of Atjehnese material culture is that they place the Atjeh warrior’s defensive equipment within a northern-Sumatran plaiting tradition that the rest of Sumatra does not share: the rotan shield is the same kind of object as the Batak rotan shield, and the two together mark a regional tradition of shield-plaiting. The Atjeh rotan shield is, in this sense, the plaiting counterpart of the reuntjong and the Atjeh powder horn — the three pieces of equipment that together define the material culture of the Atjeh warrior, in blade, in powder, and in defence.
See Also
- Reuntjong
- Atjeh powder horns
- Trawang-vlechtwerk in Atjeh
- Koepiah der Atjehers
- Sierkunst in Indonesië
- Acheh
- Aceh War
- 1949
Source
Sierkunst in Indonesië, by F. A. Wagner, Insulinde — Serie Handleidingen voor de Kennis van Indonesië, Vol. VI (Groningen, Batavia: J. B. Wolters’ Uitgevers-Maatschappij N.V., 1949), pp. 27, 37.