Two millennia of socio-cultural development in Luwu, South Sulawesi, Indonesia

The project 'Origins of Complex Society in South Sulawesi' has recorded som e fifty sites contemporary with the meteoric rise of the chiefdom of Luwu b etween AD 1300 and 1600. Six earlier sites, dated between 2000 and 900 year s ago, trace the first importation to this region of glass beads and other exotic goods, the discovery of Luwu's sources of high-grade iron ore, and t he genesis of a local smelting technology. These formative developments pro bably preceded any substantial migration of Bugis-speaking people to Luwu. Hence the Luwu chiefdom developed on a previously established, non-Bugis ec onomic basis. Luwu was not the oldest of the Bugis chiefdoms, but it does p rovide our first evidence of the aggressive organizational skills for which the Bugis became renowned in later times.