During my first fieldwork in West Java in 1970, I was struck by the fact that often, when I was being told about a person or event of local significance, the teller would want to take me to the place where this person was buried or where the event was said to have taken place. It was as if being there and seeing the locality was thought to add something extra to what was being narrated. At the time these local icons meant little to me, an outsider, though they obviously seemed to add a significant dimension to the story for the narrator. It was only later that I came to realize the deeper way in which these stories and places were in fact linked. In this article I explore the connection between stories and places with reference to significant forces that are part of people's lives, as well as to the cultural rules (adat) that maintain harmony between them. It will be seen that the veracity of the tales is verified by the significant localities, while in return these gain meaning from the stories, a meaning within which people live their lives.

Since that early fieldwork, and especially in the past decade, considerable attention has been paid to the meaning of the local landscape to its inhabitants (cf. Fox 1997b) and it has come to be realized that things like place names may contain significant, sometimes secret, local information that often may only be told at specific locations and times (cf. Osseweijer n.d.: 5, 8).

The contributions to Fox (1997b), however, generally discuss units larger than the local community, dealing with how "Timor is mapped" or with "Buru as a whole" (Fox 1997b:44, 116). Myths may tell, for example, of the wanderings of the ancestors from their arrival on an island until they settled in a particular place. These narratives speak of the bringing of order and civilization into the wild places, as the protagonist creates points of significance during his journey and in doing so differentiates places within a previously unordered chaos. Along his route, places where the ancestor or founder rested or had a significant encounter are named and often marked by an oddly shaped stone or other natural feature (Osseweijer n.d.:6). The enumeration of a list of these places, a topogeny Fox calls it (1997a:8),¹ is commonly part of the `local' history, while the places themselves may `form a consistent and meaningful grid' upon which ideas about a people's place in the locality may be ordered and expressed (Adams 1979:89). Such points may be religiously sanctioned and become places for meditation and pilgrimage.² Often these lists also have to do with the precedence of one group over another and thus may be used to back up claims to territory or authority; in Java and Bali they may even encompass the state as a whole (Fox 1997a:11).³ Often, then, the enumerated places feature in the myths and accounts of the ruling nobility (Fox 1997a:8) and Fox's use of the term local seems to imply a territorial unit more extensive than a local hamlet.

However, while people living in local hamlets may to varying degrees be aware of the topogenetic tales that define the larger landscape or territory, this larger unit is not where they primarily live. Rather, their lives, especially in the past, were and decreasingly are spent in local hamlets whose territory is correspondingly defined by locally relevant markers. As is shown in Wessing (in press b), in West Java the nature of these markers tend to be quite uniform, although the rules for their positioning are flexible enough to allow for adjustment to the local landscape. The markers are usually located⁴ on the community's boundary and include the grave of the founder of the community as well as a place where the spirit owner of the land (see below) may be venerated.⁵ Other features are communal rice husking block, a kentongan (slit-drum; Wessing 1999b) and a variety of spirit entities that may be located on hillocks surrounding the community. While people may be aware that other communities use markers similar to their own (cf. Appadurai 1995:208), they also know that the significant entities are strictly local. The founder of a community and the nature spirit with whom he made a pact (see below) are figures unique to the local community, as are various other spirit entities residing in the neighborhood.