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<p>The Toraja cultural landscape represents a living system that unites people, land, and ancestors within an ecological and spiritual continuum transmitted across generations. Tongkonan Sa’pang, one of the traditional settlements within <i>Tondok Lepongan Bulan Tana Matarik Allo</i>, exemplifies this unity through a spatial order grounded in kinship, cosmology, and customary ecological management. In recent decades, however, modernisation, economic pressures, land-use changes, heritage codification, and tourism have begun to disrupt this balance, threatening the continuity of both physical structures and intangible cultural meanings. This condition reflects a broader global trend of heritage commodification, where living traditions risk being reframed as performative heritage products. These challenges highlight the need for preservation strategies that protect not only material integrity but also the symbolic and spiritual values sustaining indigenous life systems. To address this need, the study applies a modified <i>Landscape Character Assessment</i> (LCA) framework designed to capture both tangible and intangible dimensions of the Toraja landscape. This modification is essential because conventional LCA methods, developed within European contexts, focus mainly on visual and morphological aspects, often failing to represent ritual symbolism, kinship-based spatial logic, and cosmological order that underpin indigenous landscapes. The research demonstrates how the LCA method can be reinterpreted and locally adapted to support preservation strategies that respond to ongoing socio-ecological change. The study integrates physical and symbolic data through GIS-based spatial mapping, ethnographic fieldwork, and participatory validation with customary leaders. The findings identify seven landscape character units (LCU(s)) structured into three main zones, reflecting the interconnection between ecological, spiritual, and social systems in the Toraja cultural landscape. The research advances a decolonial perspective that redefines LCA from a technocratic tool into an interpretative framework grounded in indigenous knowledge. Its main contribution lies in developing a community-based, value-driven preservation model that can be contextually applied to other indigenous territories across Southeast Asia.</p>

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Identifying the cultural landscape character of the Toraja indigenous settlement using the landscape character assessment (LCA) method: a case study of Tongkonan Sa’pang

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年6月15日

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  • Ira Prayuni Rante Allo,
  • Firmansyah,
  • Bintang Nidia Kusuma

摘要

The Toraja cultural landscape represents a living system that unites people, land, and ancestors within an ecological and spiritual continuum transmitted across generations. Tongkonan Sa’pang, one of the traditional settlements within Tondok Lepongan Bulan Tana Matarik Allo, exemplifies this unity through a spatial order grounded in kinship, cosmology, and customary ecological management. In recent decades, however, modernisation, economic pressures, land-use changes, heritage codification, and tourism have begun to disrupt this balance, threatening the continuity of both physical structures and intangible cultural meanings. This condition reflects a broader global trend of heritage commodification, where living traditions risk being reframed as performative heritage products. These challenges highlight the need for preservation strategies that protect not only material integrity but also the symbolic and spiritual values sustaining indigenous life systems. To address this need, the study applies a modified Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) framework designed to capture both tangible and intangible dimensions of the Toraja landscape. This modification is essential because conventional LCA methods, developed within European contexts, focus mainly on visual and morphological aspects, often failing to represent ritual symbolism, kinship-based spatial logic, and cosmological order that underpin indigenous landscapes. The research demonstrates how the LCA method can be reinterpreted and locally adapted to support preservation strategies that respond to ongoing socio-ecological change. The study integrates physical and symbolic data through GIS-based spatial mapping, ethnographic fieldwork, and participatory validation with customary leaders. The findings identify seven landscape character units (LCU(s)) structured into three main zones, reflecting the interconnection between ecological, spiritual, and social systems in the Toraja cultural landscape. The research advances a decolonial perspective that redefines LCA from a technocratic tool into an interpretative framework grounded in indigenous knowledge. Its main contribution lies in developing a community-based, value-driven preservation model that can be contextually applied to other indigenous territories across Southeast Asia.