ABSTRACT
The regional economic base has largely remained dependent on agriculture and is essentially domestic in nature. The presence of human settlements has been established in what is today the region of Yogyakarta, which predates by far the ‘Javanese agrarian-based interior’ kingdom that built Borobudur and the temples complex of Prambanan. Challenges for Yogyakarta Special Region are to solve employment problems associated with a wide dependency upon agriculture and the need to accommodate structural shifts in employment from agriculture towards an increasingly service-oriented regional economy. Islam penetrated the Kingdom of Mataram from the islamized coast through the Solo and Brantas rivers at that time a main communication thoroughfare from the coast to the region. It is likely that the region had never been fully deserted for any long period of time in the course of shifts of regional power and of population in Javanese history.
