ABSTRACT
This chapter intends to show how modern developments in Indonesia are affecting ancestral cults with a focus on change in ‘sacred sites’. It articulates what constitutes sacred places and what is affecting them in modern Indonesia, focusing particularly on the way pre-Islamic rituals have been reinterpreted in an Islamic mode, a question that has attracted academic attention to recent discussions about Islam as a discursive field. The chapter outlines how Gumai concern with origins operates in everyday life and the ways in which relevant ritual offices are inherited. Sacrificial animals are slaughtered in the name of Allah by men, and the internal organs and feathers are removed immediately. Tombs of village founders or descendants of village founders constitute another favourite pilgrimage site. A person whose wish has been granted returns to the tomb with his or her family and holds a gathering near the ancestral grave in the old village site.
