These thoughtful studies assess textiles and their role in discrete micro-enviroments of Indonesia. Most are built on the authors' prologued experience in those environments and each reflects an intense consideration of the problem addressed. Previouse publications on Indonesian textile tend to be broadly based, generalizing about many cloth types from various parts of the archipelago. Often that vagueness was unavoidable because field data did not exist or failed to address in any detail the questions presented by the textile. Happily, now that textile are increasingly recognized as a primary source material, researchers are asking the questions and obtaining the answers that reveal, even more convincingly, how remarkable and important they are in the socio-religious scene of Southeast Asia. While this volume is selective in its subject matter, the essays contribute to a deeper understanding of textile through archipelago.