The Karo plateau (see map page 17), at a height of 1 ,200 metres above sea-level, falls steeply 300

metres to the surface of Lake Toba, and is dominated by volcanoes, many of which are still active,
the highest being Sinabung (2,451 metres), which is clearly visible from the main trading town of
Kabanjahe. The rainfall on the plateau is very high and temperatures especially at night are low, fogs
being common in the mornings.

The height of the Karo plateau and its consequent cool wet climate has led to the increasing
importance of cash crops which were introduced by the Dutch; tobacco is grown extensively, and
fruit and vegetables for export to Medan and even to Kualalumpur and Singapore. Rice is grown
increasingly intensively, and dry rice farming has been abandoned in most of the Batak Karo area,
though- it is still an important means of subsistence in the more remote areas. Maize is cultivated
widely, and is a much more important diet element on the Karo plateau that it is in the
comparatively more fertile area of the Batak Toba, around the southern part of Lake Toba. Women
do most of the work in the field as is common in all Batak areas.

However, an increasing population and an increasing need for cash crops is resulting more and more
in the clearing of forest for cultivation; thus the view on the·plateau is open and expansive. This has
wider ramifications: it leads to depreciation of soil values and erosion, and also to less materials
being available for the building of traditional houses, whil:h demand structural members of up 'to 50
centimetres in diameter

Most Batak Karo villages have all their buildings erected within a single settlement area

the Batak Karo settlement is both larger and more random. There are no clearly delineated "streets"
and houses are quite close together, with 3~5 metres between them. The area between the houses
is not cultivated ahd is kept fairly clean by the pigs, which live under the houses with other livestock.
A government decree, not widely observed yet, that pigs should be kept penned is leading to the
disappearance of the bamboo fence around the village, which formerly was necessary to keep the
pigs from roaming. It did not serve as a barricade to enemies as the earthern. ramparts of the Batak
Toba did, but delineated village boundaries. Bamboo is also grown around the boundaries of villages.
The orientation of the traditional houses is according to the direction of flow of the river beside
whiyh the village is built, with the front door of the house directed to the source of the river (julu)
and the back to the end (jahe). They are very large, massive structures, set above the ground on
thick pillars the height of a man, and with a cantilevered beam surrounding the living area. They
were originally intended for from four to twelve jabu (nuclear family), according to size, and because
windows and entrances are comparatively small and the buildings so large, they seem impenetrable
and secretive.

Amongst these houses, which generally look alike except for variations in the shapes of the roofs,
are other traditional structures, very much smaller than the houses, but all built on the same
principle of post and beam with wedged rigid joints. These other buildings are oriented
perpendicular to the julu-jahe direction. There are altogether four different building types: the
house; the /esung, a structure used for pounding rice; the lumbung-padi (called jambur), used for
storing rice still in the husk, and as a sleeping place for young men and male guests; and the geriten,
a charnel house for the skulls and bones of important dead persons. The various roof shapes are
interchangeable amongst these buildings. Regular graves called semin, are located in the cemetery
outside the village boundaries. The cemetery is overgrown and untidy, since the Batak Karo believe
that to clear a cemetery is to clear a path for the dead, and more people would die as the result of
clearing

The Karo ethnic group consists of 5 clans (marga), three of which are represented in' Lingga. so that
the village is divided into three areas, each having its own lesung, big lumbung-padi, and one or
more geriten. A multi-family house will often have a small lumbung-padi or lesung beside it; if there
is not a /umbung and /esung in the traditional form, then there will be a cylindrical bamboo mat tub
for storing rice, and a carved tree trunk for stamping rice. From the lower side (south·west) of the
village, a path leads down to the river and the bathing places, through the bamboo groves which
circle the village. No solid paths are con· structed within the village and generally the area is kept
free of plants. Official meetings used to be held in the bale or open space under the storage area of
the lumbung-padi, but the market place now fulfils this function. Lingga contains a very impressive
collection of buildings, some of which are deteriorating, and attempts should be made to preserve
them.

Kampung Barusjahe (see photos I 4, 26, 28, 29).

The ground of this village, which is about ten kilometres to the north·east of Kabanjahe, is nearly flat
and no mountains can be seen from the village. The buildings are again oriented along the axis of the
river which flows beside the village, and village boundaries are marked by a bamboo fence and
thicket. The village is divided quite distinctly into two, possibly according to clan, with new buildings
between them and predominating in one of the sections. A new geriten and lumbung-padi have
recently been built in the northern section, which is dominated by one very beautiful building built in
the 1930's, the house of the chief's family (see photos 1·3) and its tall complex roof structure towers
16 metres above the ground. Barusjahe is a more open settlement than Lingga, with the houses
further apart, but in other respects, the two villages are quite similar

Kampung Becren

This village is close to Berastagi and the smoking volcano Sibayak (2,094 metres) is clearly visible. It is
much smaller than kampungs Lingga and Barusjahe, however a variation in the buildings can be seen
in that bases of the houses are constructed in a different manner (see: photos 5&6) which has quite
;triking similarities to the bases of the Batak Simalungun buildings. The village seems to be poorer
than the two others mentioned, and the structural members of some of the houses are rapidly being
eaten away by termites. No restoration of any kind seems to have been done yet.

The house (see photos 4- 9, 12-19, 31-34 & 3 7, and drawings pages 30 38).

This is a very large building, containing from four to six fireplaces, one for each nuclear family unit
(jabu) or shared by two jabu. Therefore, between four and twelve families may live in the house, and
with an average nuclear family size of 5 persons {husband and wife and three children) the building
may be home for 20 to 60 persons. The children of the family sleep with their parents until puberty,
when young unmarried males go to sleep in the bale of lumbung-padi, and young unmarried females
join another family in another house. All eating is done with the jabu of origin. The house has plan
dimensions of 17 metres by 12 metres, and height 12 metres. It is symmetrical about both axes, and
since both entrances look the same, it is difficult to tell at a glance which is the principal entrance to
the house: the ju/u-jahe orientation is the only clue.

A Karo house is usually built on 16 pillars which rest on large stones collected either from the
mountain or from the river; 8 of these pillars support the. floor and roof, while 8 are floor supports
only. The distance between the ground and the under-side of the floor is 2~ metres, and this space,
easfly high enough for a man to stand in, is used for the storage of wood and bamboo, and as a place
of shelter for the pigs and other animals (see photo 32). The vertical pillars, which are round and
truly massive {about thirtyfive centimetres in diameter) are interconnected with cross beams which
pass through prepared holes in the pillars. The joints are wedged to make them rigid and the result
is a post and rail fence around the under-side of the house. In the case of kampung Becren the base
of the house is built on horizontal logs built up in a rectangle and connected with vertical pegs, a
construction seen often in the Batak Simalungun area (see photo 6). Cantilevered from the support
pillars is a very large and heavy ringbeam, which surrounds the area. It is about eightyfive
centimetres wide by twenty centimetres thick and is the focal point of the house decoration, being
carved and painted in intertwining non-representational designs, and having the intersecting side
and beams at the corners of the house beautifully shaped. The decoration is continued right round
the house (see photos 7 & 8). The walls are constructed of planks which slope outward at an angle of
about 30° from the vertical to support the eaves. They are tapered at the corners of the house to
account for the outward slope and a beautifully shaped wing member marks the rightangular change
of direction, all being slotted into the ringbeam. In the older houses, these planks are more than 30
centimetres in width but they are generally narrower in the newer houses; in both new and old
houses, they are connected to each other by two rows of intricate lacing of twisted sugar palm fibre
(tali-ijuk), each row of which ends at the corner of the house and at the doors and windows with a
design of lizard's head and feet (see photo 9). The sloping walls may originally have been tactical, so
that the inhabitants could see down the sides of the house and defend themselves against intruders.
The walls are non-structural except for supporting the eaves (the roof is supported on the 8 pillars
referred to earlier) and they may be considered as curtain walls. The two entrar:ce doors and the
usual eight windows are all set in the sloping plank walls

Traditional Building of Batak Karo. 9

above the ring beam. The doors are the full height of the walls but even so just big enough for a
stooping man to enter, while the windows are smaller. All these openings are closed with internal
shutters of solid panels of wood which, when open, lie back on the inside of the sloping walls. The
doors have a double shutter and the windows a single. At night they are secured by bars which fit
into prepared slots and holders on the shutters and jambs. The exterior parts of the door jambs are
generally carved in a fretwork version of the egg and dart pattern. The windows are often roughly
barred, probably to stop children falling out (photo 7). The external surface of the sloping wall is
sometimes painted white with designs superimposed in bright colours. Inside the walls are often
papered with newspaper to stop the cold night wind entering the house. The roof, which from
outside appears to be supported on the slopjng walls, is in fact supported on the interior structure. It
is thatched in the black fibre from the sugar palm (ijuk), which is lashed to a frame of bamboo slats
which covers an under-frame of sugar palm saplings or whole bamboo. The thatch is between fifteen
and twenty centimetres thick and different grades are used, the thickest and toughest being put on
the roof ridge. (photo 4). The lower part of the roof starts in the shape of ·t steep hip to provide
overhanging eaves for all the walls, which are thus protected from the extremely heavy tropical rain.
The upper part becomes a gable roof, the gable ends facing the front and back of the house, or
occasionally as in the case of the chiefs house in kampung Barusjahe, a four angled gable. The gable
ends are filled with very beautifully and intricately woven bamboo mat panels, the variety of
patterns of which is really amazing. The main function -of the gable ends is to enable smoke to
escape from fires inside the house. (photos 3 & 31 ). At the front and back of the house are large
platforms called ture. simply constructed of circular section bamboo 6 centimetres in diameter.
These are used for washing, f0od preparation, waste disposal (including sewerage, which falls
through to the pigs below), and as they are the means of entering the house, the ture are used also
for the reception of guests. Access to the ture is by a bamboo or timber ladder, though old photos
show that the original means of ascent was a single bamboo or sapling cut with toe holds. These are
still used to get into the storage area of the rice granary. Once on the ture there is still quite a step
up to the door of the house. This is made easier by the central floor beam (labah) which penetrates
the ring beam to form a step (danggulan). (photos 7 & 37). The floor of the house is constructed in
two layers about twenty centimetres apart. The lower level is formed of rough planks, with bamboo
laid on top, which rest on the uppermost cross beams which also support the front and back sections
of the ring beam. These planks project to provide some support to the side sections of the ring
beam. The upper floor is of thick planks which rest on beams running the length of the house. The
hearths for the cooking fires are constructed between these two floors so that the bottom rests on
the bamboo and the top is level with the main floor. The sides of the hearths are made from fire
resistant wood and they arc filled with hard earth. Along the middle of the house is a narrow
walkway level with the bottom floor, and along the side walls is often a raised area for sleeping. (see
photos IS & 16). The interior of the house is very dark because of the small windows and the smoke
from fires which has blackened all timbers. The smoke acts as a preservative not only of food but of
the wooden members, which show no signs of deterioration even when exterior members have
been badly attacked by termites or woodcating beetles, or arc grossly weathered. At head level
inside the house, enormous circular beams join the support pillars which penetrate the floor on each
side of the house and these support the roof structure and platforms used for storing food and
household goods. A simple bamboo ladder leads to the storage platform and has a special
significance: when a child is born in the house its umbilical cord must be cut with a sliver of bamboo
cut from it. The large cross beams also support storage cradles which hang above each of the fires.
They hold cooking utensils and food stuffs to be (ICServed, principally maize. (photos 15- -19). The
roof -structure is supported on slender columns resting on these cross beams. These columns in turn
have beams through holes in them and wedged. These roof beams cantilever to support successive
ring beams on which the sloping roof rests and a large ring beam of

10 Traditional BuilclinK of Batak Karo.

circular section, cantilevered from the massive cross beams, gives support to the roof at the lowest
level. There is no crossbracing· in the roof structure except in the plane of the rafters and the frame
which holds the thatch. In fact the whole structure of the house is without crossbracing and for
rigidity and stability relies on rigid joints which are wedged very firmly.
Building materials.

Although almost all of the materials used by the Batak Karo arc of organic ongm, this does not mean
that they are not durable, for hard woods arc used for all important structural members, and these
arc of considerable cross-section ranging from twenty centimetres to fifty centimetres in diameter.
Bamboo and aren palm saplings are used for the roof frames and even these haw a consider· able
life when protected from insects by the smoke of fires, and from the weather by the . ijuk thatch;
this latter need be changed or renewed only every J generations, since if it is laid properly, it
becomes more and more dense with age, and will even last for over I 00 years. The toughest and
most durable part of the ijuk fibre is used for the roof ridge, and the thatch

12 Traditional Building of Batak Karo.

is laid more thickly at the eaves, where it must withstand the torrential rain pouring over it, than it is
higher up the roof. Ijuk is also used as a pad at the junction of all main timber columns and beams,
and between the stone bases and the support pillars. Although customary law decrees its use in this
way, it also smooths out irregularities in the stones or timber, provides an even base for the
columns, and enables firmer wedging. The tough fibre is also twisted into rope which ties the plank
walls together, secures the thatch to the split bamboo roof frame and ties any cross beams which
may need extra securing over and above the peg or wedge. All timber in the old buildings is worked
by hand, with an axe or broad knife, and is left in circular section as felled, with only the bark
removed. or is shaped into square section using those hand tools. Now, however, more and more
milled timber is being used, and nails are occasionally replacing ijuk binding, for example on the
plank walls. When this happens, the lizard head design of the ijuk lacing is painted on. indicating its
traditional significance. In the past, the building of all ada! structures was attended by ceremony and
special rules existed for the timber to be used and the way in which trees were to be felled. As a
consequence of the tradition. timbers were selected and cured very carefully, and the structural
members of houses allegedly 200 or more years old show little sign of splitting, decay or termite
attack. Nowadays, not so much care is taken in selecting timber, a situation which has arisen
because deforestation has markedly reduced the availability of good timber, especially in sections as
large as 50 centimetres. Much of the timber in Karo houses and other buildings constructed within
the last thirty or forty years is splitting badly, while termites, borers and wood-eating beetles are
causing even greater damage. The exception to this is the interior members of the houses where
years of smoke have hardened and preserved the wood, preventing both splitting and insect attack.
Various species of bamboo, both whole and split, are used. The platfurms at back and front of the
house are constructed entirely of whole bamboo, and the lower floor has a layer of whole section
bamboo. It is used extensively both for rafters (whole) and as the thatch frame (split) in the roofs of
all the traditional buildings. It aiso is preserved very well by the smoke from fires in the house
interiors. Tht! only inorganic material used in the construction of the adat buildings is the stone
ba.se to the support pillars. The stones are either from the mountain or the river, and prevent the
timber of the pillars from rotting from rising damp. Altogether, a well maintained Batak Karo house
will last for many hundreds of years and they provide living monuments to the skills of their builders.

The rice barn or granary (see photos 20- 24 and drawings pages 39 43).
This building (called lumbung-padi in the Indonesian language and jambor in the Batak) is a
multipur~ose structure. It is built on three levels above the ground. The first (called the bale) is open
and used for meetings and as a place for the young men of the village and male visitors to sleep on
hot nights. Under this level, on cross beams, timber and bamboo is usually stored. The second level,
which is enclosed, is used to store rice that has not yet been husked, and the third level, in the roof
space, is also used for sleeping, when the weather is cold. The structural system is similar to that of
the house, without cross bracing. The rice barn is usually built on six pillars which rest on stone pads.
A system of beams passes through holes in these pillars below the bale level and the joints are
wedged, the uppermost beams supporting the floor of the meeting area. The storage area for the
rice is in the form of a box with sides sloping outwards, which rests simply on the tops of the pillars
about three metres above ground level. The tops of the pillars are shaped into pegs which penetrate
the main floor beams of this storage area, the floor of which is very strong to support the dead
weight of rice. Small wall columns, also made with pegs at each end, support a shaped ring beam of
large cross section and this in turn supports the simple gable roof, and the light floor of the upper
sleeping level. The. walls of the storage area are formed of timber planks slotted into the beams and
columns and tied together with the usual ornamental ijuk rope lacing. These provide a stiffening to
the structure as do the braced roof panels. The interior of the storage area and the triangular roof
space are often divided up with light partitions and the gable ends are filled with wood panelling
laced together in the lower part and orna~ental bamboo mats in the upper. Access to the rice
storage is via the roof space, a door being provided in the lower timber section of the gable end. A
single piece of bamboo \<ith toe holds cut in it is used to climb up to the door. The roof is thatched
with ijuk tied onto a split bamboo frame supported by rafters which are cross braced. This roof is
very light and can easily be shaken by hand. In some cases ·the ridge beam of the lumbung sags in a
concave curve similar to structures of the Batak Toba and the eaves construction is added after the
main roof, forming a slight upward turn.

Building for rice husking (see photos 25-30 and drawings pages 44 -46).

The building where the rice mortars, called lesung, are kept for public use, is of a simpler
construction than the other traditional buildingS". It is built on twelve large pillars (diameter about
thirty centimetres) which rest on stone pads. Cross- and longitudinal beams pass through these
pillars below floor level and are wedged in place, making the structure rigid. The topmost beams
support the plank floor about one metre above the ground. (photo 25). The 12 pillars are in 4 rows
of 3 pillars each; the six side columns continue past floor level, but the two centre rows of pillars
stop at floor level to support the two lesung. These are very large logs of wood, carved into a roughly
square section and shaped a little like a long boat. The ends are carved into rudimentary heads
(singa) and the upper surface of the lesung has holes, about twentyfive centimetres deep and
twenty centimetres in diameter, carved into it, either in pairs across the width or in a single row
where the log narrows too much for this to be possible. The unhusked rice is put into these holes
and is then stamped by the women with long heavy wooden poles called lalu. When the husks have
been pounded off, the rice is winnowed by being tossed in the air from a flat rottan or bamboo
basket called nderu. (photo 26). The floor where the women stand to pound the rice is of heavy
planks which run the

Traditional Building of Batak Karo. 11

length of the structure, and it is reached by rough steps or a ladder, at both ends of the building. The
six side pillars continue past the floor to support the roof. A cantilevered ring beam supported on
cross beams connecting the heads of the pillars supports the roof structure, (see photo 29), which is
also supported by a centre post, starting at floor level, or resting on the centre beam level with the
ring beam (see photo 27). If the centre post starts at floor level it is usually carved (see photo 26 ).
The roof surface is braced and the ijuk thatch is lashed to a light frame of split bamboo. The roof is a
miniature version of the house roof shape, a hip at the lower level becoming a gable at the top, with
the gable ends again filled with woven bamboo mat.

The charnel house (see photos I 0, II, and drawings pages 41, 48 ).

This is the smallest of the traditional buildings but usually the most complex. The building is erected
by the children of a dead chief or curer and is a tribute to the high honour with which the deceased
is regarded. After death and burial, the bones and especially the skull of the deceased and his wife
are exhumed and kept in tL1s charnel house ( call~d geriten) either in a wooden box or resting on
the floor of the upper platform. The adult children of the deceased bring food as offering to the dead
in the form of rice cakes and coconut, with siri (betel nut) and flowers, at least once a year, and the
deceased arc regularly consulted by people in their family who need advice. This is part of the adat
religion, called Perbe~u which is based on the worship of the spirits of deceased ancestors, the
guardian spirits of which are those of patrilineal kin arxi their wives. The most prominent of these is
any ancestor who died suddenly (si mato sada wati = he who died in one day). The structural
principle of the geriten dosely follows that of the house, but instead of a gable roof at the top, the
ridge is in the form of a cross, thus requiring four infill panels of bamboo mat. Four support pillars of
diameter 25 centimetres rest on stone pads at the four corners of the building, and arc connected by
wedged beams below the first floor level. The ends of the top beams extend to support ihc usual
ring beam which surrounds an open platform area at the first level. These ring beams arc gently
curved upwards and the ends shaped. and they may be carved and painted. The four corner pillars
continue up to support another platform, with a broader ring beam r:nore extensively decorated.
Timber planks arc set into this and slope out to form walls which support the caves of the first
pyramidical roof. It is in this roof space that the skulls arc kept. Access to the roof space is through a
heave-up trapdoor. Four smaller columns, which support the upper roof. rest on the floor of this
roof space, and higher up, the basic structure is again repeated, with ring beam and sloping walls.
Above this is the complex four-peaked roof. A central column which rests on a cross beam
penetrates the top of th.c fourpcakcd rouf to support a miniature copy of the structure, very like a
dow cote. The decoration on a geriten is more elaborate and richer than on any other of the
buildings, and is an indication both of the wealth and importance of the founders, and of the esteem
in which the building and its contents is held.