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.