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Particular knowledges and technologies to predict seasonal changes, or “traditional calendrical systems,” are quite commonly used in farming and fishing activities in developing areas. I continue to collect such cases in Indonesia, especially in the Provinces of Bali and West Nusa Tenggara, in order to clarify their structure and compare them with examples from other parts of Indonesia.

There is area-to-area variation in the cases I have so far collected: (i) systems depending on particular natural events or phenomena that people observe keenly; (ii) systems of calculation relying on simple formulae without observation of natural phenomena; and (iii) systems combining types i and ii. Calendrical accuracy in each type is mainly dependent upon the degree to which intercalation (correction of the gap between calendrical months and particular seasons) is performed properly and routinely.

Apart from these systems, calendrical practices in daily life are important. For example: some fishermen in Lombok have their own way of predicting the appearance of the palolo worm for spawning that differs occasionally from the government’s prediction (that often fails); and when, on occasion, natural events observed by farmers in Bali do not agree with “modern” Balinese calendrical months (because the “modern” calendar is devised by computation alone, not by observation, as previously), some farmers follow their own observation.