Year: 1981
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: PURSUlTS The settlementWh en in pre-contact times the J aqaj settled somewhere for a longer period of time, they of ten chose a strategic point where their fathers or grandfathers once had planted coconut trees.If there were no such trees, they would soon plant them themselves.Around the settlement they planted a dense strip of banana bushes.It provided the community with fruit and the women with a latrine area.This strip of banana bushes also served as a defence ring.Behind it they could take cover when the settlement was attacked.In times of danger they also built a fence of tree branches and shields in which only narrow openings were left.To further protect the site, the approaches to the settlement were kept narrow and winding, th at is, if the settlement was situated in the forest, a rather unattractive place to people who, like the J aqaj, love the sun and the wide vista of the open plain.The Jaqaj distinguished between a temporary settlement, péoqowb- buaq, and a more or less permanent one, buaq.The latter was "more or less permanent" because the J aqaj were continually on the move.When they moved, the groups that had constituted a permanent settlement now dispersed, each of them settling in a temporary residence in the neighbourhood of their sago-and fishing-grounds.Every settlement consisted of one or more men's houses and, at close quarters, one or more women's houses.The houses were thus situated so that every man could keep an eye on the women's house in which his own wife (wives) was (were) lodged.One should not assume that in a permanent settlement the different men's houses (with their conjoint women's houses) always stood close together in a small site neatly surrounded by banana bushes.This might be the case in a small settlement, but wh en the settlement consisted of several groups, more space was needed.Each group wanted its own corner.The same held true, and even explicitly, in the "temporary" settlements near the sago-and fishing-grounds of the various groups.A rule of thumb in site selection was that the distance between two settlements should J.H.M.C. Boelaars
Source: BRILL eBooks
Author: J.H.M.C. Boelaars
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4299363460