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Clothing Contrary to the first European depiction of the Engganese people in the journal of Cornelis de Houtman, which shows them completely naked, both men and women had a large variety of clothes, using fibres, barkcloth, beads, wood, tinfoil, feathers, leaves and grasses. As is often the case, regular daily dress was not very special. Fibres and grasses were used to make loincloths, and roots of trees were used to make bracelets. Belts made of pig hair were worn, although the beautifully decorated ones were reserved for festive occasions. Small barkcloth shirts are known, but there is no clarity about their function and symbolic meaning. The men's headdresses for the mourning period after the death of a relative were rather peculiar, since no similar objects can be found anywhere else in Indonesia. A curved headdress made of banana leaves had to be worn for three months after the relative's death. Modigliani published a photograph of a man wearing such a headdress.
Women's clothing The most conspicuous part of Engganese material culture, however, is women's clothing for large ritual feasts, particularly the kaleak baba, the harvest ritual. Around the hips the women wore belts made of pig hair elaborately decorated with imported glass beads. Red, white and blue beads were especially used, and there are indications that the number of red beads hanging from the main part of the belt represented the number of heads taken for the feast. Glass beads were also used for the necklaces, in combination with a mother-of-pearl ornament. The ornaments are usually decorated with incised geometric designs or - in one rare case - with the depiction of a European ship.
The women's headdresses, epaku, are the most peculiar part of the ritual dress. The epaku consists of a wooden cylinder, on which a squatting figure is carved, and is often partly covered with tinfoil. The tin cannot be found on Enggano, so like the beads it must have been imported. Sticks with chicken feathers were attached to the top of the headdress. In most headdresses that have survived in museums, these sticks are lacking. Only rarely do we see the object in its 'full glory'.
During rituals the wooden cylinders were put over the women's hair and secured with small wooden or bamboo sticks. While dancing the women moved their heads, in circular movements, during which the sticks with the chicken feathers were flung about. Amulets, also with squatting figures, were also worn during these feasts. Long strings of fibres, with or without beads, used to hang from these amulets. [41] The meaning of the squatting figures has long been unclear. Modigliani calls them 'war trophies'. The women's headdresses and the amulets are, however, not the only types of objects in which the squatting figures appear. | | ||||||||||
