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Decorations Based on the data presently available, it is very difficult to enlarge on the subject of the decorations on the beehive houses. One is tempted to compare the Engganese situation with other cultural contexts in the Indonesian archipelago. It is, however, dangerous to speculate on this subject, because the available information does not give us many clues. Some of the houses, probably those of important village leaders, had a central post under the floor or the platform. A wooden sculpture was fixed to the top of this, representing the torso, head and raised arms of a human figure. Modigliani [61] states that it concerns the image of a slain enemy, sometimes described as a war trophy. This indicates that a relationship must have existed between war trophies, hunted heads, and house construction; a relationship that can be found in other Indonesian cultures as well. The doors Strangely enough not much is known about the decorated doors of Engganese houses. Modigliani wrote [62] that the doors were mainly decorated with floral designs. He mentions one door with a human figure on it, saying that it represents a child. The lower parts of the door frames were usually decorated with circular or floral designs [63]. In a door frame owned by the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam [64] two figures, male and female, are carved in a position suggesting sexual intercourse. Similar designs were used in canoes, to connect the left and the right boards of the boats.[65] Birds The bird designs on top of the roofs of the beehive houses seem to have had a protective function [66]. Wooden birds are also used to decorate canoe bows, but they might have had a different function in this context.
Based on his talks with an Engganese informant, Kähler [67] suggests that the birds on the bows of the canoes follow the fast-flying herons, and thus make the canoes go faster. Beautiful examples of such wooden birds can be found in the collections of the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde in Leiden and the Museo Nazionale di Antropologia e Etnologia in Florence.
The stairs of the beehive houses in several house models usually have a carving of a human-like face at the top. The style of these carvings is similar to that of the woodcarving serving as a finial of the central house post, to the squatting figures of the women's headdresses, and to their amulets worn during harvest rituals. It is likely that the decoration of the stairs also represents the image of the slain enemy. | |
