Representations of the slain enemy

Despite the scarcity of sources it is possible to identify at least one material expression that may have been of great ritual importance to the Engganese in the past. We have come across a squatting figure several times - on women's headdresses, the amulets and the lids of containers - and we have mentioned Modigliani's interpretation of these figures as war trophies. This idea has most likely also been a central concept in other parts of Engganese material culture. Similar carvings - although not the whole squatting figures, but only the heads - occur as knife hilts ^[68] and on house ornaments on the central post and the stairs ^[69].

RMV 2139-2

In all these cases the pictured head is probably the image of a slain enemy; an image that is closely related to the fertility of the family and the soil. One had to kill to be able to create new life. Apparently, on Enggano slain enemies symbolically supported the house. Thus the family living in the house was, as it were, supported by the image of the slain enemy in securing the welfare of the family and in producing new generations. Recent information from field work confirms the important function of the house's central post. Interviews with family leaders on Enggano in 1994 revealed clearly that the central post, also the first post to be placed, was related to the house owner's suku, and was supposed to bring prosperity to the family.

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