The structure of the traditional Great Andamanese village with closely-spaced individual family huts.
14. Shelter
by George Weber
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Table of Contents
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For archaeological evidence of shelters in prehistoric times, see Chapter 24 "Archaeology".
Given the islands' climate hot and humid climate with and frequent and frequent heavy rainfall, combined with the apparent Andamanese reluctance to live in caves, a roof over their heads has been a necessity from the earliest days. While Andamanese housing varies in detail from tribe to tribe, all tribes have a number of fairly standardized structures ranging from the one-night shelter to more permanent individual huts, to large permanent communal houses. Most notable is the distinction between (1) small temporary shelters or lean-tos quickly erected by hunting parties, (2) semi-permanent individual family housing and (3) the surprisingly large communal shelters.
The more permanent family huts of a village are a larger version of the temporary lean-to. They are put together more carefully and are far more durable. In the more permanent structures, the roof does not rest directly on the ground at the back but instead is lifted a few feet by short poles. The proportions between the higher front and the lower back varies between the various groups but the principle of construction is the same for all. The Great Andamanese, Jarawa and Sentineli thought and still think nothing of living and sleeping on the dry sandy ground, at most spreading a few leaves during the dry season. Only when the ground is wet did the Great Andamanese construct low platforms on which to sleep. The Onge on the other hand do not like to sit or lay on the ground,whether dry or wet, and their huts always have a platform a few feet above the ground and tied to the four pillars holding up the roof. The huts of all groups can last for years, depending on how much maintenance work is done on them by their owners.
The owners are the nuclear families within a local group. They put up the structures, maintain and use them them seasonally again and again, whenever they are exploiting food resources nearby. For much of the year, however, such huts stand empty with each family owning several such huts within its hunting and gathering territory.
Huts were usually left open on the sides and in front. Privacy was not known within Andamanese groups. Sometimes screens are be made to cover the side exposed to the prevailing winds. Occasionally, if still more protection was needed from the elements two huts would be constructed so that they faced each other, with one roof projecting over the other. The two huts would not be connected structurally in any way; a gap would be left between the two roofs for the smoke to escape. Although such huts at first glance looked like one house, they would still in fact be two completely separate units with two different families as builder-owner-occupiers.
Temporary shelters were similar but not identical in the details of construction among the different Andamanese groups.
The availability of fresh water not far away was also an important consideration when siting temporary or permanent villages.
Villages and camps of the inland groups (the eremtaga), were and are preferably placed away from large trees in an open space surrounded by jungle. Large trees can be dangerous during storms while the nearby jungle provides protection from sun and wind.
The Jarawa strategy for survival involves a larger element of hiding than that of other groups: Jarawa villages are preferably sited on the ridges of hills where they cannot easily be seen. Alone among Andamanese, the Jarawa routinely position lookouts and even clear trees to get a better view of all likely approach routes.
Housing of the coastal groups (aryoto) tended to be hidden in the forest fringing their beaches from where the inhabitants could spot approaching boats early without being themselves seen.
While the Jarawa-Onge tribes usually built permanent huts only for seasonal camps, the Great Andamanese, especially Aryoto groups, combined huts into main camp villages built according to certain traditional pattern. The precise form of a village need not always follow this pattern exactly but was flexibly adapted to local conditions and geography. Such a temporary village consisting of more than a dozen huts but with each containing no less than four or even five fire places has been seen on North Sentinel island recently. Since the Sentineli had, as usual, vanished into the jungle on the approach of the anthropological party, it could not be established just how many families or individuals lived in each hut. It is possible that each family kept more than one fire burning as a defence against insect pests.
The Great Andamanese had communal round huts that consisted of many individual huts built together in a circle. They could be as large as 18 m (60 ft) in diameter and 6 m (20 ft) to 9 m (30 ft) in height, giving shelter to 50 to 80 persons with the capacity to fit in many more during larger festive gatherings. An outer circle of low pillars formed the equivalent of the back of an individual hut with an inner and much higher circle of pillars representing the former front of the hut. In the center there was left an open circle in the roof for the smoke of many fires within to escape while the rain was kept out by allowing one or two of the roof mats to overhang the others at the top. The center ground was used as a communal and somewhat cramped dancing area. The space of one hut was left open to serve as entrance to the whole structure though usually covered with roofing mats down to a few feet from the ground. The roof itself was covered with large rectangular or tapered mats made in exactly the same way as the square mats used to cover individual huts. The last known intact Great Andamanese communal hut was seen and photographed in 1895 and none could be found by 1908.
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The structure of the traditional Great Andamanese village with closely-spaced individual family huts.
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A Great Andamanese communal hut. The picture was taken in the 1880s and shows M.V. Portman with "his" Andamanese. |
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An unusual group of large Great Andamanese communal huts, ca. 1886. (picture by E.H. Man) |
Great Andamanese Aryoto (shore-dwelling) groups tended to place their villages and occasional community house in the jungle immediately behind the beach from where they could observe any approaching vessel without themselves being seen.
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The Akar-Bale tribe lived on Ritchie's archipelago and probably was the first Great Andamanese group to become extinct (sometime around the trurn of the 19th/20th century). This photograph shows two Akar-Bale huts, one with a front protection against sun and rain. Such types of huts among other Great Andamanese tribes were known to be used during the dry season. It is not known whether the Akar-Bale had communal huts. The propped-up wooden item, in the foreground is a sounding board, a kind of drum widely popular among Great Andamanese. (Picture taken by Radcliffe-Brown, ca. 1906) |
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A strange hut of a type not otherwise known. Note the
unusual storage area below the roof - which might be
reaction to storage space needed for supplies received from
the British. (Picture taken by M.V. Portman, late 1890s). |
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Great Andamanese group preparing to set up or repair a
hut |
The Onge are today issued by the Indian welfare organization in charge of them, Samiti, with housing that does not resemble the traditional Onge korale huts (from ko = 'where' and ale = 'children' - 'where the children come from'). The Indian gift houses have not been an unqualified success with the Onge.
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An Onge hut with sleeping platform |
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Temporary Onge shelter. |
The traditional Onge communal hut, beyra, protected its inhabitants from even the heaviest downpours. It was still widely built and used in the 1950s but is not often found today. A beyra consists of a ring of poles held together and bent towards the center by rings of cane, giving the whole the appearance of a beehive or umbrella. This skeleton is then covered with mats made of woven palm leaves. Inside the house there are many sleeping platforms of varying sizes arranged radially all around the periphery on which the Onge sleep with their heads towards the center of the house.
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Layout of a permanent Onge communal hut, used by all families during the wet season.
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While each local Onge group maintained a string of seasonal camps, each group also had one main camp where all families of the group spend the rainy season together in one substantial communal hut.
It was the main camps and to a lesser extent the seasonal camps that built up what we know today as kitchen-midden. These piles of domestic refuse made up of stone chips, shards of broken pottery, bones and above all sea shells took centuries and millennia to accumulate. The highest known reach 5 m (16 ft). Clearly, village sites were moved only under the most unusual and rare circumstances, e.g. when a site was made untenable by the rising sea or when the source of fresh water dried up. Each local group had only its small territory with a correspondingly small number of suitable sites near its limited number of seasonal food producing areas.
The Jarawa communal round houses are closer in construction to those of the Onge than to those of the Great Andamanese but are smaller: a round house of the Jangil was found to be only 4.5 m (15 ft) in diameter and 2.7 m (9 ft) high. It was thought for a long time that the Jarawa had abandoned the construction of round houses during the late 19th century. Certainly none were reported between then and the 1960s. The ceaseless hostilities between them and the Aka-Bea and later with the British they had certainly forced them into a life of hiding and camouflage. Large and permanent structures were thought to have no place in such an adaptation. It therefore came as a surprise then when Indian anthropologists finally established friendly relations with the Jarawa and discovered in 1974 round houses in full use. The inability, for nearly a century, to spot sizable buildings in the jungle may serve as a chastening reminder of what else might have gone unseen and unnoticed by outsiders' eyes.
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Long thought to be extinct, the Jarawa communal hut was
discovered in the 1970s to be alive and well. |
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The only known photograph of what is thought to be a Jangil communal hut, as taken in the 1890s on Rutland Island, probably by M.V. Portman. The structure is remarkably similar to the Sentineli communal hut (see below). Portman never met more than a very few Jangil (see chapter 8). The figures barely discernible in the hut are Great Andamanese trackers that accompanied Portman on most of his excursions and that he used freely to pose as "Jarawas "and "Sentinelis "when the need arose for "realistic" photographs.
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The Sentineli long shelter as described in detail by members of British expeditions to the island during the late 19th century. The Sentineli communal house may be unique (but just possibly shared by the Jangil?) among Andamanese tribes because it is not round but a long, straight, rectangular structure. Known as a "long shelter", this building can be 12 m (40 ft) long, 3.6 m (12 ft) deep and 1.8 m (6 ft) high in front. It looks like a row of many conventional Andamanese lean-to huts lined up side by side. Until 1903 only ordinary lean-to huts had been reported from Sentinel island but in that year a long shelter was discovered. No photograph of it exists and none has been seen again. This is hardly surprising and does not speak against their continued existence: the British before 1947 and later Indian contact parties could not penetrate the island further than the beaches. The Sentineli would build such permanent structures be hidden from view in the forests where no recent expedition has ventured. They may still being built today. |
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Last change 12 March 2006
