Traditional Andamanese pottery forms which can be traced back about 2,000 years at least.
17. The Andamanese
Pottery, Tools and Technology
by George Weber
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Table of Contents
What is lacking |
What is lacking
It would be unfair - but not very - to say that the technology of the Andamanese could best be described by what it lacked. A list of technological marvels that they traditionally had to do without must at least include the following:
Central to Andamanese life, but strangely peripheral to its religion as far as we know, was the Fire. We know so little of the real spiritual life of the undisturbed Andamanese cultures that this impression might be mistaken. There are some hints that this is indeed so - common to all Andamanese groups is a reluctance to discuss their religious beliefs.
Individuals quickly sickened and even died without a physically and psychologically comforting fire burning nearby at night. In their humid climate - with a rather damp "dry season" and a truly wet "wet season," merely to keep a fire going was no mean achievement. Uniquely among living human groups, the Andamanese did not know how to kindle new fire. Their inability, when first reported, was received so skeptically that one early observer was moved into the following outburst of fury:
Those eminent anthropologists who study savages from their firesides in England, and criticize and contemn the work of observers on the spot from their own lofty standpoint of ignorance (possibly because the results of those observers' work do not agree with their preconceived theories), are persuaded that the Andamanese must know how to make fire, or must have some word in their language showing that they formerly knew how to make fires. The fact however remains that the Andamanese do not know, and , judging from their language, never have known, how to make fire. They are very careful of their fires, always carrying smouldering logs with them when they travel either by sea or land, and so sheltering the stock log that even in the most inclement weather the fire does not become extinct. Should such a mishap however befall a village, the people would go to the next encampment and obtain fire from there. According to a story resembling that of Prometheus, fire was stolen from Heaven and has never been allowed to become extinct since.
Controlled use and preservation of fire (by keeping fires going that were started by nature, e.g. lightning) among humans goes back at least 1.5 million years, i.e. to times before modern Homo sapiens. The ability to make fire without the help of heaven, by rubbing sticks, with drills or by striking stones, has been traced back archaeologically among human groups to about 10,000 years. Since the methods used for making fire-making are rather difficult to prove archaeologically, artificial fire-making may be much older. It has been speculated that the Andamanese received their fire from an active volcano such as Barren island. This does not seem very likely. From the legends of the Andamanese with their stories of the fire being thrown around the sky by spirits, fire would be far more likely to have been acquired from lightning strikes. In Chapter 25 "Legends" we report some of the stories the Andamanese told each other around their camp fires regarding the origin of fire.
No reliable eyewitness accounts exist on how exactly the Andamanese moved fire when travelling: groups on the move did not welcome inquisitive outside visitors. Observers only saw freshly-settled groups with open fires already blazing. We know that migrating groups of all sizes routinely carried their fire with them, the glowing embers protected in clay pots and wrapped in large leaves. Additional smouldering logs were often deposited in protected dry places under tree roots as reserves and perhaps also for religious reasons. Among the Onge, some territorial boundaries were marked by small clearings in which one or two logs were kept smouldering. Woods were selected for the ability to smoulder for long periods without going out or bursting into open flame. Whenever a full fire had to be kindled, dried leaves were pressed against the smouldering log.
The tool that impressed the Andamanese most on first contact with the British were the fire-making matches.
Fire was also invested with spiritual properties but these are strangely few:
Council fires, or fires burnt on special occasions, are not among their institutions; even the household fire is not held sacred, or regarded as symbolically of family ties, and no rites are connected with it; there are no superstitious beliefs in reference to its extinction or pollution, and it is never employed literally or figuratively as a means of purification from uncleanliness, blood, death, or moral guilt.
This description certainly oversimplifies since at least among Onge fire and smoke was traditionally used as protection against harmful spirits. Groups of Onge moving in single file through their forests are customarily led by a male or female leader (melame) who carried a smouldering log. The point of the exercise is to leave a protective smoke-screen above and behind the column. It may be noted here that it is the smoke, not the fire, that is credited with protective powers.
Clearly, we do not know nearly enough about Andamanese beliefs (in any tribe) to make definitive statements on the spiritual role of fire in their society.
Nearly as remarkable as the Andamanese inability to make fire was their ability to make pottery. The oldest known pottery goes back to the first farmers of the Middle East and North Africa, 9000 years ago and the skill has, in antiquity, been restricted to agricultural societies. Hunters and gatherers had little use for easily breakable pottery. The archaeological evidence indicates that pottery was not an original Andamanese invention but appears to have been introduced from outside, possibly from the Nicobar islands. Archaeology has also brought to light the fact that wherever series of dateable pottery shards have been excavated, the quality of the work seems to have deteriorated over time - among all groups. The reason for this remains unknown.
Pottery is very rare among hunter-gatherers and none is known dating back this far among comparable groups. Indications are that someone showed the Andamanese how to make pottery sometime before 500 BC. The Andamanese subsequently seem to have found pottery so useful that they kept making pots until very recently. The methods and the forms used remained virtually unchanged but quality deteriorated steadily over the centuries.
The Andamanese had a very down-to-earth, almost uncaring, attitude towards their pottery: they did not take much care of it, took little pride in it, did not try to improve their skills at it, had no legends and stories on it and attached no religious significance to it. Only the Great Andamanese bothered to decorate their pots. The Onge and Jarawa do not bother - and nobody knows whether the Sentineli use pottery, decorated or not.
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Traditional Andamanese pottery forms which can be traced back about 2,000 years at least. |
The southern Great Andamanese were the only group to ornament their pottery with simple decorations ( (see Chapter 20 "Art, what Art?"). All other groups whose pottery we can trace into the past had plain, undecorated pots. Pots, unlike canoes, paddles, bows, skulls and other important items, do not ever seem to have been painted, even temporarily. The Onge produced pottery that was inferior to that of the Great Andamanese and it was never decorated in any way. The pots of northern Great Andaman usually had pointed and those of southern Great Andaman rounded bases. Since the Onge used both rounded and pointed forms in still more inferior quality, it has been suggested that the Onge had learnt the art of pottery from the Great Andamanese at an early stage. Little is known of Jarawa and but it does not seem significantly different from the known ware of the other groups. Nothing is known of Sentineli pottery, not even if they have any at all..
Andamanese kitchenware never made any claims to aesthetic distinction. Pots were used for cooking, barter, the storage of foodstuffs and for carrying fire. They were articles to be used, not respected. Broken pots were unceremoniously thrown out as rubbish.
Clay of suitable quality occurs in many places in the archipelago with the possible exception of North Sentinel Island. The material was collected and cleaned from impurities such as stones, moistened and kneaded into a consistent mass and rolled on a flat board into long thin "sausages." The potter then built up the rolls, coil after coil, into the desired shape with the required thickness obtained with forefinger and thumb and by scraping off excess material with seashells. The new pot was left for a few hours to dry in the sun before being fired by placing burning pieces of wood inside and outside. Pots often broke during this primitive firing procedure. A new pot, if successfully fired, would be taken into use at once.
Pots did not vary greatly in size: the bigger sorts were mostly for food storage in the main camps and were hardly ever moved, the smaller varieties were taken to the temporary camps and used while travelling. Medium-sized pots often received additional protection in the form of a woven basket that made them easier and safer to carry.
Irrespective of size, all pots were made of the same material and by the same method so that all were of the same rather low quality. Traditional pots were so brittle that their owners were only too happy to change to the sturdier vessels that the sea washed up on their beaches in ever-increasing numbers from the 19th century onwards or that could be acquired from outsiders. Such containers have replaced traditional pottery to the point when the Onge today cannot even describe an earthen pot, never having seen one.
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Containers made of wood and other materials. |
By far the most elegant, beautiful if brittle vessel used by the Andamanese was and still is made by mother nature herself: the nautilus shell. Along with the refuse of modern civilization, this shell is today still washed up on Andamanese coasts by the sea. Unfortunately, the shells are rarely found intact because of their fragility. Less elegant but much sturdier were containers made of bamboo or blocks of wood. Bamboo large enough to be cut into suitable containers does not grow in the archipelago so that this raw material has always been limited to an occasional pole of the giant bamboo from the Asian mainland drifting into local waters. Wood suitable for containers was plentiful but difficult to carve into a useful shape without the help of iron.
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Chipped stone tools from a midden near Austin Strait,
separating Middle from Northern Great Andaman, in what was
formerly Aka-Jeru territory. Max. 2,000 years old. |
A few words must be said here on the use of stone among traditional Andamanese. It is quite wrong to call the Andamanese "pre-lithic," i.e. a people in a state of development before the invention of stone tools. The Andamanese did use pebbles of a suitable shape as hammers, anvils and wet-stones, they used chipped quartz to get shaving knives. They did make stone tools. The archaeological evidence shows that predating intensive contact with the outside world, the use of stone tools was widespread. However, the Andamanese stone technology never reached the sophistication of the standardized tool kits common in many parts of the world hundreds of thousands of years ago.
There is an explanation for the Andamanese reluctance to make better use of stone as a raw material. Nature has scattered a conveniently pre-shaped alternative raw material on Andamanese beaches: sea shells in all shapes and sizes, some naturally as sharp as knives. Such shells could be chipped, shaped and sharpened with much less effort than would have had to go into stone tools. Split bamboo, bones, animal teeth and the grates of large fish could all be used to make or shape tools for which other cultures in less favoured environments had to develop laborious stone chipping technologies.¬Ý
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Bones and animal teeth used as tools, found at the
Chauldari kitchen midden where the oldest forms can be
traced back for about 2000 years. |
Shells were not a perfect raw material, however. Its most serious drawback is the brittleness. The advantages of iron in this respect is so obvious and so overwhelming that even the most conservative Andamanese threw out traditional materials in favor of iron whenever it was available. In the 19th century, stone and shell was largely replaced by then plentiful iron and quartz by shards of glass. The bases of broken bottles made much better chips for shaving than splinters of quartz. This change of materials is clearly reflected in the archaeological record. Iron available in larger quantities (rather than the extremely rare item it was before the 19th century) also revolutionized canoe-making: much larger vessels than the traditional ones became feasible only after adzes with iron heads had become widely available.
See also Chapter 24"Archaeology".
Iron was acquired in small quantities from early times in the Andamans from plundered shipwrecks. This was almost certainly the only source although some legends (see Chapter 25 "Legends") leaves open the possibility of some tiny amount of meteoritic iron having been available to the Andamanese. An analysis of the Andamanese iron implements scattered in many museums could answer this question. That the metal was known in the islands for a long time has been demonstrated by its presence in all levels of the Chauldari kitchen-midden. Iron was rare and precious and only became widely available after the arrival of the British in 1858. A characteristic noted as early as 1771 by the British surveyor Ritchie was the Andamanese greed for iron. When four Andamanese visited Ritchie's ship at anchor in Diligent Strait near the archipelago that today carries his name
I [Ritchie] gave them some nails, and bits of old iron, which pleased them much; and about 3 in the afternoon, they went into the canoe, and tried hard to pull the chain plates from the vessel's side. They went astern when this would not do, and dragged strongly, and long, at the rudder chains; but these were too well fixed; and at last, they went towards the shore at an easy rate, looking at their nails, and singing all the way.
Although the Andamanese have had more than 2,000 years of experience in using iron, they never adapted their working methods to the material. They simply cold-hammered the bits of iron acquired (nails, etc) into the desired rough shape. Fine-shaping was done by grinding on whet-stones. Jarawa and Sentineli today still make arrow-heads in this way. The thought of using the heat of fire to make the iron more malleable seem never to have occurred to them while their open fires, of course, never generated the heat necessary to melt the metal.
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Adze and knife. |
Canoes were made with adzes, a tool that had only one other function, to dig graves. It is yet another of the many hints at a forgotten Andamanese religion that we can only note without offering an interpretation. Adzes with wooden handles and stone blades have been part of the human tool box for as long as 35,000 years but they became widely used in Europe only around 8,000 years ago when they were in demand for clearing forests and the hollowing out of dug-out canoes. Knives were made of iron by preference but traditionally split bamboo was used for a sharp blade. Another sharp tool, used as a planing knife or as spokeshave was the unaltered curved boar's tusk. All these could be sharpened on whet-stones and none were used as weapons; they were just working tools.
There was no great variety in types of weaponry and no distinction was made between hunting and fighting gear. Like all Negrito groups, the Andamanese main weapon was and still is the bow-and-arrow. The bows of the other two Negrito groups still show many similarities to those of the Andamanese even though their separation must date back tens of thousands of years. Through close contact with neighbouring groups, the Semang and Aeta have acquired additional types of weapons such as blow pipes and arrow poisons, weapons that are unknown in the Andamans.
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The genealogy of the Andamanese bow according to Radcliffe-Brown. |
Hunting and fighting was men's work and so it was only natural that bows were a major interest of all Andamanese males. None of them went anywhere without their bow and a good supply of arrows. Each made his own weapons and spent a good deal of time and effort making and maintaining them. With so much effort and attention lavished on bow construction and design, the isolated groups over the centuries developed many different styles which can be brought into some sort of evolutionary sequence based on form alone. It is unfortunate that bows have to be made of perishable wood. It would be a near-miracle to find an ancient bow in an archaeological excavation. If stone arrow heads had been used, at least the presence of the bow-and-arrow combination at some time in the past could be confirmed - but the Andamanese never seem to have used stone points.
In contrast to their pottery, the Andamanese bows and arrows - and especially those of the Great Andamanese - were not only highly efficient hunting weapons, they were also beautifully elegant and often painted works of art.
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A display of southern Great Andamanese weaponry. |
The Onge cut their bows with an adze from straight wood and planed them but did not polish or ornament them. The ends of their bows had notches at both ends for the bow-string with the ends identical so that the bows did not have identifiable up or down sides. Size varied between 130 cm (51 in) to 190 cm (75 in) with an average around 160 cm (63 in). This makes for large bows in a people with an average body height of under 150 cm (59 in). Toy bows made for young boys were simply scaled down versions of the adult bows with an average length of around 100 cm (40 in). From the few examples of Sentineli bows that have been acquired over the past century by museums, it seems that theirs is similar to the Onge bow but somewhat wider in the middle and rather flatter in cross-section. Both Onge and Sentineli bows in cross-section are somewhat convex inside, towards the marksman, and much more convex away from him with both ends ending in a notch on which the bow-string could be fastened. Sentineli bows were rather smaller, ranging in size from 140 cm (55 in) to 156 cm (61.5 in). While Onge bows are never decorated, some Sentineli bows have been found with simple parallel lines.
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Fig. 17-7. Andamanese bow forms. |
The Jarawa had and maybe still have two types of bow in use. The first is identical to the Onge bow. The other, known as the Jarawa bow or modified Jarawa bow, is of a different type and apparently developed from the Onge bow under the influence of the southern Great Andamanese bow. The Jarawa bow is large: it averages 185 cm (73 in) length and 5 cm (2 in) width in the middle. The cross-section over most of its length is either plane or concave on the inside with a central rib running down its length.
The Great Andamanese bows came in two different but related forms: the southern and the northern bow.
The southern bow (karama), unlike the Onge bows, was not cut from a straight piece of wood but from a branch that had actually grown in a curve. Once a suitable branch had been selected, it was cut and shaped with an adze and then planed with a boar's tusk. Some southern bows were made so large that they cannot possibly have been intended for use: specimens vary from 180 cm (71 in) to an enormous 220 cm (87 in) with the most usual size around 190 cm (75 in). The inner side was kept slightly concave with sometimes a raised keel running down the middle. The bow reached its maximum width of 5.5 (2 in) before the middle where it narrowed sharply but increased in thickness to form a handle. The ends were not identical in length so that there was a clear upper and lower part. Both ends tapered off in a round cross-section over which the loop of the bow-string could be pulled. Southern bows were always decorated with permanently incised pattern. More short-lived were pattern painted in red and white clay which were not renewed when they had worn off. The southern Great Andamanese also knew a toy bow for boys that seems to have had a slightly different lineage from the main bow. With around 120 cm (47 in) these miniature bows were still rather large in relation to their tiny owners.
The bow of the northern Great Andamanese (chokio) probably derived from the southern bow but was not identical to it. Northern bows were smaller, ranging in size between 153 cm (60 in) and 182 cm (72 in) with an average size of around 160 cm (63 in) and a width at the widest part of between 6.5 cm (2.5 in) and 7.5 cm (3 in). Northern bows were never decorated, they were much lighter and more elastic, easier to handle and an altogether more efficient weapon than their southern cousins. On the other hand, the northern bow did not last as long and broke more easily. There was also a northern toy boy with a length between 90 cm (35.5 in) and 120 cm (47 in) made from bamboo and rather different from the adult bow. This toy bow was the only Andamanese bow to be more convex on the inner than on the outer side, the exact opposite of the conventional cross-section.
A group of northern Andamanese using their bows for fishing (photograph from Radcliffe-Broewn, ca. 1906).
Great Andamanese bow making (as photographed in the 1890s by M.V. Portman):
1 Choosing and cutting the wood
2 Shaping the wood with an adze (originally stone, later iron)
3 Fine shaping
4 Polishing
5 Fitting the bow-string
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The best bow is useless without arrows and these, in the Andamans, came in two main types: as fish and as pig arrows. Common to all Andamanese arrows was the absence of feathering; in this they differ from the arrows of the other two Negrito groups. Common to all three Negrito groups are the detachable arrow-heads. It is likely that this refinement goes back to common roots. The attached illustration shows the various types so that we need not waste time in describing them in detail, especially since the arrows did not differ much between the various Andamanese groups.
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Different types of arrows were used for different
purposes |
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Arrows were hardened in a slow fire |
Multi-pronged fishing arrows with between two and four heads were used in the Onge-Jarawa group, including the Sentineli but such arrows are also known from the Great Andamanese where they seem to have been less common. The preferred material for fishing arrows among all groups was bamboo. Pig arrows with their often detachable heads had to be stronger and more sturdy so that wood was usually used for their shafts and heads. While the arrow point was never made of stone and only sometimes of hard wood, points of cut shells, fish grates and the serrated tails of sting rays were common. Whenever iron was available it was the material of choice for both fishing and pig arrow points.
The length and thickness of arrows varied considerably. Among Great Andamanese they tended to vary between 70 and 110 cm (27.5 and 43 in) with those of the Onge somewhat longer but arrows as much as 150 cm (60 in) length were also reported among Greater Andamanese. Single-pronged fish-arrows, being light and well-balanced, could be shot with sufficient accuracy over about 45 m (150 ft) and could still inflict serious wounds at 90 m (300 ft). Fish-hunters also shot such arrows under water when the deadly distance was, of course, reduced to a few meters. Pig arrows, on the other hand, were heavier and with their detachable head much less well-balanced. They were accurate to a maximum of 14 m (45 ft) only but this clearly was not a significant drawback in the thick underbrush.
The Andamanese with their bow-and-arrow combinations were far from devilishly accurate marksmen. We do not know how often they shot at pigs or fish and missed but we have accounts of hostile skirmishes in which almost all of their shots missed. Still, their hunters managed to shoot enough game to feed their group. From boy to experienced adult hunter, all Andamanese males practiced continuously with their bows and arrows. Even when just walking they would shoot at anything that took their fancy, whether it moved or not, just as long as they were sure to get their arrows back.
Harpoons were made of bamboo for hunting turtle,
dugong and large fish. This was the largest weapon in the
Andamanese arsenal and appeared only after the 1860s when
iron had become plentiful. Before that time nets and
harpoon-arrows were used to hunt for large sea animals.
Having struck his prey, the hunter (standing on a canoe)
could kill and secure his catch only by jumping into the
sea, end-cross of the harpoon line in hand. Depending on the
animal at the other end of the line, this could be a
dangerous undertaking, especially if hunting at night.
Gigs: a traditional weapon for hunting of fish among
all fishing tribes. Spears: although some Andamanese
arrows were so long that they could pass as spears, the
Andamanese did not know spears as such until the 1860s. The
Aka-Bea of the Southern Great Andamanese developed this
weapon after dogs had come into use and even among them it
was used rarely and then only to kill pigs cornered by the
dogs.
Throwing spears were unknown among Andamanese but some arrows were so long that they could occasionally be used as thrusting spears. Rather more widespread was the use of harpoons for fishing, many of them with multiple heads. Large harpoons attached to long ropes were employed to spear big fish, turtles and dugong but these were introduced only after 1858 and may have been copied from outside fishermen. The hunter waited, standing on the large platform of his canoe with his weapon at the ready. Smaller harpoon types with up to 8 points were used like thrusting spears in shallow water on smaller prey. The small harpoons were known to all Andamanese groups, including the eremtaga (jungle dwellers) who had no canoes and who could fish only in creeks and rivers.
Below: a remarkable photograph of 1875 (by E.H. Man) showing the influence the new masters were having on islanders' daily life and technology only 17 years after the British took over. In the foreground is a traditional Great Andamanese outrigger canoe used mostly for fishing. There was no travel over longer distances in pre-British times. In the background is the much longer, new-style outrigger-less canoe that could transport more people over longer distances. The people standing around their vessels are Great Andamanese (some with their traditional weapons) with a supervising Indian Jemadar at the back.
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An Onge outrigger canoe. Unknown photographer, late 1980s. |
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Traditional forms of outrigger canoes and paddles differ in details between the tribes. |
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Fig. 17-11. The 'new-fangled' Great Andamanese long canoe was developed only after 1860 when a previously unthinkable mobility between iAndamanese groups developed and many more people travelled around the islands. The appearance of this type of vessel shows the technological adaptability of the Andamanese when circumstances demanded it. |
Next to building a new community house, making a canoe was the biggest single task in Andamanese life. Andamanese canoes were barely seaworthy and hardly masterpieces of naval engineering. Their navigators were rightly terrified of drifting out of sight of land. The craft were very simple dug-outs, i.e. hollowed out tree trunks, very similar to the dug-out canoes familiar from European prehistory. Sails were unknown, the only power was supplied by paddling or poling. A sophistication were the outriggers that stabilized the craft somewhat. Primitive though the technology was, there was still room for a qualitative gradient between south and north: the Onge canoes were the best while those of the Greater Andamanese were the worst. The Onge were also the most adventurous navigators, frequently travelling between Little Andaman and the southern tip of Great Andaman. Little Andaman is flat and invisible from the southern tip of Great Andaman while the cliffs of Rutland Island can be seen from Little Andaman. There are a number of conveniently placed small islands as stepping stones that reduced the longest distance that had to be crossed at a time to little more than 20 km (13 miles) so that the Onge accomplishment was not quite as great as might at first glance appear. The Onge raids on Car Nicobar are likely to be just stories: no Onge canoe could have safely, let alone regularly, made the 150 km (92 mile) crossing without any stepping stone islands on the way, and come back loaded down with loot.
Any large wave - and there are many of them in the open Andaman sea - could swamp an Andamanese canoe at any time. When one was overturned and its crew thrown into the water, it was all regarded as good clean fun. The canoes were unsinkable and merely had to be bailed out before the journey could resume. Goods carried, if not secured with rope, could be lost in this way, however.
Canoes were made of hollowed-out tree trunks but fire does not seem to have been used in the laborious hollowing-out process. Cutting down a large tree and then hollowing it out was done with adzes and involved a large amount of hard work over a considerable period of time by Andamanese standards, especially if the adzes used in the process did not have iron blades. As soon as iron had become plentiful, larger trees became practical and with them larger canoes.
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Rafts and floaters. |
Selecting and cutting down a tree for a canoe required an experienced eye. Many types of softwood trees were suitable but the tree had to be cut so that it fell in the right direction. This meant that if it was not absolutely straight, the convex side had to come to lie downwards. The trunk had to be cut to the right length and branches removed; next it had to be roughly hollowed out, the bark stripped off and the two ends shaped. Following this, the inside had to be finely finished and the sides and bottom reduced to the right thickness. Caulking was traditionally done with bees wax. Except for the ends, the canoe was cut so that overall it retained the shape of the original tree. The Onge cut the ends square and slanting with a small platform at either end. Onge canoes and those of the Sentineli were the same on both ends with no distinction between bow and stern. The Sentineli also cut the ends squarely but vertically and with only the tiniest of platforms. The Great Andamanese canoes had rounded ends with a small platform over the stern for the navigator and a large one over the bow for the harpoonist.
As the next step in the lengthy process of making an Andamanese canoe, the dug-out was dragged to the nearest beach and tested briefly in the water before its outrigger was attached. All but the very largest Andamanese canoes had outriggers to prevent the vessel with its round keel from turning over. The float was a straight spar of a light wood and was attached to the canoe with between three and eight booms, depending on the size of the canoe.
Additional technical refinements were ballast stones and a stone on which a small smouldering fire could be kept during the journey, an anchor in the form of a larger stone tied to a long piece of rope, some Nautilus shells for bailing out, a bamboo pole and some paddles. On the platform overhanging the prow a few holes were cut to attach the anchor rope and other ropes. For decoration, as good-luck charm or as part of an obscure ritual, turtle skulls were often hung beneath the prow platform.
The traditional outrigger canoes could vary in size from 4-5 m (13-16 ft) for 3 persons up to 9-10 m (30-33 ft) for 10 persons. Very large canoes for 30-40 persons without outriggers were made only after 1858 when iron adzes made their construction possible. When fully laden such large craft tended to be more stable in rough weather without outriggers than the smaller canoes were with them. The large canoes were used for longer-distance travels up and down the islands. They played their part in bringing the Andamanese groups closer together but also helped in the dissolution of traditional Andamanese society by spreading infectious diseases. They were not manoeuvrable enough for fishing expeditions but were often brought along as "mother ships" on which to store the catches of the smaller boats.
Canoes were owned by the man who had chosen the tree from which it was made. Other men helped the owner who in return was obliged to help his helpers when each of them decided on a new canoe for himself. Women did not own or make canoes but they were responsible for decorating them and sometimes for helping to row them. The women painted simple pattern with red and white clay on the inside of the canoe, on the platforms and on the paddles. Such painting was not renewed once it had worn off. Like the canoes, paddles could be made by the men only but were painted by the women. They could vary in size and shape according to the whim of the maker.
In deep water canoes were paddled, in shallow water a man on the forward platform poled the craft along. The large canoes without outriggers had oars copied from the British boats seen at Port Blair. All crafts were steered with a paddle. Andamanese canoes were made of soft wood and so were prone to attack by marine pests and rot. For this reason, they were not left in the water when not in use. The speed with which an Andamanese canoe could move was much exaggerated before 1858. It was soon found that they did not even reach half the speed of the ordinary British gigs then used.
The many myths and legends surrounding Andamanese canoes as well as their archaic construction speak for a considerable age of these vessels. One legend has four people escaping in a vessel of unspecified design when their world was deluged. The Aka-Bea believed that their first outrigger canoe had been introduced immediately after this calamity. It is glaringly obvious that the Andamanese built ships of much lower technical sophistication than those of their nearest neighbours, specifically those of the Nicobarese and of the Moken in the Burmese Mergui archipelago. It is another indication of the basic Andamanese conservatism and possibly an indication of a certain retrograde development that a people who had lived for thousands of years in an archipelago surround by nothing but wind and sea should not even have copied the principle of sailing. They need not have had the idea themselves: sailing ships of many types must have called at or passed in full view of the islands for millennia. The Andamanese, somehow, did not catch on.
So far we have discussed mostly implements made and used by males. The one craft where the Andamanese excelled was women's work: basket-weaving. Not only were woven items made with relatively sophisticated techniques, they were also attractively decorated through variously coloured materials. Even decorative shells were sometimes woven into the males. This is rather a contrast to the often clumsy items made by the stronger sex. Baskets were used for storage and came in all shapes and sizes. They were used to protect portable pottery as well as to wrap and hang up hunting trophies. Mats were used as roofing material and as ground covers to sleep on. Mats could be 1.5 m (5 ft) wide and up to 10 m (33 ft) long. When used for sleeping, the unused portion remained rolled up to serve as pillow. Only the best available quality of calamus cane or rattan was used.¬Ý
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Basket work and weaving. |
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Mats and thatching work. |
There were a number of minor stylistic and technical differences between the various tribes. It is noticeable that items made by men developed further apart in style without advancing much or at all technically while the women made technically more advanced items but did not let their styles drift apart over time.
In order to adjust their personal appearance - important to all Andamanese of either sex and of any age - they filled shells of the huge tridacna bivalve with water and, hey presto, there was a serviceable mirror.
Rope, string and thread had and still have many uses in the Andamans. They ranged and range from ropes attached to harpoons or anchors, to bow-strings and strings needed to hold roofs to house frames, to the strings needed to attach outriggers to canoes, arrow heads to arrows, to the thread and string needed to make nets, baskets and personal ornaments. Rope was made by men but string and thread could be made by both sexes whenever it was needed. Fibres, bark and bast of many different plants could be taken, depending on the planned use.
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Fishing nets. |
Perhaps surprising for a people who never invented the fish hook, the Andamanese made relatively sophisticated fishing nets. Rope nets for catching turtle and dugong could be 150 cm (5 ft) deep and of widely varying length. Such nets were placed in relatively shallow water with stones holding them to the bottom while floats with tassels above the water level marked the position and signalled the movement of any large creature caught in it. Much smaller hand-nets made of string were used to catch small fish and crustaceans by women wading in shallow water. Nets were also used as baskets for storing small items and, often coloured with clay, could be worn around the neck as personal ornaments.
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Torch, cord-maker and torch. |
Men hunted creatures large and small exclusively with bow-and-arrow and harpoons while net-making and hunting with nets was usually left to the women, the men helping only occasionally and briefly with the large nets.
Whether the simple level of Andamanese material culture was the result of being separated at a very early stage of development from the technical progress of the outside world, whether long isolation caused more and more skills deteriorating or being lost altogether, or whether genetic inbreeding among their small numbers was responsible for the faltering inventiveness must remain an open question. There is evidence for all three processes but without a great deal of additional, especially archaeological, research there is no way to establish which of these processes was the decisive one.
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Last change 12 March 2006
