Headhouse

Sarawak


Whereas the Iban traditionally hung head-hunted heads outside each family’s bilik, the Bidayuh grouped theirs together in the community’s panggah or baruk (communal meeting hall). The heads are no longer believed to protect the village – these days the people of Annah Rais are almost all Anglican (and the Bidayuh of Kalimantan are mainly Catholic) – but about a dozen smoke-blackened human skulls still have pride of place in the headhouse, suspended near an 18th-century Dutch cannon.


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