Uma

Siberut, in the Mentawai Islands

An uma on Siberut is a long house on ironwood posts: an open veranda at the front facing the river, a closed room with one hearth for each household, and a second veranda behind. Uma is also the name of the group that lives in it. There is no chief: the rimata leads ritual and does not command, and decisions are taken together on the front veranda. That is why this building is here — and it is also a difficulty that has to be said plainly, because a building that genuinely has no rank and a building whose rank nobody modelled are the same model. What can be checked is checked; the rest is stated. The second thing: the space is graded front to back like a Palembang rumah limas, but the grade follows what is being done rather than who is doing it. The sun in this model is computed for Muara Siberut, 1.6° S and 99.15° E: the second-westernmost site in the collection.

Carving and figures are a large part of a real uma and are not here: the jaraik is built as a plain board when the carving is the thing itself. Not modelled, for the reason the other packs give. Beyond that: the hearths here are ranged at an even spacing down the closed room, and real arrangements differ from uma to uma; the divisions of the front veranda and the rules attached to them are not built; the animal skulls on the jaraik are not modelled; and every metre here is the author’s reading of ethnographic description rather than a measurement. It should be added that much older writing about the Mentawai is wrong or demeaning, and that the Mentawai are living people rather than a comparison.