Iban Heirloom Beads in an Evolutionary Framework.

THE SARAWAK MUSEUM JOURNAL
VOL LXXV NO.96 DECEMBER 2015

Title :
Iban Heirloom Beads in an Evolutionary Framework.

Author :
Michael Heppell

Abstract:

This paper tests a hypothesis that as early as the first millennium CE before the Iban1 had their cotton to include and developed technologies gins and spinning wheels, they began using beads and cord to construct accessories which led to increasingly sophisticated garments. If the hypothesis has any merit, it will provide suggestive evidence why the Iban eventually treated beaded and cotton garments as two parallel costly signals in the arena of sexual selection. Beaded garments signaled the wealth of a household and the good genes that were necessary to acquire it. Textiles enabled women to promote their desirability as long term sexual partners by signaling their intelligence. Both also signaled a capacity for hard work, a particularly desirable trait in sexual selection. With the Iban, beadwork survived until the end of the 2nd millennium. Examples of a range of beadwork survive to this day. To set the historical context, this paper briefly describes Ibanic migrations (the Ibanic includes a number of groups like the Kantu’ Desa, Mualang, Bugau, Iban and others who speak what linguists call an Ibanic language) from the southwest of Borneo in the Ketapang area to the upper Kapuas and then into Sarawak.2 [Fig. 1] The migrations are interesting to this paper because one Iban group which has good oral histories left the ‘original homeland’ many centuries after the main body and caught up with it in the 17th century but does not appear to have made the same investment in beadwork as other Iban groups.

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61507/smj22-2015-V71Q-01

Download Abstract

How to cite:
Michael Heppell. (2015). Iban Heirloom Beads in an Evolutionary Framework. The Sarawak Museum Journal, LXXV (96) : 1-44

References

Beckerman, Stephen. 2000. Mating and Marriage, Husbands and Lovers, Comment on Gangestad, Steven W., and Jeffry A. Simpson, “The Evolution of Human Mating: Trade-offs and Strategic Pluralism”, Journal of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 573-644.
Bellina, Bérénice. 2003. Beads, social change and interaction between India and South-east Asia. Antiquity, 77, 296, 285-297.
Bird, Rebecca Bliege, Eric Alden Smith and Douglas W. Bird. 2001. The Hunting Handicap: Costly Signaling in Human Foraging Strategies. Behavoral Ecology and Sociobiology, 50, 9-19.
Boyle, Frederick. 1865. Adventures among the Dyaks of Borneo. Hurst & Blackett, London.
Danvers, Frederick Charles. 1896. Letters Received by the East India Company by Its Servants in the East. Vol. 1, Sampson Low, Marston, London.
Dove, Michael R. 1989. The Transition from Stone to Steel in the Prehistoric Swidden Agricultural Technology of the Kantu’ of Kalimantan, Indonesia. In David R. Harris and Gordon C. Hillman (ed.) Foraging and Farming: The Evolution of Plant Exploitation, Unwin Hyman, London, pp. 667-677.
Frazer-Lu, Sylvia. 1989. Silverware of Southeast Asia. Oxford University Press, Singapore.
Francis, Peter, Jr. 1991. Beads in Indonesia. Asian Perspectives, xxx, 2.
Francis, Peter, Jr. 1990. Glass Beads in Asia: Part II, Indo-Pacific Beads, Asian Perspectives, xxix, 1, 1-23.
Freeman, Derek. 1970. Report on the Iban. The Athlone Press, New York.
Hawkes K., J.F. O’Connell and N.G. Blurton Jones, 2001. Hadza Meat Sharing. Evolution and Human Behavior, 22, 113-142.
Heppell, Michael. 2014. The Seductive Warp Thread: An Evolutionary History of Ibanic Weaving. Borneo Research Council, Phillips, Maine,.
Horsburgh, A. 1858. Sketches in Borneo. L. Russell, London.
Howell, Rev. William and D.J.S. Bailey. 1900. A Sea Dayak Dictionary. American Mission Press, Singapore.
Ismail, Pengiran Haji bin Pengiran Ibrahim. 1985. The Craft of the Silver-smith in Brunei. Brunei Museum Journal, 6, 89-106.
Kaplan, Hillard and Kim Hill. 1985. Hunting Ability and Reproductive Success Among Male Ache Foragers: Preliminary Results. Current Anthropology, 26, 1, 131-133.
Lankton, James W, Laure Dussubieux and Thilo Rehren. 2008. A Study of Mid-first Millennium CE Southeast Asian Specialized Glass Beadmaking Traditions. In Peter Sharrock, Ian C. Glover and Elizabeth A. Bacus, Interpreting Southeast Asia’s Past: Monument, Image and Text, 335-355, National University of Singapore Press, Singapore.
Ling Roth, Henry. 1896. The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo. Truslove & Hanson, London, 2 vols.
Morrison, Hedda. 1962. Life in a Longhouse. Borneo Literature Bureau, Kuching.
Munan, Heidi. 1991. Beads. In Lucas Chin and Valerie Mashman (ed.), Sarawak Cultural Legacy: A Living Tradition. Atelier Society, Kuching, 177-190.
Munan, Heidi. 2005. Beads of Borneo. Editions Didier Millet, Paris.
Purchas, Samuel. 1625. Hakluutus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrims. Vol. 3, Rpt. 1905, James McLehose and Sons, Glasgow.
Read, Brian. 2001. Metal Artefacts of Antiquity: a Catalogue of Small Finds from Specific Areas of the United Kingdom. Portcullis Publishing, Langport.
Reber, Rolf 2002. Reasons for the Preference for Symmetry. Behavioral and Brain Sciences., 25, 415“416.
Richards, Anthony. 1981. An Iban-English Dictionary. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Sasaki, Yuka, Wim Vanduffel, Tamara Knutsen, Christopher Tyler and Roger Tootell. 2005. Symmetry Activates Extrastriate Visual Cortex in Human and Nonhuman Primates. PNAS, 102, 8, 3159—3163.
Sandin, Benedict. 1967. The Sea Dayaks of Borneo before White Rajah Rule. MacMillan, London.
Sellato, Bernard. 2002. Innermost Borneo: Studies in Dayak Cultures. Seven Orients/Singapore University Press, Paris.
Spencer, L.K., S. David Dikinis, Peter C. Keller and Robert E. Kane. 1988. The Diamond Deposits of Kalimantan. Gems & Gemology, summer, 67-80.
Sutlive, Vinson and Joanne (ed.) 1994. A Handy Reference Dictionary of Iban and English. Tun Jugah Foundation, Kuching.
Sutlive, Vinson and Joanne (ed.) 2001. The Encyclopaedia of Iban Studies. 4 vols., Tun Jugah Foundation, Kuching.
Wynn, Thomas. 2002. Archaeology and Cognitive Evolution, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25, 389-438.