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Chapter One. The Material Background |
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cotton and bark-fiber cloths |
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From December until March it can be very cold in the villages on the higher ridges, and at this time of the year men and women wrapped themselves in cotton or bark-fiber cloths. Unlike most other Naga tribes, the Konyaks attached little significance to the patterns of various types of body cloths. Apart from a richly embroidered cloth with red and white stripes, to which only men of the rank of head-taker were entitled, there was no cloth reserved for persons of specific social status. Not even chiefs donned cloths of distinctive pattern. The cloth most commonly worn in Thenkoh villages was a plain blue cloth of a type current also among Ao Nagas. More expensive were cloths of red and white or red and blue stripes. A cloth sometimes worn by men, but more popular among women, was white, decorated with a few narrow stripes of black and red embroidery. |
