Dani people in Indonesia

The word Dani actually refers to about 30 sociocultural groups, or clans, each of which has its own recognized territory and distinct individual identities. They live in small thatched-roof huts and burn wood for heat.

The Dani people traditionally love in self-contained fenced compounds, with its own cooking house, men’s house, women’s house and pigsties.

A traditional house is circular, topped by a thatched dome-shaped roof.

The very first contact between Dani people and outsiders occurred in early 1910. In that year a mountain climbing expedition led by the Dutch explorer H. A Lorenz, tried to climb to the snow –covered to of Peak Trikora.

Peak Trikora lies just within the southern boundary of the Dani Speaking area, and several Dani visited the base camp of the explorers.

The Dani people live in the central Highlands of Irian Jaya, which is the eastern-most province of Indonesia. They are found in the valleys of the upper reaches of two major river systems, the Mamberamo, which flows north-west to the Pacific Ocean.

They are one of the most populous tribes in the highland, and are found spread out through the highlands.

They live simply off the land. Their staple diet consists of sweet potatoes and some meats such as birds, pigs and other small animals.

The Dani remain subsistence farmers who cultivate mostly sweet potatoes in gardens in the Baliem valley in West Papua, Indonesia.

Women continue to raise pigs, which men strategically exchange to promote their status and to strengthens their politically alliance.
Dani people in Indonesia

Archeology: Limitation and Contributions to Understanding of Human Culture

One of the limitations on archeology is that what remains are only the durable materials of a past culture. These are not necessarily what the people might have left if they had wanted to show us what was important to them.

Prehistoric peoples did not have the future in mind when they dump their garbage or buried their dead; they did not provide us with a time capsule containing records of their way of life.

Thus not only must we interpret the material they left behind within the limited context in which we find them, such as a burial site or a refuse pit; we must also try to paint a picture of an entire way of life without the hope of ever finding physical evidence for much of that picture.

We can make an inventory of the kinds of tools or weapons of early humans used at a given sites, and we can note which ones are found most often, how they are made and so forth.

What, then, can archeology contribute to our understanding of human culture and social behavior? First, we can learn much about the technology of earlier peoples through their materials remains, as well as through analysis of such aspects of their life style as what they ate.

For example we can tell whether a particular group lived mainly by hunting or fishing or farming. A second aspect of the life of early peoples that is revealed to us through archeology is their economic practices.

For example, sometimes we find pottery or jewelry made from materials that are to have known available only in distant place. This usually means that these items were not made at the site but obtained through some other means – either by traveling to the place where they were available or by trading with other group.

Finally, archeology evidence can reveal a great deal about certain aspects of the religious and spiritual life of ancient societies. We can recognize sacred objects by their location in centers of religious activity or in burial sites.

When we are fortunate enough to find their temples or other religious structures, we can determine their importance and their influence on the society. But in other areas it is very hard to interpret the evidence.

Thus we know little about ancient people their feelings about spirit and so forth. Even when we find materials object that might suggest such beliefs; we cannot ask anyone to explain their meaning but must go on what we know about other aspects of that society and later societies that seem to be similar to it.