Akha - Settlements

Villages ranging in size from over two hundred to less than ten houses have been reported. A decline in village size in Thailand since the 1930s has been noted and attributed to the deteriorating ecological and economic situation in the mountains. A traditional community is characterized by two wooden gateways, one upslope and one downslope, flanked by carved female and male figures. These gates mark the division between the "inside," the domain of human beings and domesticated animals, and the "outside," the domain of spirits and wild animals. Also distinctive is a tall four-posted village swing, used in an annual ancestor offering related to the fertility of rice. Houses are sometimes scattered on a slope, but are often built on either side of a ridge with an open avenue in the middle. Smaller paths connect fenced family compounds, which contain a house and rice granary, and, in the case of an extended family, may also include one or more huts for younger couples. Traditionally constructed of logs, bamboo, and thatch, dwellings are of two types: "low house," built on the ground, and "high house," built on stilts. Akha are known for the internal division of their houses into a female side and a male side, paralleling that between the village and the surrounding forest; this division is not retained in the houses of Christians.