Gahuku-Gama - Settlements



Prior to intensive European influence, Gahuku villages, with populations ranging from 70 to 700 people, consisted of twenty to fifty houses, occupied by women and children, laid out in a straight line with one or two men's houses at the end. Villages were enclosed with double palisades and located on narrow tops of ridges for defensive purposes. Temporary houses were erected in the surrounding gardens, beyond which pigs were put out to graze in the grassy, unclaimed area separating villages. Groves of casuarinas and bamboo, as well as their ridge locations, clearly identified villages as distinct entities, and they were indeed centers of ritual and Ceremonial life. Since pacification, villages have become more spread out, and traditional conically shaped grass houses have been replaced in many cases with rectangular houses with walls of woven cane and bamboo.

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