Sio - Settlements

For two to three centuries the Sio lived on a tiny offshore island (later known as the "Dorfinsel" to the German colonists). The island village was divided into residential wards, each of them densely packed with houses that were typically occupied by two or three nuclear families. Each ward also had a men's ceremonial house. The island village was destroyed during World War II and was not rebuilt. Instead, the people established four villages on the opposite mainland, all of them near the sites of prehistoric Sio villages. The houses are rectangular pile dwellings roofed with sago-leaf thatch. Men's clubhouses, of similar design, were not built in the postwar villages, and this signaled the demise of the traditional men's organization together with male initiation.