Yangoru Boiken - Settlement

The Yangoru Boiken live in villages of about fifteen to thirty-five hamlets, located mainly on the leveled crests of densely forested ridges. Most villages have between 150 and 400 people. In 1980, Sima village comprised twenty-eight inhabited hamlets—each with an average of three dwelling houses and two food houses—and 275 residents, with another 57 being absent in towns. Each hamlet is home to one or two patrilineagelike units called hring. Each village has several mandawia ("big places"), hamlets that clanlike congeries of related hring claim as the homes of their apical ancestors; here they build their spirit houses, conduct their exchange ceremonies, and hold major moots. There are two basic house structures: the pile house, which is raised a meter or so off the ground on stilts and is particularly common in the higher foothills; and the ground house, which is built directly on the earth and is more common in the lower foothills. Both are thatched with coconut-palm fronds or tiles of sago leaflets; they are walled with sago-bark shingles or sago-frond stems, and floored with limbum palm planks or cane.