Pume - Settlements



The 1982-1983 census noted a total of 100 Pume communities ranging in size from 3 to 274 people with an average size of 39 people. Villages are spatially discrete and tend to be located at 5to 16-kilometer intervals. The Bea Khonome Pume locate their villages on the river levee less than 1 kilometer from the channel. These villages tend to be permanent, some having been continuously occupied for over thirty years. The Ciri Khonome Pume, more mobile than the Bea Khonome Pume, maintain a wet-season and a dry-season village, each occupied for approximately six months of the year and relocated every three to five years. In addition, up to nine different camps may be used during the dry season for periods of a few days to a few weeks. Villages of both the Bea Khonome and the Ciri Khonome Pume are compact in area and have as their characteristic feature a large, circular plazalike area on their eastern side, which is used during the the ceremony (see "Ceremonies"). Houses are built of poles tied together with vines and covered to within 50 centimeters of the ground with moriche palm fronds ( Mauritia flexuosa ) or corrugated iron. Houses generally lack walls, enabling free circulation of air. Shelters in the camps used by Ciri Khonome Pume during the early and late dry season, when rainfall is possible, consist of small conical structures 1 to 2 meters in diameter and thatched with palm fronds; camps used in midsummer, when rain is no longer a problem, have shelters consisting of a few upright leafy tree limbs that simply provide protection from the sun.


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