Textile tradition of the Atoin Meto
In the culture of Atoin Meto , men and women have different artistic forms of expression to represent their culture-specific worldview: Men are responsible for composing oral poetry , the characteristic feature of which is a continuous grammatical parallelism.
Women, on the other hand, use a non-verbal symbolism, which provides the motifs of the textile tradition , and process them in splendidly decorated costume . A primary purpose of these clothing is to be displayed in all formal situations.
dress
The textiles of every culture are generally divided into everyday textiles and ritual textiles. While everyday textiles in West Timor are no longer different from Western clothing, the Atoin Meto use traditional textiles that can be described as ritual textiles (festive clothing, mourning clothing, ceremonial clothing). While everyday clothing is characterized by an instrumental function, the focus of ritual clothing is on an expressive function, especially through the often extremely elaborate patterns on the textile surface of these fabrics.
The Atoin Meto weavers mainly produce three different types of decorated clothing for their own needs, which they consider to be a traditional repertoire:
- the large, rectangular mau naek , a shawl , the man's clothes,
- the tubular tais that the woman wears, the Indonesian sarong ,
- the narrow, mau ana called scarf, the appearance of which in Timor can be traced back to West Indonesian or Javanese influences , as well as
- the individual textiles that together form the regalia of the warrior headhunter ( meo ) of the past.
In Amanuban , the clothes just presented are mainly decorated with ikat motifs (futus) . The well-known chain technique (lotis) for decorating the fabric has only recently become more and more popular, especially in urban areas. Additional decoration techniques (buna`) such as brocaded pattern entries (saeb) and thread binding of the entry (ala`) play a secondary role in connection with ikat patterned clothing. In this repertoire, the individual pieces of clothing in the meo regalia represent clothing from the past that is now more likely to be kept than worn.
The clothes that men wear every day in rural areas are mau naek wrapped around their hips and monochrome or printed T-shirts or colored, patterned short- sleeved shirts. The head is adorned and protected by the inevitable western hat with a brim of any width. The hair is cut short in accordance with western style. The previously obligatory topknot (bu`it) that adorned the back of the man's head has now completely disappeared.
The woman wears the pan-Indonesian sarong , called lipa in West Timor , a t-shirt or a blouse (kebaya) that is no longer new . The long hair is tied into a neck knot (bu`it) , either knotted or traditionally fixed with a comb (so`it) , today with a hairpin or a ballpoint pen. It is unusual for both sexes to wear footwear. The plastic sandals, which are inevitable in western Indonesia today, are rarely seen.
In contrast to everyday life, all formal situations (market, festival, ritual, church) are subject to dress norms that are referred to as wearing traditional costume. The appropriate costume of the man consists of the following elements:
- from the headscarf tied around the forehead (piul nakaf) , a square, batik cloth bought on the market , which is folded so that a horn-like tip points upwards at the temples or the back of the head,
- from a white shirt with short sleeves (fanu) ,
- of two mau naek , worn one on top of the other : the petticoat (mau pinaf) , which in Amanuban reaches well above the calf, which in Molo ends directly below the knee, in Amanatun just above the knee; the outer garment (mau fafof) , which is folded twice or several times around the hips and which covers the upper part of the lower mau naek , as well as
- from the bag carried over one shoulder for betel and other things for personal use (aluk) .
At the height of the hips, the mau pinaf is fastened with several belts (pilu) lying one on top of the other . The man wears the white and undecorated piul muti as the bottom belt , above it at least one, but usually two or three piul saluf . These belts made of cotton are called piul saluf because their two ends run out in wide, saeb-decorated fringes ( saluf , torn, torn). Several bracelets (niti) made of silver or brass, worn on both forearms, round off the costume of men and women. Arm, leg and chest tattoos are only seen on very old people.
The woman's costume consists of the pan-Indonesian blouse (kebaya) and the tubular tais that falls down to her feet. Over this tais , the woman wears a new, barely worn lipa that covers her self- woven garment so far that its lower hem is just visible. Hanged loosely over one shoulder or fastened as a sash over the hip with a safety pin, she wears the narrow mau ana . Silver bracelets and belts (fut noni) , orange-colored inuh ( coral ) chains, rings (kleni) and earrings (falo) as well as the often silver-studded comb (so`it) , which is tucked into the hair in the topknot or above the forehead, form the usual jewelry. Footwear, on the other hand, is unusual for both sexes.
In the urban milieu - depending on the social class, social position or formal situation - the clothes described for the rural population or all possible combinations are common. Modern city dwellers today wear trousers, a shirt or a T-shirt or a skirt and blouse, especially if they are civil servants or teachers or if they are open to Western influences, especially at a young age. Short-sleeved jackets made of ikat-decorated, tailored fabrics serve as a socially differentiating uniform in the civil servants' environment, similar to the batik shirt in Java. European jackets worn with a white shirt and the mau naek are now very popular with all men, regardless of whether they live in urban or rural areas, in formal situations.
In everyday life today almost only men wear the self-made, decorated textiles, while women, the skilful and knowledgeable producer of these textiles, prefer to wrap themselves in the imported pan-Indonesian sarong (lipa) . She only dresses in traditional tais during formal situations . In everyday life, it is of far greater importance for the man who pursues his tasks outside of the household and the hamlet to be able to fall back on specially patterned textiles, as these are able to express his territorial affiliation. The different ways of wearing as well as the different motifs of the Atoin-Meto-Textiles of the individual, formerly politically autonomous territories, have the function of an “ethnic marker” for this culture, a label with recognition value, which depending on the context, an internal as well as an external, territorial , social or political differentiation.
function
The ritual textiles of Atoin Meto indicate the connection of the wearer with a certain situation (ritual), a certain status (age, gender, wealth), membership of a certain community (a social or political group) or certain ideological ideas (religious and moral beliefs). In the so-called old Indonesian cultures, to which the Atoin Meto belongs, the production of ritual textiles is a woman's affair. All work related to hand-weaving, such as material extraction, material preparation and material processing, fall into the female area. Deviating from the social ideal of the gendered division of roles and work, homophile men are also allowed in West Timor to produce fabrics. In general, however, the man is excluded from the entire area of textile production. This female-male polarity, which occurs in the division of labor, also plays an important role in other aspects of the Atoin Meto worldview. In Indonesian cultures, tissues are generally classified as female. In the strictly ritualized exchange transactions between women givers and women recipients, during the life cycle rituals of the Atoin Meto, birth, marriage and death rituals, textiles are considered female gifts. The women who are otherwise relatively ritualless in most Indonesian cultures have and perform the rituals associated with the production of these textiles without the involvement of men. In the culture of the Atoin Meto, ritual textiles can be defined by four criteria:
- by their time-consuming production due to complicated ornamentation techniques;
- by observing ritual rules during their creation;
- by their special function in the social relationships between individual groups, especially in phases of the life cycle;
- through their use in a special situation that removes everyday life.
The specific expressiveness of the pattern systems serves less for the aesthetic enjoyment of the beholder, but rather creates identity and is entirely geared towards the recognition and symbolization of culture-specific convictions. The motifs produced using extremely complicated ornamentation techniques thus take on the function of signs (with a symbolic meaning) that refer to the affiliation of the wearer of these textiles to a certain situation, a certain group or a certain idea.
iconography
For the patterning of their textiles, the Atoin Meto use an extremely extensive repertoire of a motif that stands out due to its hook shape. In many different ways, it is an integral part of all textile motifs of Atoin Meto, regardless of whether the pattern is made using ikat or chain technology. The special thing about this iconography is that all motifs can be reduced to the basic shape of a hook (`kaif) . The textile motifs of Atoin Meto not only use the `kaif element for the representation of abstract, geometric motifs, but this decorative element also dominates the second large group of motifs of Atoin Meto clothing, which depicts the shape of the crocodile (kauna) in different ways. As kauna , the Atoin Meto describe all animals that only use short legs to move or crawl on their stomachs. Representatives of this genus are the crocodile (besimnasi) , the gecko (teke) and other lizards , snakes , the eel , fish , worms and caterpillars . An additional criterion that extends the kauna genus to include the scorpion (kbiti) and various venomous spiders is the relative dangerousness and malevolence attributed to these animals.
The relationships that exist between the two groups of motifs, `kaif and kauna , not only indicate the form and semantics of the motifs, which are similar in form and content, but also the identical function of such decorated clothing. The image of the hook pointing backwards has the power to pull something or someone under its spell in order to manipulate it. The speculation about the origin of powerful forces leads to images and the representation of these forces in textile motifs. The function of hooked clothing in the Atoin Meto culture is to protect the physical integrity of the user of this clothing. Qua motive he excludes a certain category of poignant powers that try to take control of him uncontrollably. The omnipresence of hook motifs on clothing guarantees that the individual has control over his own body. The powerful forces are presented as an enemy headhunter, as an adversary that activates damage magic, as a crocodile or python , the only animals in Timor that are dangerous to humans . But they can also appear as impersonal, in certain places in the air atmosphere, evaporation, fluorescent shimmer or glow. Overall, it is about feelings of fear and horror, fear and discomfort, uncertainty and the inexplicability of phenomena in the environment.
On the clothes of the Atoin Meto they appear as an abstract, hook-bearing diamond motif or as a stylized image of a crocodile with a hook-reinforced tail. In all of these textile motifs, the symbol of the hook metonymically represents feelings of fear and horror of attractive, banishing forces, which are present in the unprotected outside of the world as bad death, as a lurking crocodile or as magic directed against it. The awareness of these dangers leads to the assumption of the existence of grasping and pulling forces that make him the plaything of their will.
literature
- Herbert W. Jardner , Atoni textiles. Variations of a style in West Timor , unpubl. Master's thesis from the University of Cologne, 1988.
- Herbert W. Jardner, clothing as a home for the body. Notes on the iconography of the Atoin Meto in West Timor , in: Großheim, M. (ed.), Leib und sent. Contributions to anthropology , Lynkeus. Studies on New Phenomenology, Vol. 1, Berlin, 1995: 169–192.
- Heidrun Jardner and Herbert W. Jardner, Captured Threads. Textile decorating techniques in West Timor, Indonesia , Austronesia Vol. 1, edited by Rainer Carle and Peter Pink, 2., revised. and exp. Ed., Hamburg, 1995.
Web links
- Herbert W. Jardner, Atoin Meto Revisited: The textiles of Atoin Meto [1]