Headhunting and House Building - Exploring Sabah Museum!

I have a very established love/hate relationship with museums. I know I should think "WOO YAY knowledge and learning and new stuff!" but I invariably think "oigh, blurry plaques and looking at 8 million identical ceramic plates, thrillsville...". In what seems to be becoming a regular event now, Sabah Museum turned my expectations upside down by being an interactive version of the Discovery Channel, and my memories of The Magic Schoolbus came rushing forwards! 

Having held my map the correct way and followed to the spot the museum allegedly stood, I landed in the middle of a patch of deserted rainforest, having left all cars, road signs, and recognisable paths far behind. I climbed for 15 minutes, past an abandoned ticket booth with smashed windows and no signs of human life in sight, genuinely wondering if I had accidentally strolled into the set for the next Jurassic Park.

Not creepy at all...

When I reached the top, I emerged from a dense bush of sticky fern leaves to see, very clearly, the entrance gate standing approximately 200m to my left and on the opposite side of the buildings. For all my excellent map handling skills, I had come from the back.

Brushing myself off and regaining sweaty, sweaty composure, I got my entrance ticket and wifi code (?!) to use with their interactive QR codes on different exhibits, and I skipped through the sweeping doors into the beautifully chilly museum. Instantly hit with "NO PHOTO" signs my heart sank a little because it already looked so cool, but actually I think it was a great thing as it made me really pay attention and learn about what I was seeing, in order to describe it properly. So brace for geeky excitement, because it was awesome. 

As in all great educational love stories, it starts with a bloody massive whale skeleton. Bryde's whale, to be exact, and it was huge.
Towards its tail there's a brilliant travelling exhibition about the cultural significance of beads in Sabah, how these were originally used for interpersonal communication (kind of like the language of flowers, for English Lit lovers), healing rituals, spiritual significance, and for interaction with the underworld, as well as being used as pretty ornamentation for clothes, jewellery, baskets, etc. In essence, beads have lost most of their original purposes but are used widely in contemporary fashion as a way for modern populations to connect with their heritage in a way which suits their lifestyles now, such as wearing headed belts or embellished skirts. I think that's cool. 

So then I moved into the actual museum proper, starting with the strong evidence of the first Ancient cave-dwelling populations of Sabah around Madai and Baturong appearing around 17,000 years ago, disappearing around 7,000 years ago (suggested due to environmental changes), and then reappearing around 2,000 years ago. Wandering into a full size reconstruction of a Bronze Age burial cave, complete with bats, birds nests (collected for birds nest soup and some medicines), and stone tools, I read all about the strong evidence of regular international trade found inside these caves, including Vietnamese style drums, ceramics from the Philippines, beads from India and Persia! It was such a breath of fresh air to explore the cave without red tape, and to be encouraged to pick up selected original stone tools rather than casts! Past boards explaining the full geological composition of the cave lay 2 long log coffin burials, both over 900 years old with intricately carved main sections and beautifully crafted mythical creatures at either end. The coffins are made in two parts, upper and lower, which slot together, the top half curving up at the ends and holding the upper face of the creatures at the ends and the lower piece curving down and holding the lower jaw, giving the creatures an open mouthed, roaring expression. SO COOL.

Caves and coffins gave way to a section on traditional tribal spirit relationships which has always been one of my main interests in anthropology - the way in which people act around death speaks volumes and reflects on all aspects of life. In extreme versions you have things like obsessive ancestor duty, in others it's taboo, and in most it's an insight into raw values and customs which form the pillars of daily business as one of the few certainties to be found.  If I get away with having a tutor group in Dundee next year, their syllabus will be essentially based off this museum! 

Alongside the menislad ceremonies used to please spirits and prevent them causing mischief if neglected, huge significance is attached to honouring skulls in homage to the headhunting days. Headhunting among the Kadazandusuns (originally read as the Kardashians) occurred as a balancing act: somebody's life would be unjustly taken, and therefore the balance had to be squared by the offended tribe hunting out the original killer. As you can imagine, this all escalates rather quickly into full blown tribal warfare as spears and swords are used to sever heads, but there are 3 different types of headhunting which lead to different outcomes:

Communal - all out tribal attack on an individual. Skull belongs to the community.

Family - one family targeting an individual (usually the family of the previously attacked). Skull becomes family property.

Individual - one on one combat, usually to prove bravery and manhood in order to win a bride. Skull belongs to the individual.

Ownership of the skull is important, as they are considered heirlooms and lucky. Skulls are tied to long poles with leaves or laid into planks (Marut tradition), and these are then hung from the rafters in the house of the owner of the skull as a trophy and talisman. Legit, the museum literally has poles of human skulls just hanging from the ceiling to demonstrate this! 

Photo from my visit to the Heritage Village

Fresh heads are left outside the village perimeter in kind of head huts guarded by villagers until they are clean bone and have been blessed in a ritual ceremony to allow them into the village. Contrary to popular early colonial belief, this whole process has nothing to do with cannibalism and is instead a demonstration of manhood and worthiness of a bride - early edition of the bachelor, but with heads instead of roses? This continued right up until British colonial forces wedged their way in, and in modern culture it seems to be respected as a past practice but without an active place in society. Back to the roses, then!

Straight out of headhunting the museum dives right into daily culture, with soundproof rooms to practice banging the gabang (9 pitched pieces of soft wood constructed like a xylophone) and the nose pipe (health and safety) to your heart's content! I am not talented on either of the above, it turns out. Then we hit basket weaving, rice cultivation, and move right on into a huge ceramics exhibition. 

Sigh. Ceramics. Memories of walking around galleries of "Oh look, a plate. Oh look, another plate. A pot? Curveball." come swimming back and I try to put my clever hat on for a bit. Legit, ceramics provide excellent evidence for trade links, potential political and social influences, and demonstrate interesting variations in fashion, but it's not quite as flashy as headhunting, is it? Long and thin Chinese vases with intricate white and blue paintings, large and deep European bowls with large floral designs, short and plain Thai water carriers, bulbous Vietnamese pieces with relief dragon images, large and solid Cambodian jars, and broad Japanese plates with detailed engravings... HOLD UP. BURIAL JARS. Two huge earthy jars as tall as my waist and satisfyingly rounded in excellent condition poke out from behind a load of Chinese porcelain pillows. Jackpot! Used for storing clean bones (see, nobody likes flesh) and in ritual ceremonies, these beauties brought my attention back in the room before trotting off to the taxidermy zoo.

Yep, taxidermy zoo. No replicas in this 'Natural History Gallery', folks, just pure stuffed original goodness. Although in some cases the refit is almost too good - poacher signatures and all - I've never seen such a varied and well pulled-off (too close?) taxidermy display as this one: polar bears, mongoose, Sumatran rhinos, elephants, mouse deer, leopards, pythons, crocodiles, hornbills - the lot! 

The last stage of the museum is a full political history exhibition going from the Sultanate Era (Sabah was owned by the Sultan of Brunei), through the hot-potato routine between the Americans, Europeans and Chinese all vying to protect trade routes, into the Christian missionary period which actually did a lot of educational good amongst other things, and then headfirst into WW2. Having been heavily caught up in the fighting, Sabah remained under British control until independence and the establishment of Malaysia in 1957. New flag for you Malaysia, you go Malaysia. 

And that was that! Sabah from start to present in a really cool way. A quick mosey around the shop later and I headed out, ready to head home via ice cream. A left turn in Jurassic park, however, decided otherwise and pretty soon I quite literally fell onto a Pirates of the Caribbean worthy rope bridge leading to a jungle wonderland!  

Aye Aye

This is the 'Heritage Village' tucked away behind the museum - a completely free to roam around village with all different types of traditional housing, decked out inside for interest, and lots of lovely information in bite size chunks about what's going on where. Also helps that there's a truly lush lily pond in the middle and a small resting hut in the middle which is divine for eating a totes earned ice cream in. 

Sabah Heritage Village

One of the traditional style houses

This is also the setting of the dramatic dragonfly photo, which involved a lot of poo and a selfie in order to get it!

He's a beaut

I got a lot of personal space on the bus back

Sabah museum is a great way to spend half a day - ideal for when the inevitable sunburn or thunderstorm hits! This and the heritage village are both very easy, laid back ways to absorb a bit of the local culture and get some historical grounding behind modern Sabah.

Yay, Borneo!