Iban Longhouse

The Iban longhouse sits on stilts and normally accommodates the entire village. Unlike the land dayaks, the Ibans or Sea Dayaks position their villages on the banks of accessible waterways. The Ibans are great adventurers and take long sojourns across lands but prefer using the waterways to move about.

The longhouse is inhabited seldom more than 15 or 20years. There are various reasons as to why an Iban community would move. The new site would quite often be in the same tributary or in the same river, within a few miles from the old one perhaps because the good timber and planks are removed from the old longhouse and towed along the river to the new site. As Ibans practice shift cultivation, moving often results from looking for fertile land to till after the existing land has been exhausted. The same area is normally cultivated not more than 4 times at intervals of several years. Other reasons would be from enemy attacks sometimes causing burning of the longhouse, or an epidemic that hit the village or if the villagers have been hit with a string of bad luck or evil omens.

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