islands of Enggano and Mentawai off the west coast of Sumatra, on Luzon, Palawan and Mindanao in the Philippines, and among the Sakai of peninsular Malaysia, suggests that this type of clothing was worn in Neolithic times. It was probably the apparel of the early inhabitants of the region who were displaced and absorbed by more technologically advanced prehistoric immigrants.
In this century, in many cultures where other clothing materials are now available, leaves and fibres are still used as ritual garb. Examples of such use include the personification of the evil spirit encased in fibre on the island of Buru in Indonesia (Gittinger, 1979c: 50, Fig.20), the masked shamans of Borneo (Khan Majlis, 1984: Col. Plates opp. 48), the fibre-enveloped dancers of certain 'Bali Aga' villages and the delicately folded formal palm-leaf headbands of mountain Sumbawa, Bali and Lombok. In Bengkulu, however, the veil of leaves that forms the bride's head-dress is now fashioned from silver Gasper and Pirngadie, 1927: 153), while in Bali and many other parts of Indonesia, the flowers and leaves previously used to create decorative head-dresses have been transformed into crowns of gold which still retain the essential floral form.
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Bark-cloth beaters, very similar to those still used today, have been found in a number of Neolithic archaeological sites (Bellwood,. 1979: 173-4).5 These stone mallets were obviously used to beat bark to form felted fabric. The texture of bark fabric and its potential as a raw material to fashion garments varies considerably. At one end of the spectrum, crude untreated pieces of bark were stitched together with fibre, a technique used to form effective protective coats for some Dayak warriors in Borneo. Softer, smoother, felted surfaces were achieved by soaking and pounding the bark fibres with mallets, and paper-fine quality was produced from the careful processing of the bark of certain trees.
One of the plants used to make fine bark-cloth, the paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera), is one of the oldest cultivated plants in Southeast Asia (Bellwood, 1979: 139). The extent of its cultivation is uncertain although it was still being planted in Java in the nineteenth century (Kooijman, 1963: 58-62).6 The finest bark-cloth offered great freedom for design, and could be readily painted or printed with pigments, as in many traditional Balinese paintings. Some such paintings were executed on good quality white bark-cloth imported from Sulawesi well into this century (Forge, 1978: 9, Fig.48; Solyom and Solyom, 1985: 3). In Bali it is possibly significant that the calendars for the Balinese 210-day year (wuku) used for prediction were often on bark-cloth. According to some Balinese informants, bark-cloth was also the preferred fabric for death-cloths.7 With the spread of written scripts throughout the region, bark became the raw material used for sacred manuscripts, talismanic hieroglyphs and even magical cures for illness.8
This turn-of-the-century photograph shows women from mountainous Luzon in the Philippines wearing leaf skirts. Their male companion wears a woven cotton loincloth.
A 1929 photograph of two women from the island of Mentawai, off the west coast of Sumatra, wearing costume constructed of various leaves
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Painted decoration on bark-cloth throughout insular Southeast Asia ranges from broad, strong strokes to fine, detailed, linear patterns similar to those found on wood and bamboo carving. Paintings with soot and ochres have been found in Stone Age caves in the region,9 and painted bark-cloth made in the central Philippines, Seram, central Sulawesi and by the various Dayak groups of Borneo, appears to draw upon similar ancient designs and techniques. The framing border commonly found on Lake Sentani painted bark-cloth fabrics is an unusual decorative device. The manner in which figures often protrude from the linear frame or even stand outside looking in indicates the strikingly free design format permitted by painting on bark-cloth. While these cloths are worn by women on festive occasions, they are also hung over a young woman's grave (Kooijman, 1959: 20). Further east in Polynesia, the similar design structure of some painted bark-cloths to that of many Indonesian woven cloths led the textile historian, Alfred Bühler, to suggest the possibility of a lost weaving art in that Pacific region (1969: 228). It seems more likely that the ancient design elements of both the Pacific and Southeast Asia, particularly of the Austronesian peoples within the region, have been continually developed and transformed, using various materials and decorative techniques. Consequently, similar patterns have often emerged in both regions.
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Bark-cloth beaters are easily transportable and many of the groups who used bark-cloth were shifting cultivators and hunters. However, many are now settled agriculturalists and alternatives to bark-cloth, such as various types of thread and cloth, are widely available. As a result, the use of bark-cloth has almost disappeared except for isolated pockets of insular Southeast Asia.10 However, in some cultures where bark-cloth has long been replaced by woven fabrics for everyday and festive wear, bark-cloth garments, as well as leaf cloaks and skirts, still hold ritual significance and appear to offer the necessary symbolic protection at funerals and other such times of spiritual disorientation. For example, in southern Borneo bark-cloth is donned in rites associated with death, including the simulated death that takes place during ritual tattooing and the ritual rebirth of circumcision ceremonies. In the same region, a widow or widower wears clothing made of bark-cloth until the mortuary feast to ensure her or his own continued 'existence' after the funeral (Scharer, 1963: 89-90). A bark-cloth fabric is included amongst the full set of four death cloths required for an Ifugao of importance, though these are not often worn in Luzon today (Roces, 1985: fn.6).
A photograph by Fay Cooper-Cole, taken in 1907-08, of a group of Batak people dressed for a ceremony on Palawan, in the Philippines. All participants are wearing bark-cloth wraps, loincloths and head-dresses, many of which exhibit hand-painted designs.
Bark-cloth continues to be made to the present day in the northern regions of central Sulawesi and is used for delicate ceremonial garments and sturdy everyday apparel including sleeping covers, rectangular headcloths for men, tunics and huge cylindrical skirts for women. A range of bark-beating implements is shown against a cloth of fine white bark (fuya or nunu) produced by an ancient felting technique. The surfaces of the stone head of the pébamba or iké are of different grades for the early and middle stages of the bark-pounding process. The wooden mallet that is applied to finish the finest cloth is also known as an iké.
baju sungkit man's jacket Tebidah Dayak people, Sintang district, west Kalimantan, Indonesia bark-cloth, cotton, natural dyes embroidery 34.5 x 45.0 ern Rijksrnuseurn voor Volkenkunde, Leiden 781-59
This nineteenth-century bark-cloth jacket displays decoration in the form of stitched reinforcement, one of the earliest forms of embroidery in the Southeast Asian region. The hooked rhornb designs, in white thread, contrast with the brown bark-cloth base. The garment has woven insets at each side and red and blue cotton binding. In other parts of Kalimantan, thick, soft bark-cloth jackets are patterned with painted or stencilled designs (Wassing-Visser, 1983: 12, 84; Gittinger, 1979c: 224).
Two young women wearing layered bark-cloth skirts (nunu) till the rice fields near Kulawi, central Sulawesi.
