TY - JOUR
T1 - An Ethnic House Form at the Western Margins of Southeast Asia
T2 - The Elusive South Asian Stilt Architecture of the Chittagong Hill Tracts
AU - Ara, Dilshad Rahat
AU - Rashid, Mamun
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 The Australian National University.
PY - 2018/1/1
Y1 - 2018/1/1
N2 - Descriptive and somewhat elusive, sketchy historical notes exist for possible cultural links between ethnic people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh, South Asia, and ethnic people across the national borders in Southeast Asia. Yet, there is a curious lack of research that uses vernacular architecture or ethnic architectural building typology as a key tool to establish, or reiterate, the common proposition that CHT is the western fringe of a Southeast Asian cultural sphere. Historically, language has been a standard tool used by both colonial British rulers and a few anthropologists to consider the topic of reconstruction of cultural heritage in this geographically complex region, while architecture has played an incidental part. In this article, we examine the stilt or platform typology of vernacular architecture of the CHT as a tool to reflect on the inter-ethnic cultural position of the CHT. The chosen analytical framework hinges on the notion that architecture is constructive, in parallel to language, in establishing a heritage position. The concluding findings of the article establish CHT as a historic region with shared Southeast Asian building-cultural features, notwithstanding the possibility of correspondence to early Austronesian building heritage.
AB - Descriptive and somewhat elusive, sketchy historical notes exist for possible cultural links between ethnic people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh, South Asia, and ethnic people across the national borders in Southeast Asia. Yet, there is a curious lack of research that uses vernacular architecture or ethnic architectural building typology as a key tool to establish, or reiterate, the common proposition that CHT is the western fringe of a Southeast Asian cultural sphere. Historically, language has been a standard tool used by both colonial British rulers and a few anthropologists to consider the topic of reconstruction of cultural heritage in this geographically complex region, while architecture has played an incidental part. In this article, we examine the stilt or platform typology of vernacular architecture of the CHT as a tool to reflect on the inter-ethnic cultural position of the CHT. The chosen analytical framework hinges on the notion that architecture is constructive, in parallel to language, in establishing a heritage position. The concluding findings of the article establish CHT as a historic region with shared Southeast Asian building-cultural features, notwithstanding the possibility of correspondence to early Austronesian building heritage.
KW - Austronesian Heritage
KW - Building Technology and Culture
KW - Southeast Asian-Type Vernacular House Form
KW - Stilt Architecture
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U2 - 10.1080/14442213.2017.1400091
DO - 10.1080/14442213.2017.1400091
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85038915303
SN - 1444-2213
VL - 19
SP - 35
EP - 54
JO - Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
JF - Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
IS - 1
ER -