Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 271
architecture of houses changed as a result, from being an assembly of circular rooms to a
rectangular-shaped house with just one zinc roof. The timber to make the roof truss, as well as
the ropes and grasses used for building a thatched roof, was a man’s activity in decline.
Plate 18a: Wurighe (fan palm) had many uses - the leaves
for repairing roofs; the fruits buried to germinate; the bark to
make fibre
Plate 18c: Lave tree - used to make ritual
sticks (tsage) put into house for bull festival
Plate 18b: Palm tree fibre hammered out of the bark
Plate 18d: Wa'iye tree - used for roofing;
was inherited by thaghaya (seventh born)
The Dghweɗe subsistence economy had a great wealth of natural resources and some of those
listed above are also presented in photographs above. There are however many gaps in our
documentation. For example, we do not know which trees were traditionally used for the
production of charcoal, but we can see that many were used for firewood. We also do not
know where and how the trees used for making charcoal were cultivated, but assume that it
was outside of the hamlet area, more towards the outer fields and bushland. We remember
that the furnaces for smelting iron were preferably built on high terraces, but we hold no
records of whether this happened away from the houses and the infields.
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