ABSTRACT
The Puyuma village is organised in ceremonial moieties: upper and lower (ami, timuL), one on each side of the main road. Traditionally, each included a boys’ house, and three founding households to which were attached three men’s houses, each with its own hunting ground. The upper moiety houses the three founding households descended from the original couple ‘born of the bamboo’. Each of these households possessed an ancestral cult house, karuma/an. The lower moiety reproduced the same structure, but according to accounts, two households were descended from division of those in the upper moiety.
