The Atoni are an ethnic group on Timor

Timor

Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, north of the Timor Sea. It is divided between the independent state of East Timor, and West Timor, belonging to the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara. The island's surface is 30,777 square kilometres...

, in Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

n West Timor

West Timor

West Timor is the western and Indonesian portion of the island of Timor and part of the province of East Nusa Tenggara, .During the colonial period it was known as "Dutch Timor" and was a centre of Dutch loyalists during the Indonesian National Revolution...

 and the East Timor

East Timor

The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, commonly known as East Timor , is a state in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco, and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island, within Indonesian West Timor...

ese enclave of Oecussi-Ambeno. They number around 600,000. Their language is Uab Meto

Uab Meto language

Uab Meto is an Austronesian language spoken by Atoni people of West Timor. The language has a variant spoken in the East Timorese exclave of Oecussi-Ambeno, called Baikenu...

.

The Atoni lives in villages consisting of 50 to 60 people, each village is surrounded with stone fence or shrubs, with fields and cattle cages on the periphery. The houses usually form a circular cluster, or following the road after the introduction of a road.

Spatial symbolism

According to ethnographer Clarke Cunningham, their culture is notable for its spatial symbolism, associated with a gender dichotomy. Male-female principle is important, as with the duality of sun-earth, light-dark, open-close, dry season-wet season, outer-inner, central-periphery, secular-sacral, right-left, and so on. This in turn effects the spatial configuration of an Atoni house. The right side of the house (facing the door) is always male, whereas the left is female. The center of the house (and the attic) is male, while the periphery of the house is female. The interior of the house is female, the terrace is male. The house is female and the yard is male. This principle conceived the Atoni house as a microcosmos. The house also expresses social order.

A more elaborate house is called Ume Atoni (Atoni means "male"). The house is dominantly male in quality. The Atoni entertains their guest in a communal house called Lopo. A Lopo is always located in front of a house and is oriented to the road.

Furthermore, each cardinal direction is associated with a gender, as are different parts of a house. Sex and gender do not always line up, as an important lord is called a "female-man," and is accordingly always a man, but performs stereotypically female duties.

Literature

• Atoin Meto
• Clarke E. Cunningham, Atoni Borrowing Of Children: An Aspect Of Mediation, in: Spiro, M.E. (ed.), American Ethnological Society Proceedings, Annual Spring Meeting, Seattle, 1965.
• Clarke E. Cunningham, Categories Of Descent Groups In A Timorese Village, in: Oceania 37, 1966:13-21.
• Herbert W. Jardner, Textilien der Atoni. Variationen eines Stils in West-Timor, unpubl. Magisterschrift, 1988,Köln.
• Herbert W. Jardner, Die Kuan Fatu-Chronik. Form und Kontext der mümdlichen Dichtung der Atoin Meto (Amanuban, Westtimor), Veröffentlichungen des Seminars für Indonesische und Südseesprachen der Unsiversität Hamburg, Band 23, Berlin und Hamburg, 1999.
• Herbert W. und Heidrun Jardner, Eingefangene Fäden. Textile Verzierungstechniken in West-Timor, Indonesien, Austronesia Bd.1, herausgegeben von Rainer Carle und Peter Pink, 2., neu bearb. und erw. Aufl., Hamburg, 1995.
• Andrew R. McWilliam, Harvest of the nakaf: A Study of Headhunting Among the Atoni of West Timor, B.Litt.thesis, Australian National University, 1982.
• Andrew R. McWilliam, Narrating the gate and the path. Place and precedence in South West Timor, Ph.D.thesis Australian National University, 1989.
• Schulte Nordholt, H.G., The Political System Of The Atoni Of Timor, Verhandelingen Koninklijk Instituut 60, 1971.