The Ette House. Humanity and Architecture in northern Colombia

Abstract

The house has become a major object of anthropological research on Amerindian societies. Based on a long-term ethnographic research, this paper aims to make a contribution to this field by focusing on the Ette of northern Colombia, a society whose houses have been commonly considered to represent a simple, elemental architecture. A much more complex image of these buildings emerges by framing them in the simultaneously anthropocentric and anthropomorphic cosmos of the Ette. The houses serve as an index of humanity, a model of the world, and an enclave for environmental management. Furthermore, distinctive human traits are attributed to them, such as a certain substantiality, an anthropomorphic figure, and a life cycle of growth and decay.