THE SKULLS ARE COLD, THE HOUSE IS HOT - INTERPRETING DEPTHS OF MEANING IN IBAN THERAPY

This article examines how the Iban of Sarawak ascribe 'depth' to meaning. It is concerned with interpretation as an active process. It identifies how interpreters are enlisted and socially engaged, and how meanings accumulate, extend and ramify. These processes are examined at work on the Iban categories of angat and chelap ('hot' and 'cold') in diverse cultural domains, including corporeality, longhouse sociability, and healing. In the course of ritual treatment, the Iban shaman manipulates the meanings of angat and chelap from one level to another, and it is this movement between shallow and deep referents which transforms the experience of illness and health. Thus, a fundamental source of transformation, whether healing the sick, giving birth, or burying the dead, is the capacity of language itself to move from shallow to deep.