Whereas the Iban traditionally hung head-hunted heads outside each family’s bilik , the Bidayuh grouped theirs together in the community’s panggah or baruk (communal meeting hall). The heads are no longer believed to protect the village – these days the people of Annah Rais are almost all Anglican (the Bidayuh of Kalimantan are mainly Catholic) – but about a dozen smoke-blackened human skulls still have pride of place in the headhouse, suspended over an 18th-century Dutch cannon.
