Punamhan

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Ellis, George R. "Arts & People of the Northern Philippines" (In Casal, et.al. The People & Art of the Philippines. Los Angeles: University of California, 1981), p. 250

The individually unique but collectively a formal category with similar features composes the group of Ifugao sculpted boxes called punamhan. The punamhan form typically extends the lateral ends of the rectangular box, into evocations of an animal-like (usually porcine) snout. The lid may show shallow relief (usually reptilian). These are containers of ritual paraphernalia, used in rites associated with terrace agriculture. Known in the last few centuries in association with rice terrace cultivation, the same association in the centuries before the 20th may have been slightly or vastly different, considering that the rice terraces were planted to root crops in earlier time frames. The punamhan is part of the assembly that includes a bulol pair for ritually consecrating a rice harvest. The bulol pair and punamhan—residing most of a year on a beam of an alang, a smaller version of a house that serves a granary—are taken down to the ground for rituals marking harvests.

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