Shabono

A shabono (also xapono, shapono or yano) is the communal dwelling of the Yanomami, an Indigenous people of the forests of far southern Venezuela and far northern Brazil. It is essentially one enormous roof: a ring of lean-to shelters thatched with palm leaves, facing inward onto an open central plaza that is left unroofed.

Form

Each family builds and occupies its own wedge of the ring, so the house is assembled from many family sections that together form a circle or oval. There are no internal walls between families; each household's area is marked off by a wooden post. EveryCulture, drawing on Gale's encyclopedia of world cultures, describes the whole as a giant circular lean-to made of a pole framework lashed together and thatched with palm leaves.

Habitatio, a teaching resource of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, gives diameters of 15 to 60 m (50 to 200 ft) and an internal height of 5 to 6 m (16 to 20 ft), with communities of about 40 to 300 people. The frame is of hardwood poles bound with lianas. Wikipedia describes outer walls formed by a palisade of timber cleared from the site, and an opening in the middle of the roof.

Adaptation

At higher elevations, where nights are cooler, communities build smaller houses with pitched roofs instead of open rings. Since about 1970 many villages have moved from small streams to larger rivers to stay in contact with missions.

Life span

Shabonos are short-lived. Habitatio reports that they usually have to be rebuilt every one to two years because of insect damage, heavy rain and strong winds, and that they are often burnt when abandoned. Building a new shabono is men's work.