Since a school trip to an Iban longhouse in Sarawak several years ago, I've been fascinated by the historic cultures of the native Dayak peoples. They just sound so awesome - with the Iban, you've got a warrior culture living in the rainforest who use blow darts and use diamond wooden shields. I'm just wondering if there are any good books about them, historical or anthropological? I haven't been able to find too much about them.
Good to see another fan of the Iban here ))
Wild People by Andro Linklater is probably the most accessible general introduction to the Iban. Linklater is a journalist, not a scholar, though.
Stranger In The Forest by Eric Hansen is a marvellous account by the first Westerner to cross Borneo on foot. Not much on the Iban in particular, but he spent a lot of time with other tribes, mostly with the nomadic Penan.
World Within by Tom Harrisson. Goog luck finding this book, it took me 12 years to hunt my copy down. Tom Harrisson was an English researcher, one of the founders of Mass Obersvation. Claiming some knowledge of Borneo during WWII, he parachuted into the Kelabit highlands to organize a guerilla force of headhunters to fight against the Japanese. This book is his war time account. After the war he founded the Sarawak Museum in Kuching which is probably your best source of proper scholarly work on the island's anthroplogy (see if you can find copies of the journal they publish, I think it's a quarterly). Sadly, Major Harrisson did not leave an account of his work during the 1960s when the respectable director of the Sarawak Museum had to mobilize his war-time headhunter buddies and go back into the jungle for more war in the Brunei revolt and, later, the Confrontasi, the guerilla war between Indonesian Communist partisans and Malaysian and British special forces. I was fortunate to meet some people in Sarawak who worked with him back then.
Hope it helps