Given its perfect condition, deep colors, excellent use of negative space, and unusual pictorial qualities, this tampan is an excep­tional example of the genre. In contrast to 1983.72, here the primary designs, except for the topmost center motif, are symmetrically aligned. Within these designs are carefully placed argyle patterns, smaller diamond shapes, rosettes, and dots.

Ceremonial cloths called tampan were displayed and exchanged during important rituals and rites of passage ceremonies. In Lampung the most important ceremonial use of these textiles was either during marriage rites or during the raising of one’s status to garner honors and titles.

The tampan in the Dallas Museum of Art collection of Indonesian textiles can roughly be divided into two basic types: tampan darat and tampan pasisir.

Dragon-shaped boats decorate the top and bottom of this cloth. Between them is a gigantic mythological creature with an oversized head, hunkered body, and arms or tails with fingerlike appendages. Its long triangular face, exposed teeth, flared nostrils, and accentuated eyes are those of protective supernatural animals.

This exquisite dagger (pattei) comes from northern Siberut (Berisigep) and was said to have been made in headhunting times more than a century ago. It has an iron blade that was obtained by barter from Sumatran traders as a blank and then ground into shape. Such blades are also used to tip spears. Unlike many of the other ethnic groups represented in the Dallas Museum of Art's collections of island Southeast Asian art, Mentawaians did not forge their own metal.

This superb shield (koraibi) made from lightweight wood was acquired in 1968 from an elderly shaman of the Siriottoi clan, Matsebu, who had inherited it from his father as part of the latter’s headhunting equipment. He had kept the shield because of its incised drawings of hands that had been carved over the shield’s original designs.