Traditional slate roofing of the Khiamniungan tribe

Khiamniungan
Peshu village, Noklak District, Nagaland, India

This project documents the traditional slate roofing technique practiced by the people of Peshu village, under Noklak District in Nagaland. Once a hallmark of the region, this distinctive building method – known to neighbouring groups as Kalyo Kengyus, meaning the “legendary stone house dwellers” – is no longer commonly used and faces imminent disappearance. As noted by the anthropologist Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf in 1936 during his visit to a Noklak-area village, “dark grey slates cover the flat roofs of small houses, which stand close together and side by side”. In modern times, this observation no longer holds; however, the method is not yet completely lost, and this project aims to document it before it disappears.