The Andaman Islanders [See note 1] speak a variety of dialects and/or languages which are classified by Greenberg within his Indo-Pacific phylum (Voegelin 1977: 20). After the establishment of continuous British administration in 1858, such government officials as Edward Man began to provide the first substantial information on these people.

They were found to be divided into 12 or 13 “tribes” or tribal units, most of whom differed mainly in dialect. On the basis of more pronounced linguistic and cultural differences, these tribes are usually clustered into two major groups correlating roughly with the main geographical division notes above, namely a Great Andaman Group and a Little Andaman Group. The latter group consists of only 2 or 3 tribes, while the former consists of 10 tribes, who in turn may be divided into 2 subgroups varying somewhat in cultural and linguistic features.

The ecological setting is basically tropical rain forest. The daily temperature varies little throughout the year, averaging about 30 degrees C. There are two seasons—the wet, or monsoon season, from mid-May to mid-November, and the dry season, from mid-November to mid-May. Rainfall is heavy and, depending on the location, averages 264 to 437 cm. annually. The land is covered with dense tropical foliage.  Although the environment is not rich in land mammal species, the reefs and harbors abound in marine fauna.

Any discussion of the Andaman Islanders’ economic and social organization must be prefaced by a qualifier concerning the data. Western contact brought about rapid cultural disintegration and decimation of the population. From an estimated precontact population of about 5,000, there were perhaps 2,000 Andaman Islanders left by 1901, when Temple (1903) led a British census team. By the 1950s, there remained less than 700 inhabitants in both the Great and Little Andaman groups.  Thus, discrepancies in information between various authors may be due to a number of factors, including inter-island variability, sociocultural change, and differing methodological and theoretical orientations among the investigators.
The Andaman Islanders were foragers, subsisting on whatever they could hunt, fish, or collect. Some authors divide them into two adaptive types: those depending largely on coastal resources and those utilizing mainly inland resources. Bows and arrows are used for both hunting and fishing. Harpoon fishing and hunting with dogs appear to have been later introductions. Reef collection was done with nets. Males were primarily hunters and fishers, but also engaged in secondary collection activities. Females were primarily collectors of vegetable products, reef fauna, and small animals. The Andaman Islanders’ animal foods included pig, civet cat, lizards, rats, snakes, insects, birds, turtles, fish, mollusks, and crustaceans. The bulk of their diet, however, came from fruits, roots, seeds, and other plant products.  Seasonal feasts of wild honey are also noted in the literature.

The Andaman Islanders were organized into local groups, or bands, consisting of about 20-50 members. Each group was associated with a traditional resource territory, throughout which it moved during the year. Members of the local group had equal rights to the resources within the territory, and local groups could usually obtain permission to forage in neighboring territories. The settlement pattern included three kinds of encampments: (1) permanent camps in which the same dwellings were occupied from year to year; (2) temporary camps which were occupied for one season; and (3) hunting camps, consisting of little more than a few lean-tos thrown up by small hunting parties. The local group comprised a number of nuclear families plus a few unattached adults. Investigators differ on the matter of local group leadership and on whether the local groups were organized politically, or merely linguistically, into tribes. Man states that there were tribal as well as local group “chiefs”(Man 1932:40-41). Radcliffe-Brown, on the other hand, argues that there were no tribal chiefs and that leadership on the local level was informal, based on respect for the advice of older and more talented members of the community (Radcliffe-Brown 1922:44). Social control was informal, with disputes settled by the interested parties.
Integroup contacts were generally peaceful. People moved between neighboring groups either to visit or to change residence. Neighboring groups sometimes joined together for festivities at times of abundance. Such intergroup feuds as arose were quickly terminated with peace agreements.

The typical household seems to have been the monogamous nuclear family. Marriage restrictions prohibited near kin, including cousins, but otherwise choice of partners was not restricted. Partners were frequently found in other groups or tribes, and postmarital residence patterns were flexible. Divorce was rare, especially after the birth of the first child. Infanticide is not reported for these people. Adoption was a common feature of Andaman society. Most children by the time they reached ages 6-10 were given by their parents to another family. Both males and females underwent puberty rites. The role of shaman was achievable by either males or females, but such achievement depended on the acceptance by the group of the individual’s claim to special powers. Shamans were thought to have special powers for curing, sorcery, and dream interpretation. The cosmology of the Andaman Islanders contained a variety of animistic spirits and spirits of the dead.

Some sources concerning the islands in general include Guha (1953), an anthropological survey focusing on settlement patterns and the population composition of local groups; and Sen (1962), a survey of physical geography incorporating a cultural summary of each of the main tribal divisions and a sketch of the culture history of the islands. Finally Heine-Geldern (1958) reviews the fieldwork done among the Andaman Islanders, and lists the principal publications. Two further cultural summaries are available in Service (1971), who focuses on the Andamanese, and in Nag (1972), who covers all of the Andaman Islanders.

[Note 1] In this discussion, the term “Andaman Islanders” will refer to all the indigenous Negrito peoples of the Andaman Islands, whereas the term “Andamanese” will refer specifically to the 10 tribes of the Great Andaman Group. This nomenclature has been adopted for reasons of clarity and simplicity.

Culture summary by Robert O. Lagace and Eleanor C. Swanson