Austroasiatic carrying basket

Since the arrival of European ethnologists in the second hald of the 19th century, the austroasiatic carrying basket referred to by the French scientists as "hotte" attracted attention.

[3] It has been presumed that this carrying basket common to Austrasiatic people spanning from Indonesia to Laos can also be explained by geography, as mountainous areas such as the ones in Southeast Asia, make it more difficult to keep one's gravity center, thus explaining the double-saddle balanced shape of the basket.

[5] Despite its geographical unity, the carrying basket is also easily identified through specific characteristics from one area to the other.

Straight bamboos, which knots are widely spaced and the top forms a sharp curve, are the best for making hoods.

[11] During harvest, the carrying basket was personalized as the skin and body of the rice to which promises and threats were made in popular rites: thus, a knife was stabbed in the ground or in a tree behind the carrying basket as an apotropaic sign of threat and protection.

[12] In modern days, the austroasiatic carrying basket rice measurement has often been replaced by a kerosene tin.

According to their custom, a young bride must cut logs into five pieces which – and this is essential – must remain linked to each other, like the five petals of a flower.

These logs of love will be part of her dowry delivered in the very same carrying basket, one of the gifts she will give to her future in-laws to keep them warm in winter.