To understand the history of any community or region, one must start with the study of its cultural materials.
The world of the Nagas is unusual yet intriguing! Situated on the borders of India (Nagaland, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and some parts of Assam) and Myanmar, the Naga hills have been the home of these people. They speak around 22 languages and 300 dialects.
The world did not have access to almost all the diverse and essential information about the Nagas for many, many years due to several reasons (the Inner Line Permit System, repeated burning of villages, etc.). But, since the last twenty years, scholars from the Nagaland University are doing some interesting archaeological works to know more about this place and its people. To our fortune, several photographs and cultural objects (taken during the 18th and 19th centuries), are stored in different museums across the USA and Europe. These can be studied to understand the past of this region. Ornaments have been a part of the identity of the Nagas since times immemorial. Similarly, the knowledge of their grave practices is another factor helpful in exploring their lifestyles. Many questions still need to be answered and many issues still need to be addressed.
The best possible way, perhaps, to know more about the culturally and traditionally rich lives of the Nagas is to decipher the aspects that are the last to change. An interesting and detailed story highlighting their fascination with ornaments and diverse grave customs was published on Medium which can be found here. It is based on one of the sessions (delivered by Alok Kumar Kanungo, faculty in the Humanities and Social Sciences discipline) of the Virtual Seminar Series by IIT Gandhinagar.