The Risks and Uncertainties of Migration: an Exploration of Recent Trends amongst the Wosera Abelam of Papua New Guinea

This paper reports on ongoing research on migration and circulation between the Wosera sub-district, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, and the island province of West New Britain. We examine the pressures contributing to increased family migration and longer-term, possibly permanent, migration from the Wosera. While rising resource/population pressure and stricter forms of land tenure arrangements are altering patterns of out-migration, the situation for long-term and temporary migrants in West New Britain is becoming less certain as land shortages begin to limit opportunities for further settlement and indigenous landowners become less tolerant of migrants from other provinces. We discuss these influences on migration patterns within the context of emerging social stratification of Wosera society, and consider the implications for both migrants and non-migrants.     

PROSPECTS OF VILLAGE DEATH IN ILAHITA

The history of settlement in Ilahita village, an Arapesh community in the East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, is pronounced by incessant, behaviourally mediated adjustments between changing internal and external social environments. Having grown to immense size and structural complexity partly in response to Abelam encroachment and cultural exportation, Ilahita began to come apart once warfare was suppressed in the 1950s. The twin processes of social denucleation and physical disintegration have greatly accelerated during the post-independence period, as new religious, economic, and legal institutions, along with galloping population growth, combine to promote a shift from collectivist to individualist modes of social agency and identity. Despite the novelty of these circumstances, village death in Ilahita signals a reversion toward the kind of settlement which existed before the village was ever born. The case of Ilahita is presented for its ethnographic interest and as an illustration of settlement dynamics which perhaps occur more generally under Melanesian social, cultural and historical conditions.     

HIERARCHY AND ‘HEROIC SOCIETY‘: MANAM VARIATIONS IN SEPIK SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Anthropologists have come to recognize that in addition to the prevalence of egalitarian relations, many New Guinea societies also exhibit elements of hierarchy as well. This article discusses the nature of hierarchy in some Sepik societies through the comparative analysis of the social structure of four Sepik area societies on the northeast coast of Papua New Guinea. Using Sahlins' definition of ‘heroic societies’ based upon a principle of ‘hierarchical solidarity’, the article argues that the form of hierarchy found in Manam Island society is different in type from that of the neighboring societies of Boroi, Murik and Wogeo. An additional diagnostic feature of heroic societies is what Sahlins refers to as ‘heroic history. In Manam the cultural form this takes is a ‘heroic’ variation of the myth of two brothers common throughout the area.     

Nostalgia for Rabaul1

In September 1994, an eruption of the Rabaul Volcano in East New Britain, Papua New Guinea, devastated the town of Rabaul and many surrounding Tolai villages. Many villagers were resettled or lived in refugee camps far from their homes. Many non-Tolai residents of Rabaul were repatriated to other parts of Papua New Guinea. Tolai villagers and former residents of Rabaul, be they Papua New Guineans or expatriates, mourned the passing of ‘Rabaul’. This article examines the different nostalgias for Rabaul which are articulated in the Australian print media, by Tolai villagers, and by migrants from the Sepik provinces who had lived in Rabaul prior to the eruption. The article concludes with a reflection on Rabaul as a symbol for the Papua New Guinean nation.     

The Thrill of the Line,the String,and the Frond,or why the Abelam are a non-cloth culture

With few exceptions, weaving was traditionally unknown in Oceania. Yet soft, pliable bark cloth — often richly decorated — was produced, and used like textiles, especially in Polynesia. This cloth was artistically draped around objects and people and in turn ritually removed. These cloth cultures are based on a system of aesthetic values radically different from those of inland groups especially in New Guinea. This article demonstrates that within Oceania there are two different cultural traditions with opposing aesthetic fundamental values. Taking as an example the Abelam (East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea) whose aesthetics is based on the principle of ‘visual open-work’, the fundamental aesthetic values of a non-cloth culture and the gender specific attributes associated with them are analyzed.     

Sik Bilong Ples: an Exploration of Meanings of Illness and Well-Being Amongst the Wosera Abelam of Papua New Guinea

This paper examines indigenous concepts of health and well-being amongst the Wosera Abelam, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Indigenous conceptual frameworks for understanding human well-being are remarkably resilient despite the use of western medical services and nutritional advice from health clinics. Their resilience is probably attributable to their embeddedness within a wider worldview that emphasises the social context of health and well-being and thus makes them resistant to change. Whilst the Wosera Abelam are open and receptive to modern health services, their response to these services remains considerably influenced by indigenous concepts of health and illness.     

Review

The Song to the Flying Fox: The Public and Esoteric Knowledge of the Important Men of Kandingei about Totemic Songs, Names and Knotted Cords (Middle Sepik, Papua New Guinea). By Jurg Wassmann. (Apwitihire: Studies in Papua New Guinea Musics, Don Niles, ed.; vol. 2) Boroko, Papua New Guinea: Cultural Studies Division, The National Research Institute, 1991. Pp. xxi+313. Price: Kina 6.50.     

The Long Arm of the Third Reich

Mission histories and autobiographies dealing with the internment of Germans from New Guinea in Australia during World War II remember the shock and hardship of the initial detention and the journey from New Guinea to Australia, stories of funny events and good times in the camps, and the struggle with the Australian bureaucracy to get back to New Guinea. The time of enthusiastic or reluctant commitment to National Socialist leadership and ideology has had hardly any space in personal memories or written history, neither in mission accounts nor in Australian war histories. This article examines the politics of Tatura Camp 1, where most Germans from New Guinea were interned, within the context of wider Australian and German internment policies. The Germans from New Guinea were not cut off from the outside world behind barbed wire, but became entangled in a net of interacting and conflicting agencies. By examining the role of the German Reich and Switzerland, and their interaction with the Australian government, military authorities, and internees, the article shifts away from national histories of internment, which set the interning nation as the central reference point, to transnational histories.     

Mapping prehistoric social fields on the Sepik coast of Papua New Guinea: ceramic compositional analysis using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry

The Sepik coast of northern Papua New Guinea is one of the most linguistically diverse places on earth despite communities there currently being connected into wide-reaching social and economic networks that cross language boundaries. One possible explanation for observed human diversity is that social connections were substantially less intensive prior to colonial pacification. As a proxy for human interaction, we compositionally analyzed 287 ceramic sherds from archaeological contexts using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to determine their place of production. Our results indicate that ceramics produced on Tumleo Island—currently the most important regional ceramic producer—were transported to other places on the Sepik coast after ∼1000 BP, suggesting that linguistic diversity on the coast has been maintained in an interactive environment for at least a millennium.     

The Bugiau Community at Eight‐Mile: An Urban Settlement in Port Moresby,Papua New Guinea

Contrary to the popular tendency to scapegoat and demonize urban settlements in Papua New Guinea the trend among academics has been to normalize their existence. There is however little detailed information upon which to base either view. This paper reviews existing studies of urban settlements in Papua New Guinea and finds a lacuna of information on basic livelihood functions. On the basis of a household survey and general observations made during a four‐week period of residence in an urban settlement in Port Moresby, it presents data on household composition, employment, income, expenditure and social identity for one urban settlement. The picture presented describes a way of life that does not support popular stereotypes.     

Settlement fortification in village and ‘tribal’ society: Evidence from contact-era New Guinea

Using ethnographic data from contact-era New Guinea, this paper seeks to advance an understanding of the logic of settlement fortifications—i.e., the principles governing their design and operational functioning. This issue has been largely neglected because the principles involved seem so obvious: fortifications function to improve the security of a position by impeding an attacker’s efforts to penetrate it. For village and tribal societies, though, this can be an oversimplification. In these communities, people are generally most dependent on their settlement fortifications at night, when they are home and asleep; yet the cover of night is precisely when settlement fortifications are at their most vulnerable to penetration. What the New Guinea evidence reveals is that settlement fortifications were designed not just to keep attackers out but, even more important, to keep them in once they had penetrated and launched their attack. Defenders could then rally and annihilate their assailants, creating a powerful deterrent against attack in the first place—the best defense of all. These findings are applied to an early Late Woodland site in Ohio to illustrate their potential for informing an archeology of war.     

The Gender of the Cosmos: Totemism,Society and Embodiment in the Sepik River

This article contributes to recent research on the foundations of society in Melanesia, both in terms of local representation and actual social practice, as well as body imagery and gender. I have three interrelated objectives. First, I present new data on the symbolism and politics of Eastern Iatmul cosmology and totemism (Sepik River, Papua New Guinea). Second, I engage Harrison's distinction between magical and material, or realist and nominalist, polities in Melanesia. Eastern Iatmul society is represented by totemic names and categories. Yet society also requires human agents to embody named entities: men rarely assert the existence of cosmological categories that are divorced entirely from the realm of human action. This is a key difference between Eastern Iatmul and other Sepik societies such as Manambu. Finally, I argue that there is a symbolic homology between the gendered human body, the body politic and the cosmos, an important perspective that has been lacking in Melanesian comparative studies. Totemism for Eastern Iatmul is largely a realm of male ritual-politics. Nevertheless, an idiom of maternal fertility and reproduction is salient in the local cosmology. For this reason, the gender of the cosmos, to invoke Marilyn Strathern, is androgynous.     

The Apotheosis of White Men?: A Reexamination of Beliefs about Europeans as Ancestral Spirits

Criticisms of work on cargo beliefs argue it supports paternalistic colonial projections and patronizes Melanesians. But researchers continue to hear Melanesians asserting that Europeans communicate with ancestral spirits. Such assertions are part of a dynamic religious tradition responding to troubling times. Some have cast cargo beliefs as naive ‐ if rational ‐ attempts to understand bewildering changes. Such work fails to capture the innovative, discriminating tenor of cargo beliefs as a religious ideology that adherents manipulate to address their own needs. Case material comes from the Bumbita Arapesh, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea.     

Exploring Spatial Relationships between Material Culture and Language in the Upper Sepik and Central New Guinea

ABSTRACT New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse region in the world. Over 1,000 languages are found there. Unsurprisingly, controversy exists concerning the degree to which this diversity has been shaped by migration or interaction. At the centre of this controversy is the putative origin and migration path of Austronesian speakers. The advent of Lapita ceramic ware in Melanesia around 3,000 years ago is seen by some as important evidence for their arrival; nevertheless the validity of using Lapita as a marker for Austronesian populations remains in question. The Upper Sepik is one of New Guinea's most linguistically heterogeneous regions. Because it is not marked by far‐reaching exchange systems the region's language and material culture distributions provide potential for exploring such issues. This paper discusses these in the context of an analysis of important ethnographic collections from the region. It is shown that when material culture is assessed technologically and stylistically it is easier to determine an effect for important variables such as language and distance. Additionally, it is demonstrated that as men and women often have different levels of mobility and sociality, classes of material culture belonging to each may differentially reflect important socio‐historical processes.     

WOMEN'S FACIAL TATTOOING AMONG THE MAISIN OF ORO PROVINCE,PAPUA NEW GUINEA: THE CHANGING SIGNIFICANCE OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM

The Maisin women of northeastern Papua New Guinea are among the last coastal Papuans to tattoo their faces. This article first describes the techniques and social process of Maisin tattooing. We then examine the resilience of the custom in light of changes in puberty rites and notions of gender. We argue that these contexts have lost their cultural salience as a result of the Maisins' incorporation into the larger Papua New Guinea society. Tattooing has acquired new significance as a marker of cultural identity in a multicultural setting and as a sign of the Maisin people's commercial success as makers of indigenous art.     

Biosocial archaeology of the Early Neolithic: Synthetic analyses of a human skeletal population from the LBK cemetery of Vedrovice,Czech Republic

Bioarchaeology is a powerful tool in the examination of prehistoric collections of human skeletal remains. Application of a few bioarchaeological techniques (ancient DNA, carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes, and dental micro-wear) to the human osteological remains from the Early Neolithic LBK settlement of Vedrovice (Moravia), has allowed us to reconstruct not only broad cultural patterns but also the life histories of the individuals with insights into diet, migrations, ancestry, personal identity, social position and life experience. Vedrovice acted as a gateway settlement for a farming community with close ties to western Hungary and northeast Bohemia. The individuals showed clear differences in status and migration histories, giving glimpses of more complex social practices and patterns than could have been determined through the traditional culture-historical studies.     

THE INCEST PASSIONS:AN OUTLINE OF THE LOGIC OF THE IQWAYE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

In the first part of this paper (Oceania 62(1)) I presented the mythopoeic-cosmological foundations of incest among the Iqwaye people, a Yagwoia-Anga group of the West Menyamya Census Division, Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. The core of incest passions derives from the primordial autosexual-autonutritive, i.e. self-procreative, cosmic man. Here I am demonstrating how incest as autocreation is realized in the main structural configurations of Iqwaye social organization, specifically the naming system, patrifiliation, matrifiliation, affinity, cross-sex siblingship and, finally, institutionalized male homosexuality.     

The Return of the Ambush: ‘Raskolism’ in Rural Yangoru,East Sepik Province

Over the last 15 years or so, ‘raskols’ have become a prominent feature of the cultural scene in Papua New Guinea and have prompted a number of academic studies, focussed mostly on urban crime. This paper documents and analyses a dramatic rise of raskolism in a rural setting, the Yangoru Subdistrict of the East Sepik Province. It seeks to describe how interactions between raskols and the population they exploit evolved, and it focusses on why Yangoru raskolism emerged when it did. Although a conjunction of rising material aspirations, failed economic programs, and the erosion of traditional and modern sanctions probably are important explanations, what seems critical to understanding this sudden rise in crime is the experience some young Yangoru men gained in raskol gangs in urban environments, experience that facilitated their recognition and exploitation of pre-existing but hitherto unacknowledged weaknesses in the systems of control back home.     

Dixon,Skinner and Te Rangi Hiroa

In the early 1920s, Henry Devenish Skinner of the Otago Museum, Dunedin, New Zealand, entered into a correspondence with Roland Burrage Dixon of the Peabody Museum and Harvard University and with Te Rangi Hiroa, then Director of Maori Hygiene in Auckland, New Zealand. The correspondence centred on recent publications by Dixon that used an experimental craniological analysis of his own devising to construct a number of global racial types and to trace their prehistoric migrations. This work had a bearing on theories of the settlement of Polynesia, in particular of New Zealand, a subject of vital interest to Skinner and Te Rangi Hiroa. Although the weaknesses of Dixon's technique were well documented in subsequent reviews, both New Zealanders were initially swayed by his arguments. This paper looks at the details of and context for the interactions between the three scholars and the possible impact of this correspondence on later work.