BETRAYAL: THE CASE OF THE NEW GUINEA BARUYA

This article is situated within the discussion started in 1962 by John Barnes, whose observations on the fluidity of social organization in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea raised the question, what binds together a certain number of individuals belonging to distinct kinship groups? Is it defense of a common territory? Is it participation in initiation rituals which institute a general order between genders and between generations? Or is it, as in the Big-men societies, participation in cycles of ceremonial exchanges which involve all the local groups of a same region? These questions have been discussed by various authors: De Lepervanche (1967–8), A. Strathern (1968, 1970), and Feil (1981, 1984) to mention just a few. The fabric of Baruya society is generated by two principles: direct exchange of women and an elaborate system of male and female initiations. The Baruya share the same culture and the same language with their neighbours and enemies, but they distinguish and define themselves by claiming a common territory conquered at the expense of local groups and by the fact that their women circulate primarily between kinship groups residing on this territory. However, from time to time these two principles are transgressed by individuals or segments of lineages who betray their kinship or tribal solidarities, generating situations which reshape the internal composition of the Baruya tribe and its relationships with its neighbours. I intend by analysing the mechanisms of these betrayals to throw some light on this key-moment in the dynamics of New Guinea Highlands societies.     

Three Deserted Medieval Settlements on Dartmoor: A Report on the late E. Marie Minter's Excavations

HOUNDTOR, HUTHOLES AND DINNA CLERKS are three deserted medieval settlements on the granite uplands towards the eastern side of Dartmoor Forest, Devon. Houndtor and Hutholes were small villages comprising eleven and six buildings respectively; Dinna Clerks was an isolated homestead. Extensive excavation at these sites by the late Mrs E. Marie Minter revealed a long sequence o f superimposed houses, divisible into two periods. Those of the first were built of turf. Although their remains were few, and in some places confusing, they provided much information on the construction of this type of building in the South- West of England. During the second period commencing in the middle of the 11th century, the houses of turf were gradually replaced by those of stone. The excavation of the well-preserved remains of the long-houses and their associated barns and corn-driers and the recording of the gardens and some of the open fields have given a clear insight into the ecology of a community dependent upon mixed farming at altitudes between 1100 and 1300 ft above sea level. The excavation of these settlements has also demonstrated how the deterioration of the climate in the late 14th and early 14th centuries led to their eventual desertion.     

The Indo‐European mirror: Monotheism and polytheism (J.G. Herder,E. Renan,A. Pictet,F.M. Müller and R.F. Grau)

Some authors assigned the Indo‐Europeans a mirror‐like role which allowed them to understand their own position with respect to contemporary Christian values. After dealing briefly with the writings of J.G. Herder, I shall evoke a certain number of questions which oriented the research of E. Renan, F.M. Müller, A. Pictet and R.F. Grau. The works of the latter authors expounded fabulous genealogies, organizing them into explanatory systems that radically opposed Hebrew monotheists to Indo‐European polytheists. Thus, depending on whether they had used the Semites or the Indo‐Europeans as their starting‐point, they concluded that monotheism or polytheism, respectively, was the archaic source of human thought. The goal on their horizon was a ressuscitated West, forever in the forefront of progress, often simultaneously Christian and scientific. If this type of historiographic analysis is urgently needed at the present time, its purpose is not to provide a grid for distinguishing “truth”; from “falsehood,”; but rather to grasp a set of scholarly traditions within its own channels of transmission.