Women,Place and Practice in Vanuatu: a View from Ambae

This paper discusses the relationship between people and place in Vanuatu, focusing on the relationship between women and place. The paper draws on ethnographic data from the island of Ambae, arguing that practice mediates the relationship between people and place, and, in the new context of the nation, has become a way of demonstrating a person's affiliation to place. In contemporary Vanuatu, kastom mediates and expresses place-based identity. Landholding and land-use are aspects of the practice of a place. The fact that a person's identity is tied to their place raises issues for the identity and status of women, who move at marriage to their husband's place. It remains the case, however that at marriage a woman becomes identified as a person of her husband's place, no matter whether she lives there or not. Ni-Vanuatu women see their capacity to move and resettle in this way as a strength, a capacity of which they can be proud, and for which men respect them. The growth of urban centres since Independence is bringing new presssures to bear on the relationship between people, practice and place.     

An Analysis of Arrow and String Bag Craft Variability in the Upper Sepik and Central New Guinea

ABSTRACT This paper describes an analysis of relationships between language, geography and material culture in the upper Sepik region of New Guinea. We used Mantel tests and principal coordinate analysis to assess and compare the associations between arrow and string bag crafts and language and geographical distance. The Mantel tests resulted in a significant association between each class’ craft variability and both geographical distance and language, however, after statistical control was applied to either of the independent variables only a significant association with geographical distance remained. We argue that these results indicate craft techniques were readily disseminated and that craft distributions are unlikely to reflect any deeper historical relationships between groups. The spatial autocorrelation of arrow crafts was particularly great. A comparison of the principal coordinate analysis plots indicates a greater degree of diffusion and synthesis had taken place between lowland and highland arrow craft traditions. We conclude that the more intensive learning regimes needed to master string bag craft techniques, as well as a greater degree of interdependence between string bag components, had ensured more abrupt differences between bag types resulting in a more moderate degree of spatial autocorrelation.