New Guinea peoples and their ethnographers

Question 1

First wave of highland etnography

When, according to Knauft (1999:205) did the first wave of work from the New Guinea highlands and adjacent areas take place?

Answer 1

From the late 1950s to the early 1970s.

Question 32

Which people did Poole (1976, 1982) study?

Answer 32

Poole studied the Bimin-Kuskusmin.

Question 33

What people did Dan Jorgensen study?

Answer 33

The Telefolmin.

Question 34

When, according to Knauft (1999:208) did research in the fringe and peripheral highland areas burgeon?

Answer 34

From the mid-1970s through the 1980s.

This impetus resulted in major published monographs through 1990.

Question 35

Which group did Margaret Mead study for eight months during 1931 and 1932?

Answer 35

The Mountain Arapesh of the East Sepik Province.

Question 36

Why did Paul B. Roscoe visit the Arapesh in 1991?

Answer 36

In order to :

• clarify some ambiguities in Mead’s work
• help reconstruct what had happened to the Arapesh since Mead’s visit in the early 1930s.

Question 37

What is this?

Answer 37

A Baining fire dancer

Question 38

• Who are the Baining?
• Where do they live?

Answer 38

• The Baining people are among the earliest and original inhabitants of the Gazelle Peninsula of East New Britain, Papua New Guinea.
• They currently inhabit the Baining Mountains into where they are thought to have been driven by the Tolai tribes (or volcanic erruptions).
• The Baining tribes get their name from the Baining Mountains.

Question 39

Who was first to study the Iatmul?

Answer 39

Gregory Bateson

Question 40

Where did Bateson go for his first fieldtrip (1927) - and where had he wanted to go?

Answer 40

Bateson had wanted to go to the Sepik, but the government anthropologist had refused him to do so, and insisted that he studied the Baining, which he did.

Question 41

Who were first to study among the Mundugumor?

Answer 41

Margaret Mead and Reo Fortune

Question 42

What was the first people that Bateson introduced to Mead and Fortune?

Answer 42

The Washkuk

Question 43

In which Iatmul village did Bateson live when Mead and Fortune encountered him?

Answer 43

Kankanamun

Question 44

What was the second people that Bateson introduced to Mead and Fortune?

Answer 44

The Tchambuli / Chambri

Question 45

Among whom did Bruce M. Knauft study during 1980-82?

Answer 45

The Gebusi

Question 46

Among whom did Maurice Aodelier study?

Answer 46

The Baruya.

Question 47

Among whom did Raymond Kelly study?

Answer 47

The Etoro.

Question 48

Where did Roy Rappaport do fieldwork for his monography Pigs for the Ancestors (1968)?

Answer 48

The Maring

Question 49

Among whom did Gilbert Lewis live and study in 1968-69, 1975 and 1985?

Answer 49

The Gnau (Sepik)

Question 50

Who lived and studied among the Gnau, arriving for the first time in 1968?

Answer 50

Anthropologist and physician Gilbert Lewis.

Question 51

What is going on here?

Answer 51

Initiation in Malingai (Bateson 1936)

• Novice is lying prone on an inverted canoe clasping mother’s brother
• Initiator of oppsoite moiety is cutting his back with a small bamboo blade.
• Other initiators watch the operation

Question 52

Face paint in Malingai

Why the white and black paint on the faces?

(Source: Bateson 1936)

Answer 52

The white and black paint is a privilege of those who have killed a man, and is worn on all ceremonial occasions.