bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The archaeology of the Port Hedland coastal plain and implications for understanding the prehistory of shell mounds and middens in northwestern Australia
Authors: HARRISON RODNEY
Published: January 2013

This paper reports the archaeological salvage, radiocarbon dating and analysis of seven shell midden sites located south of Port Hedland, and makes observations regarding the archaeology of the Port Hedland region and the Abydos coastal plain. The excavations revealed an almost continuous sequence of archaeological sites dating between 5250calBP and 50calBP years. These include some of the earliest and latest radiocarbon ages associated with Anadara granosa dominated middens, shell mounds and earth mounds from northwestern Australia. Where earlier researchers had suggested that Anadara exploitation in northwestern Australia, and particularly on the Abydos plain and Burrup Peninsula, was limited to between 4200 and 1600 BP, these excavations demonstrate that the exploitation of Anadara shell in the Port Hedland region was continuous from at least 4400calBP (and possibly as early as 5350calBP) until the early twentieth century. Based on a consideration of their contents and ages, it is suggested that the various forms of shell accumulations in the study area, including shell mounds, earth mounds, surface scatters and stratified lenses of shell midden, are likely to vary more as a result of site formation processes than Aboriginal people's past gathering practices. This finding has broader implications for understanding the place of Anadara shell mounds and middens in the prehistoric regional economy of northwestern Australia.
Radiocarbon and linguistic dates for occupation of the South Wellesley Islands, Northern Australia
Authors: ULM SEAN , EVANS NICHOLAS , ROSENDAHL DANIEL , MEMMOTT PAUL , PETCHEY FIONA
Published: January 2013

Radiocarbon dates from three Kaiadilt Aboriginal sites on the South Wellesley Islands, southern Gulf of Carpentaria, demonstrate occupation dating to c. 1600 years ago. These results are at odds with published linguistic models for colonisation of the South Wellesley archipelago suggesting initial occupation in the last 1000 years, but are consonant with archaeological evidence for post‐4200 BP occupation of islands across northern Australia, particularly in the last 2000 years.
The Hakaea Beach site, Marquesan colonisation, and models of East Polynesian settlement
Authors: ALLEN MELINDA S. , McALISTER ANDREW J.
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT Field explorations at the newly recorded Hakaea Beach site, Nuku Hiva, Marquesas Islands were spread across a 12,500 m2 area on the western coastal flat. The site's geomorphic and cultural history is reconstructed based on nine strata and ten radiocarbon determinations. The Hakaea record illustrates the range of powerful environmental processes, including sea level fall, climate change, tsunamis, and tropical storm surges, which have operated on Marquesan shorelines for the last 800 years, and the ease with which past human activity can be obscured or erased. The results highlight the need to systematically search for protected coastal contexts and geomorphic settings where older surfaces might be preserved. Radiocarbon assemblages from the 13th century Hakaea Beach site and seven other early Marquesan sites are considered in light of three models of East Polynesian dispersal: 1) Leap‐frog; 2) Stepping‐stone; and 3) Advancing Wave. Along with chronometrics, the processes and mechanisms which might account for regional patterns of mobility and settlement are emphasized. The Marquesan record is unique amongst central East Polynesian archipelagos in the number of pre‐14th century sites, a pattern that might relate to the antiquity of human settlement, and one which should be considered alongside the late Holocene sea level record.
Chemical characterization of sources of obsidian from the Sepik coast (PNG)
Authors: GOLITKO MARK , MEIERHOFF JAMES , TERRELL JOHN EDWARD
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT We report here on the chemical analysis by portable x‐ray fluorescence (PXRF) and laser ablation‐inductively coupled plasma‐mass spectrometry (LA‐ICP‐MS) of 438 obsidian flakes recovered from Sepik coastal sites spanning the last two millennia of prehistory. Our results demonstrate the continuous involvement of local people in exchange networks moving obsidian from both the Admiralty Islands and West New Britain to this coast, possibly as far back as the mid‐Holocene. Suspected early assemblages contain significantly higher frequencies of obsidian from the more distant sources on New Britain. Assemblages dated to after ∼2000 calBP contain obsidian predominately from the nearer Admiralty sources. Site by site differences in the relative frequencies of obsidian from different Admiralty sub‐sources suggest that prehistoric patterns of interaction on the coast were complex, and cannot be accounted for by simple patterns of ‘down the line’ connections.
Prehistoric fishing strategies on themakateaisland of Rurutu
Authors: WEISLER MARSHALL I. , BOLLT ROBERT , FINDLATER AMY
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACTRecent observations of fishing, the ethnohistoric literature, the archaeological fishing tool kit, marine environments adjacent to the site, and the fish bone assemblage were considered to understand fishing strategies on themakateaisland of Rurutu, Austral Islands, French Polynesia. Excavations totalling 53.5 m2at the Peva dune site (ON1) were conducted in 2003. The sandy, calcareous deposits from Area 2 (33 m2) were dry sieved through 3.2 mm mesh and 5,011 fish bones weighing 2,229.7 g were retained for analysis. Two distinct cultural layers were identified. Archaic period layer D had 20 fish families inventoried from a total of 141 minimum numbers of individuals (MNI) and 1,081 numbers of identified specimens (NISP). Average bone weight was 0.42 g and median vertebra width between 5–6 mm (n=747). The Classic period layer A, associated with amaraecomplex, contained only seven fish families, a MNI of 24 and NISP of 403. Average bone weight was 0.63 g and median vertebra width between 10–11 mm (n=107). While a broad spectrum fish capture strategy is inferred for the Archaic, selective larger fish, including an order of magnitude increase in shark, were likely prestige items used in ritual offerings during the Classic period. Comparisons of the archaeological assemblages from fivemakateaislands show that in all but one case, sites are dominated by groupers, unlike many other Pacific island sites where parrotfish are most frequent. This, alone, might be the unique signature ofmakateaassemblages.
Temporal trends in prehistoric fishing in Palau, Micronesia over the last 1500 years
Authors: FITZPATRICK Scott M , GIOVAS CHRISTINA M , KATAOKA OSAMU
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT Previous research at the Chelechol ra Orrak site in Palau, Micronesia suggested that fishing may have declined prehistorically over the past two thousand years. Here we discuss the analysis of an additional suite of archaeofish remains recovered from the site that significantly expands the size of the previous assemblage, providing a more robust interpretation of prehistoric fishing in the archipelago. Results indicate that although all phases of occupation show diverse and relatively equitable exploitation of fish taxa, there are statistically significant changes in fishing over time when feeding guild (general ecological niche) is considered. In addition, the number of fish remains declines by an order of magnitude between early (1400–1240 BP) and later (1290–720 BP and 500–0 BP) occupation phases. Although various factors may be responsible for this dramatic decrease, it is generally correlated with settlement changes and possible increasing agricultural production in Palau. Thus, a decline in the overall importance of fishing may account for the changes observed in the archaeofish assemblage over time.
Magnetometer surveys in archaeological research in Papua New Guinea: Keveoki 1, Gulf Province
Authors: MOFFAT IAN , DAVID BRUNO , BARKER BRYCE , KUASO ALOIS , SKELLY ROBERT , ARAHO NICK
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT A magnetometer survey was conducted on the abandoned village site of Keveoki 1, near the Vailala River, Gulf Province, PNG. The survey, using a single sensor proton precession magnetometer, was successful in locating and defining the boundaries of areas confirmed by excavation to contain dense assemblages of pottery. The combination of geophysical and excavation results allowed a broader understanding of the spatial distribution of human occupation at Keveoki 1 than would have been possible based on excavation or visual field walking alone. We suggest this technique should be applied more regularly.
Morphometric analyses of Batissa violacea shells from Emo (OAC), Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea
Authors: THANGAVELU ANBARASU , DAVID BRUNO , BARKER BRYCE , GENESTE JEAN‐MICHEL , DELANNOY JEAN‐JACQUES , LAMB LARA , ARAHO NICK , SKELLY ROBERT
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT Archaeological investigations of human predation pressures on shellfish usually rely on measurements of complete shell specimens. However, most archaeological shell assemblages consist predominantly of broken shells, limiting measurable sample sizes, and thus potentially biasing results in cases where shell fragmentation is biased towards particular size classes (due to shell size‐fragility correspondences). This paper presents a recent application of morphometric analyses on the Batissa violacea assemblage from Emo, an early ceramic site from the Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea. Our method enabled most shell valves, fragmented or not, to be accurately and comparably measured for size. The results reveal a close match between the commencement of occupation and maximum shell sizes in a sequence of occupational phases, each separated by many decades to hundreds of years of site abandonment. While each occupational phase begins with peak mean shell sizes, the later peaks never again attain the mean shell size of the initial phase. As each phase progresses, shell sizes diminish until abandonment, and then the same pattern starts again with the next phase. Identical trends were obtained from two separate excavation squares. We interpret these results to indicate that while people may have abandoned the site of Emo between the occupational phases, they did not abandon the region, continuing to exploit local shellfish beds, albeit less frequently than during the site's occupation. These results highlight the ability of local (site‐specific) archaeological shell data to shed light on regional demographic and occupational trends.
Looking for the proverbial needle? The archaeology of Australian colonial frontier massacres
Authors: LITSTER MIRANI , WALLIS LYNLEY A.
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT Amongst other issues, the ‘History Wars’ raise the question as to whether or not sites of conflict on the Australian colonial frontier will be preserved in the archaeological record. We explore this question through a consideration of what the expected nature of any such evidence might be, based on general and specific historical accounts and an understanding of site formation processes. Although limited success has been achieved to date in locating definitive evidence for such sites in Australia, we conclude that there are some specific situations where archaeology could usefully be applied to give rise to a more multi‐dimensional understanding of the past.
Quantifying shell weight loss in archaeological deposits
Authors: FAULKNER PATRICK
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT While a range of physical and chemical taphonomic processes are known to affect archaeological shell assemblages, it has been difficult to directly quantify the effects of these degradational processes on the shell itself. Here the measurements of Anadara granosa shell features are used to derive morphometric equations for estimating expected shell weights. A cubic regression model is developed to this end, based on measurements of all shell elements of complete A. granosa valves, resulting in high predictive power. The morphometric method proposed here therefore allows for the comparison of observed and expected shell weights to determine the extent of weight loss as an indication of these processes. A case study is presented by applying these morphometric equations to a midden assemblage from northeast Arnhem Land to investigate potential bias in shell preservation. This study demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed method, and the need to assess the interaction of different taphonomic processes on a site and species‐specific basis.
A model‐based age estimate for Polynesian colonization of Hawai'i
Authors: DYE THOMAS S.
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT A model‐based Bayesian calibration using 14C data from paleoenvironmental cores and materials introduced to the islands by Polynesian colonists estimates that the islands were likely colonized sometime late in the first millennium AD. Two calibrations, one using 14C dates on floral materials and the other using 14C dates on floral and faunal materials, indicate that archaeological materials yield relatively imprecise estimates of the colonization event with 95% highest posterior density regions 3–5 centuries long. Materials introduced to the islands by Polynesians date to two periods, one that coincides with the colonization event, and another some 3–6 centuries later. A disparity between colonization and the first reliably dated archaeological evidence of human activity is identified and estimated to be 1–4 centuries long.
Intrusion, integration and innovation on small and not‐so‐small islands with particular reference to Samoa
Authors: DAVIDSON JANET M.
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT Investigations on small Polynesian outliers have illustrated how difficult it can be to identify archaeological evidence of intrusion, or to interpret the effect of any intrusion on the resident populations. In Samoa, the still meagre amount of artefactual and faunal remains from archaeological excavations adds to these problems. A review of the known Samoan archaeological sequence finds little or no evidence of intrusion, apart from a probable post‐settlement introduction of pigs and dogs. This need not mean that Samoa was ever isolated from contacts with other islands.
Middle and late Holocene skin‐working tools in Melanesia: Tattooing and scarification?
Authors: KONONEN NINA
Published: January 2013

Use‐wear/residue analysis of small flakes and stemmed tools made of obsidian and quartz, from middle and late Holocene archaeological sites in Melanesia, indicates their use in piercing and cutting soft skin. This skin‐working activity was possibly associated with occasional manufacture of items from animal skins but it is more likely these tools were used for tattooing, scarification or medical treatment of the human body. Tattooing by cutting and piercing and scarification are an integral aspect of social behaviour among peoples in the Pacific region. I argue that the practice of tattooing by cutting and piercing were both used in Melanesia in the middle Holocene, but tattooing by piercing became more common in the late Holocene.
Dating the appearance of Lapita pottery in the Bismarck Archipelago and its dispersal to Remote Oceania
Authors: DENHAM TIM , RAMSEY CHRISTOPHER BRONK , SPECHT JIM
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT The Bayesian calibration program OxCal v.4.1.5 is applied to two chronological datasets for early Lapita derived from two comprehensive reviews. The two datasets are supplemented by published ages for early Lapita sites in two key island groups within Remote Oceania: Vanuatu and Fiji. The analyses provide statistically robust chronologies for the emergence of Lapita on Mussau at 3470–3250 cal BP and in the rest of the Bismarck Archipelago at 3360–3240 cal BP. After a period of 130–290 years, Lapita dispersed to Vanuatu by 3250–3100 cal BP and to Fiji by 3130–3010 cal BP.
‘Rebecca will you marry me? Tim’: inscriptions as objects of biography at the North Head Quarantine Station, Manly, New South Wales
Authors: CLARKE ANNE , FREDERICK URSULA
Published: January 2013

In this paper we explore the historical inscriptions at the North Head Quarantine Station, Manly through the lens of biography to examine what the archaeological record can tell us about some of the people who found themselves in quarantine and who chose to mark their presence in the landscape. In particular we focus on two inscriptions located in the Wharf area of the Quarantine Station to illustrate how the archaeological record in this instance provides a mechanism for investigating and exploring the personal and social histories of migration and quarantine. Half of all the inscriptions at the Quarantine Station contain some biographical information about people, place and passage. They provide a material portal through which we can access something of the stories of the ordinary men, women and children who migrated to Australia. The archaeological record of names and lists of passengers and crew does not simply map onto the shipping registers in the archives, as the Samuel Plimsoll and John Howie examples illustrate. The material characteristics of the inscriptions set up a discursive interaction between the archaeological and historical records that allows us to interrogate them as objects with a biography and as objects as biography.
Terrestrial food production and land use in prehistoric Samoa: an example from Olosega Island, Manu'a, American Samoa
Authors: QUINTUS SETH J.
Published: January 2013

Samoan terrestrial production is vastly under researched archaeologically and few projects explicitly explore such a topic. This paper reports a food production system found in the interior of Olosega Island, one of three islands within the Manu'a group of American Samoa. This production system was part of a divided landscape, in which the residential was separated from the non‐residential. This division was created by a large ditch that cuts across the landscape that was likely used for water diversion. Swidden horticulture was a key component in this production system, practiced upslope of the large ditch. Arboriculture occurred within the residential area downslope of the ditch. Such a production system illustrates the multiple paths cultures can take to increase production while staying resilient in their unique environment. The human population of Olosega utilized numerous ecological niches in order to minimize variance while also creating a productive food exploitation system.
Identification of Fergusson Island obsidian on the Sepik coast of northern Papua New Guinea
Authors: GOLITKO MARK , SCHAUER MATTHEW , TERRELL JOHN EDWARD
Published: January 2013

During PXRF analysis of obsidian recovered from sites on the Sepik coast of northern Papua New Guinea, seven pieces were identified exhibiting a chemical signature inconsistent with sources in the Bismarck Archipelago previously identified on the coast. Comparative chemical analysis of obsidian from sources in the western Pacific confirms that these pieces originated on western Fergusson Island in the D'Entrecasteaux group. Our results represent the first identification of this source material on the north side of the New Guinea mainland beyond the Massim region.
New radiocarbon ages for the Lower Murray River, South Australia
Authors: WILSON CHRISTOPHER , FALLON STEWART , TREVORROW TOM
Published: January 2013

This paper presents the initial radiocarbon ages from the Lower Murray Archaeological Project developed in conjunction with the Ngarrindjeri Heritage Committee in South Australia. As part of this community based research program, a total of 59 shell (V. ambiguus) and charcoal samples were selected for radiocarbon dating. Radiocarbon ages varied significantly between sites within the region and ranged from 150–490 calBP at Pomberuk (Hume Reserve Midden and Historic Campsite) to 8190–8390 calBP at Glen Lossie Midden and Burial Site (GLMBS). These results will contribute to developing a more comprehensive understanding of human occupation in Ngarrindjeri ruwe (lands and waters) and assist in developing a local chronology for the region.
Knowledge, Morality and ‘Kastom’: SikAIDS among Young Yupno People, Finisterre Range, Papua New Guinea
Authors: Keck Verena
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the extent of knowledge about HIV/AIDS among young Yupno women and men. Local understanding of sikAIDS is shaped by cultural, moral and religious concepts and processes that are based on social values and practices. Difficulties these young people face in accessing information about HIV/AIDS and using it to implement preventative measures — for example by obtaining condoms — have to be seen in the framework of ‘kastom’ and a moral discourse coined and influenced by the Lutheran Church. As the research shows, there is an urgent need for a broad and contextually sensitive approach to sexual health, including information about conception, family planning methods, and sexually transmitted diseases when planning awareness campaigns for teenagers in rural regions.
Valleys of Historicity and Ways of Power among the Fuyuge
Authors: Hirsch Eric
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT Attention to history is widely seen as a necessary corrective to the synchronic perspective of ethnography, especially as this has come to inform research in Melanesia. In fact, anthropologists turn to the study of history not only to understand ‘change’ and ‘the past’ but to delineate the ‘history’ of the people studied. However, history as a concept and discipline has a unique place in western knowledge conventions, an outcome of the distinctive ways of gauging and relating past, present and future. Historical analysis can augment ethnography but not necessarily portray the history of the people concerned, as they may have no history, as such. The article suggests that historicity is a more appropriate notion with which to register the significant ways in which the social past is entangled in what people are and do and in their future potentialities. This argument is made with reference to the Fuyuge people of highland Papua and their involvement in engineered trail and road building during the colonial and post‐colonial period and their simultaneous interest in the performance of their gab ritual. These events exemplify different kinds of power and associated historicity. Through scrutiny of each it is shown that the form of Fuyuge (Melanesian) historicity parallels that of their sociality and its distinct temporality. The events that actors perform produce not so much history, as the recurrent evocation of past actions and the foreshadowing of future ones.
Sit, Cook, Eat, Full Stop: Religion and the Rejection of Ritual in Auhelawa (Papua New Guinea)
Authors: Schram Ryan
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACTThe Auhelawa people of Normanby Island (Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea) typically observe the death of an individual through a series of feasts in which the lineage of the deceased and its lateral relatives exchange food and perform rituals of mourning. Recently, a number of people have decided to reject all forms of ‘custom’ in favor of a practice of ‘Christian custom’ in which no food is exchanged and no rituals are performed. This paper examines the way people view custom and its Christian alternative. It argues that the basis for Christian forms of mortuary feasting is a shift away from thinking of feasts in terms of reciprocity and towards thinking of them in terms of traditional customary rules. In this context, active church members have begun to represent the absence of markers of custom as itself a marker of an alternative Christian custom. I argue that this reformulation of the relationship of custom and change is meant to give concrete form to the value of Christian individualism as the basis for sociality. The paper then concludes that in order to explain historical changes in ritual systems, the study of ritual needs to examine ritual in relation to the values that underlie it.
Nakomaha: a Counter‐Colonial Life and its Contexts. Anthropological Approaches to Biography
Authors: MacClancy Jeremy
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT In the anthropology of Melanesia, local life‐histories or biographies have all too often been presented in a non‐problematic, acritical manner. Instead of repeating this hide‐bound style in an unthinking manner, I attempt to be more ethnographically sensitive to local realities and to open up the genre by presenting information about a ni‐Vanuatu leader in a deliberately achronic style. By providing relevant data in terms of their sources, I put up front the biases and blindspots of each source, to enable easier assessment of their worth and to forestall premature closure. In the process I examine the conflictive dialogue between locals and expatriate officials in Vanuatu between the 1940s and 1960s. The final aim is that the open‐ended approach adopted here makes the resulting text more accessible to indigenous readers, who might wish to produce their own version of the subject's life‐history. Writing this kind of biography can thus be viewed as a further attempt towards decolonizing the anthropology of former colonial states.
Can Animals Break Taboos?: Applications of ‘Taboo’ Among the Nage of Eastern Indonesia
Authors: Forth Gregory
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACTLike several other Malayo‐Polynesian speaking peoples, the Nage of central Flores apply a word meaning ‘taboo’ to certain undesirable behaviours by animals. Since ‘taboo’ is usually understood to incorporate the idea of prohibition and thus to refer specifically to human action, this application might appear to reflect either a polysemous usage, such that with reference to animals, ‘taboo’ does not really mean ‘taboo’, or a cosmology in which humans and animals are ultimately not distinct. An analysis of Nage ‘animal taboos’, however, demonstrates that the idea of breaching a prohibition is not necessarily absent from these applications of ‘taboo’, and that in this context ‘taboo’ cannot simply be understood as ‘omen’ or a reference to inauspiciousness. Rather than Nage ‘animal taboos’ implying an equivalence or identity of humans and animals, they express their crucial opposition and a disapprobation of anything that compromises their conceptual separation.
New Ireland Malanggan Art: A Quest for Meaning
Authors: Billings Dorothy K.
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT Sustained scholarly interest in the malanggan carvings of New Ireland has achieved consensus regarding the social, political, and economic functions of the ceremonies in which they are used but inconclusive interpretations of the iconography of the art objects themselves continue. This paper finds an interpretation of recurring motifs in a reexamination of early reports, published and unpublished, of former burial customs. The perspective presented here supports but cannot confirm informants' insistence that the carvings are not religious but just pictures. No conclusions are reached regarding pre‐ or post‐Christian beliefs in general, but doubt is cast on their role in malanggan art. Some theoretical implications and further research directions are suggested.
Mekeo Chiefs and Sorcerers: Metaphor, Ideology and Practice
Authors: Jones Alan
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT This paper evaluates two English expressions used by Michelle Stephen to translate the Mekeo terms lopia and ungaunga, traditionally rendered as “chief” (or “peace chief”) and “sorcerer” (Seligman 1910; Hau'ofa 1971, 1981; Mosko 1985). Stephen suggests that more “literal” translations are “man of kindness” and “man of sorrow”. I argue that the expressions proposed are only literal if we accept postulated etymologies based on Stephen's reading of the Desnoës Mekeo‐French Dictionary (1941) and a grammatical analysis Stephen puts forward as unproblematic. I use authentic texts from Desnoës and my own grammar of Mekeo to challenge Stephen's suggested translations, and suggest that the use of conventional labels for key cultural terms is preferable to searching for non‐existent “literal” meanings. More generally, I discuss the use of etymologies that are unverifiable, and often from a linguistic viewpoint unlikely, in ethnographies of the Mekeo and to some extent elsewhere.

I outline linguistic processes whereby metaphors and other associative tropes rapidly become conventionalized, and lexical items become grammaticalized. I evaluate the role of metaphor and metonymy in the formation of concepts and belief systems, and sketch an interpretative framework capable of accounting for the different effects and uses of polysemy and homonymy.
Wellsprings of Belonging: Water and Community Regeneration in Queensland
Authors: Strang Veronica
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT This article considers how local communities in South Queensland make use of the cultural meanings encoded in water to articulate social connections and notions of belonging. Drawing on recent ethnographic research, it compares the activities of a community catchment group in Brisbane, and participants in a water festival in Maroochydore, exploring how each group engages creatively with local water sources to materialise particular beliefs and values about identity and belonging. Their creative efforts range from conventional attempts to strengthen local community ties through inclusion in catchment management, to more subversive visions, which resist inclusion in the mainstream and promulgate ‘alternative’ social and environmental values.
Kimberley Friction: Complex Attachments to Water‐Places in Northern Australia
Authors: Toussaint Sandy
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT Water, in all its physical, symbolic and metaphorical guises, has an obvious interconnection with people. Without water, human and other life forms cannot (and do not) exist. Less obvious is water's potential as a site of anthropological investigation to explore attachments to place. Such attachments, as Arturo Escobar observes, facilitate a multiplicity of place‐based cultures, and emerge when ‘connectivity, interactivity and positionality’ are present. His observation makes epistemological room for what Anna Tsing conceptualises as the ‘friction’ that permeates environmental and indigenous projects. Via Australian‐based Kimberley ethnographic insights, this article examines people's attachments to place‐based cultures when they become meaningful through multi‐layered tensions about water.
The Green Frog and Desalination: A Nyungar Metaphor for the (Mis‐)Management of Water Resources, Swan Coastal Plain, Western Australia
Authors: McDonald Edward , Coldrick Bryn , Christensen Will
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT In common with Aboriginal groups around Australia, the indigenous people, or Nyungars, of Perth adopt a holistic attitude towards groundwater resources. Of cultural significance are lakes, springs, soaks and watercourses that feature in Dreamtime creation narratives. Perth is experiencing major water shortages and many Nyungars feel that the degradation of the freshwater supply is a result of mismanagement and unsustainable development by non‐Aboriginal people. Proposals for dealing with the issue are seen as equally out of balance with the natural order of things. Water regulators have much to learn from indigenous Australians about water and environmental management. Although water continues to be central to Nyungar identity, the study on which this article is based found evidence of attenuated knowledge about the Dreaming, with discontinuities evident in the way significance is increasingly being read in everyplace rather than in specific ‘story places’.
Watercourses and Discourses: Coalmining in the Upper Hunter Valley, New South Wales
Authors: Connor Linda , Higginbotham Nick , Freeman Sonia , Albrecht Glenn
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT Water is a resource that both unites and divides people in the Upper Hunter Valley of New South Wales, where many communities are facing the prospect of large‐scale open‐cut coalmining developments on productive mixed use land, or already live in proximity to mines and power stations. This article analyses conflicts over a proposed coal mine at Bickham in the Upper Hunter Valley, by contrasting the various protagonists' discourses of water scarcity, supply, and connectivity. It examines the ways in which the terms of opposition are narrowed to the arena of state and industry supported science and economic development, marginalising other cultural values and environmental ethics that are integral to opponents' discourses. Opponents have achieved some measure of success through contestation of the uncertain science of hydrological modelling, bolstered by the context of drought and increasing public acceptance of climate change science.
Managing Meaning at an Ancient Site in the 21st Century: the Gummingurru Aboriginal Stone Arrangement on the Darling Downs, Southern Queensland
Authors: Ross Anne
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT Aboriginal stone arrangements occur throughout Australia and are of ritual importance to Aboriginal peoples. Stone arrangements are part of the dynamic context within which Aboriginal peoples lived in the late Holocene, where constant renegotiation of social alliances required an increasing reliance on ceremonial places with ritual importance. This is the past social context for the Gummingurru Aboriginal stone arrangement site complex on the Darling Downs, Queensland. In the late 19th century Gummingurru was a highly significant men's initiation site but by the early 20th century most of the traditional custodians of the site had been removed to the government‐run Aboriginal mission of Cherbourg. Since 2000, traditional custodians have returned to the site and have given the place and its cultural landscape a new meaning. No longer used for initiation, Gummingurru now has contemporary value as a site of learning and reconciliation for all Australians. Today Gummingurru has been given a new meaning and occupies a new place in Aboriginal society and political networking.
Piot, Personhood, Place and Mobility in Lihir, Papua New Guinea
Authors: Hemer Susan R
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT This paper is an exploration of the nature of personhood through the medium of the concept of piot in the Lihir islands, Papua New Guinea. Piot is an embodied experience in response to the movement of others in space. When people leave or arrive at a place and spend the night, others in the area feel unwell. Piot is thus one aspect of the relations between persons. I suggest that ideas of relational personhood are inadequate to fully comprehend piot, and, following LiPuma (1998) and Clay (1986) rather than Strathern (1988), argue that persons in Lihir are more than just relational beings who always act with others in mind. Piot is predicated on the dual themes of fixed sociality and mobility that are important in Lihir as elsewhere in Melanesia (cf Eves 1998; Patterson 2002). Through piot, persons comment on and sanction the movement of others, yet this mobility still occurs.
Mother's Umbilicus and Father's Spirit: The Dialectics of Selfhood of a Yagwoia Transgendered Person
Authors: Mimica Jadran
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT This is an ethnographic exploration of a Yagwoia transgendered person and his‐her life‐situation within the specificities of libidinal dynamics and economy of intersubjective relationships that constitute Yagwoia matrix of kinship and affinal relatedness. Developed within a framework of psychoanalysis and existential phenomenology, and forged through a long‐term field research, this study offers an in‐depth perspective on concrete realities of gender experience and social existence in an Angan life‐world of east Papua New Guinea.
Heroic History and Chiefly Chapels in 19th Century Tahiti
Authors: Sissons Jeffrey
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT This article seeks to understand mass conversion to Christianity in early 19th century Tahiti as the re‐materialisation of a heroic social field. Beginning with a re‐consideration of Sahlins' notion of ‘heroic history’, I argue that heroic Tahitian history was a distinctive combination of chiefly and collective action. The cultural structure of this history was reflected in three architectural moments: the building of a chapel for the high chief, Pomare, at Mo'orea, the generalised replication of this act through the construction, within a very short period, of some 70 chapels at Tahiti, and the building of a monumental chapel for Pomare at Tahiti. This article is a ‘prequel’ to an earlier publication on mass conversion to Christianity and church construction in Rarotonga.
Exploring Spatial Relationships between Material Culture and Language in the Upper Sepik and Central New Guinea
Authors: Fyfe Andrew
Published: January 2013

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.
‘Becoming Beautiful in the Dance’: On the Formation of Ethical Modalities of Being in Yap, Federated States of Micronesia1
Authors: Throop C. Jason
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACTThis article examines how the ideals of self‐monitoring, self‐reflexivity, self‐restraint, and self‐governance, as well as assumptions pertaining to the mastery of the body, its movements, and forms of expressivity, lie at the heart of one of Yap's (Federated States of Micronesia) most important aesthetic institutions ‐ the dance. In so doing, it suggests that Yapese dancing and the forms of self‐vigilance that are associated with it can be understood as implicated in the formation of a distinctly Yapese moral modality of being. That is, Yapese dancing ‐ including its performance and appreciation ‐ plays a role in helping individuals craft particular forms of feeling, thinking, appreciating, judging, imagining, and behaving that are consonant with local understandings of the good person, the good life, and right action.

A polite and agreeable exterior was maintained at all times to reveal nothing of internal mental states. Yapese frequently played games testing each other's abilities to keep their concentration and sense of restraint. Spectators at a Yapese dance who had forgotten themselves and had become enthralled by a particular dancer were singled out and reminded to chew their wad of betel (mu ko bu'), much to the delight of all present.
Material Culture and the Magical Power of Dance Objects
Authors: Eves Richard
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT This paper takes up the call by scholars such as Alfred Gell to consider objects of material culture as objects, by examining them in the context of production, circulation and reception. Because they are unadorned and without visual interest, langarol, the hand‐held artefacts used in some New Ireland dance performances, do not lend themselves to modes of analysis that see cultural objects as surrogate texts, the hidden meanings of which can be ‘read’. This very ‘lack’ enables us more readily to discern their significance, which lies in their magical potency and in the performance of their creator, the shaman, in attracting, wielding and revealing his awesome power. The power sought is less power over others and more power to — the ability to realise projects that can elicit effects. If consciousness and body are one, such achievements are to be understood as embodiments of intentionality and agency. It is through the production and wielding of such objects that people make themselves.
Tree Totems and the Tamarind People: Implications of Clan Plant Taboos in Central Flores
Authors: Forth Gregory
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT Among the Nage of eastern Indonesia, a sizeable minority of clans maintain totemic attitudes towards trees and other plants whose names they share. Tree totemism is mostly expressed in taboos on burning the wood and using the timber in construction. In addition, there is the idea that all Nage people should not burn wood of the Tamarind (Nage) tree. Comparative evidence and local historical narrative locate the source of phytonymic clan names in an earlier use of such names as toponyms and settlement names. Insofar as this is their origin, Nage plant totemism can thus be understood as a residue of a naming practice relating to places rather than to people, either human ancestors or groups. As the use of ‘Nage’ as the formal name of an inclusive ethnic, socio‐political, and territorial entity is relatively recent, and indeed largely a function of a colonial administration introduced barely a century ago, this case further demonstrates how taboos and totemic relations can develop rapidly in contexts of major social change.
‘By the facts we add to our store’: Lorimer Fison, Lewis Henry Morgan and the Spread of Kinship Studies in Australia
Authors: GARDNER HELEN
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT The formal study of kinship was introduced to the South Pacific Islands and the Australian colonies by Methodist missionary Lorimer Fison who distributed schedules and collected kinship data from around the region in collaboration with the founder of Anthropology in America, Lewis Henry Morgan. This article is a sequel to H. Gardner, 2008 ‘The origins of kinship in Oceania’, Oceania, 78:2, 137–150. It traces Lorimer Fison's return to the Australian colonies from his mission post in Fiji and the subsequent spread of kinship schedules to settlers, missionaries and administrators around Australia. Based on unpublished correspondence, the article investigates Fison's gradual disillusionment with Morgan's evolutionist hypothesis of the development of the human family and his disdain for the speculation of much metropolitan anthropology in the 1870s.
Part and Whole Numbers: an ‘Enumerative’ Reinterpretation of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits and its Subjects.
Authors: Pickles Anthony J.
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT From the starting point that concepts of number can contain within them a representation of a society's overall cosmology, reinforcing and strengthening its reality in logical terms through practice (a process I call enumeration), this paper charts the meeting of two systems of enumeration. As such systems are constantly changing, we concentrate on a particular point in time and space: the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits (CAETS) in 1898. Here a nineteenth century anthropology obsessed with reinforcing its position as science through the mathematicalisation of its methods met a Melanesian enumerative system bound to materiality and pattern. The conflict between intentionally abstractive and intensely material enumerative systems generated perplexing results which throw their underlying cosmologies into greater relief.
Kabit, RimbuandOpa: Modalities of Anganen Sacrifice1
Authors: Nihill Michael
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACTAt the time of colonisation and missionisation that quickly saw their abandonment, the Anganen practised two male exclusive cults in which animals were sacrificed in the hope of influencing powerful spirits. One cult,kabit, was only staged to overcome serious affliction thought to be sent by the spirits to individuals of subclans or women married into them. That is, it was a reaction to spirit power. The other cult,rimbu, while practised in response to widespread problems of humans, pigs and gardens, was also undertaken in the hope of increased health and productivity, and thus a possible action as well as a reaction. The paper describes and compares the cults. One major theme is male empowerment, asrimbunot only underwrites male power over others, it is also about empowerment to act on the world as well. While obviously radically different in many respects, at least in local consciousness, the adoption ofopa, the giving of money, produce and labour to the church, has resonance with the pre‐colonial situation. Mostly it is undertaken to please what the Anganen see as a vengeful God based on Old Testament stories. However, on occasions such as the lead up to theyasolupork distribution, the most prestigious event in Anganen, big men may ostentatiously present large gifts of money to missionaries or men may purchase cattle to slaughter, cook and distribute their meat on the opening of new churches. Both instances are beyond emulation by most in the community and, likerimbumay be, venues for male empowerment.
The Carnival of Custom: Land Dives, Millenarian Parades and Other Spectacular Ritualizations in Vanuatu
Authors: Tabani Marc
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT This paper deals with the aestheticization and commoditization of culture in specific grand rituals held in Vanuatu. Through political, commercial and juridical processes, the traditional referent of these neo‐ritualizations has been replaced by a celebration of the kastom theme itself; the official value of a regional, national, and global cultural heritage. The examination of two iconic rituals, the Nagol land dive on Pentecost island and the 15th February annual commemoration of John Frum on Tanna island, reveals them as similarly invoking a Christian and colonially inspired reverence in their idealization of an ancestral past. Nevertheless, the increasing monetarization of village communities through the global promotion of kastom spectacles by media and for touristic purposes is ever more frequently considered locally as a factor of inequality or division.
Securing Modernity: Towards an Ethnography of Power in Contemporary Melanesia
Authors: Lattas Andrew , Rio Knut M.
Published: January 2013

ABSTRACT Contemporary public discourses, which depict Melanesian nation states as weak or as having failed, serve to legitimize the imposition of external, neo‐paternal, regulatory structures on former colonies. Such discourses problematise the numerous local experiments that combine custom, state structures and religion so as to create modern Melanesian ways of governing. Starting with the colonial policy of indirect rule, Melanesia has had a long history of experiments that have sought to tie together different regimes of power in relays, which are meant to remediate, supplement and strengthen state structures. Today, those relays are pathologised as dysfunctional precisely because they can be used to subvert, contest and divert state programs. Current political problems arising from growing ethnic and economic divisions are producing new conflicts, new moral languages for figuring evil, and new tactics and technologies of power. Many of these new experiments seek to reconnect the nation state with the moral authority, pastoral regimes, and individualizing practices of Christianity.