Academic literature on the topic 'Archaeology, Oral History, New Guinea, Agriculture'

The distribution of food-plants—both potential and actually exploited — reflects the natural history of contact across the seas and through the region, often long before Pleistocene times. The later and the human contribution has to be discerned from varied lines of evidence. The inventive process of early domestication leading to cultivation in the Sahulian north (New Guinea) was not a part of plant adaptation in the south (Australia). Neither did species diffusion result in adoption of agriculture or stimulation towards domestication among the Aboriginal hunter-gatherers.

ABSTRACTWhen European colonists arrived in the late 19th century, large villages dotted the coastline of the Gulf of Papua (southern Papua New Guinea). These central places sustained long-distance exchange and decade-spanning ceremonial cycles. Besides ethnohistoric records, little is known of the villages’ antiquity, spatiality, or development. Here we combine oral traditional and 14C chronological evidence to investigate the spatial history of two ancestral village sites in Orokolo Bay: Popo and Mirimua Mapoe. A Bayesian model composed of 35 14C assays from seven excavations, alongside the oral traditional accounts, demonstrates that people lived at Popo from 765–575 cal BP until 220–40 cal BP, at which time they moved southwards to Mirimua Mapoe. The village of Popo spanned ca. 34 ha and was composed of various estates, each occupied by a different tribe. Through time, the inhabitants of Popo transformed (e.g., expanded, contracted, and shifted) the village to manage social and ceremonial priorities, long-distance exchange opportunities and changing marine environments. Ours is a crucial case study of how oral traditional ways of understanding the past interrelate with the information generated by Bayesian 14C analyses. We conclude by reflecting on the limitations, strengths, and uncertainties inherent to these forms of chronological knowledge.

- G.J. Abbink, Serena Nanda, Cultural anthropology, Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company (second edition), 1985, 398 pp. - H.J.M. Claessen, Patrick Vinton Kirch, The evolution of the Polynesian Chiefdoms, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge etc. Series: New Studies in Archaeology, edited by Colin Renfrew and Jeremy Sabloff, 1984. 314 pp., index, glossary, bibliography, maps, and figures. - H.J.M. Claessen, Jarich O. Oosten, The war of the gods. The social code in Indo-European myths, London etc.: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985. 175 pp., bibl., figs. - H.J. Duller, P.W. Preston, New trends in development theory. Essays in development and social theory, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1985, 200 pages. - H.J. Duller, M. Stiefel, Production, equality and participation in rural China, UNRISD, Geneva & Red Press, London, 1983, 172 pp., W.F. Wertheim (eds.) - M. Grijns, Kirsten Hastrup, Basisboek culturele antropologie. Bewerkt door Yme Kuiper & Nellejet Zorgdrager. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1983, 353 pp., Jan Ovesen (eds.) - Simon Kooijman, Jelle Miedema, De kabar 1855-1980. Sociale structuur en religie in de Vogelkop van West-Nieuw-Guinea. Dissertatie Katholieke Universiteit van Nijmegan, Dordrecht 1984: ICG printing BV. Gelijktijdig verschenen als Verhandelingen 105 van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Leiden, Dordrecht 1984: Foris publications. - Adam Kuper, R.H. Barnes, Two crows denies it: A history of controversy in Omaha sociology, Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska press, 1984. - C.L.J. van der Meer, Steven Piker, A peasant community in changing Thailand, Anthropological research papers, no. 30, Arizona State University, 1983. - J. Miedema, Mark S. Mosko, Quadripartite structures: Categories, relations, and homologies in Bush Mekeo culture, Cambridge: University Press, 1985, XIII + 298 pp. - David S. Moyer, Rodney Needham, Against the tranquility of Axioms, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1983, xi + 182 pp. - Anke Niehof, Imke Swart, Die Traditionellen Grundlagen der Erziehung im Zentralen Java, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1983. (130 pp.) - J.H.B. den Ouden, R.S. Khare, The untouchable as himself. Ideology, identity and pragmatism among the Lucknow Chamars, Cambridge studies in cultural systems, Cambridge University Press, 1984. - Rien Ploeg, James A. Boon, Other tribes, other scribes; symbolic anthropology in the comparitive study of cultures, histories, religions, and texts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. xiv + 303 pp., appendixes. - Frank N. Pieke, Rubie S. Watson, Inequality among brothers: Class and kinship in South China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. xiii + 193 pp., 3 maps. - Rien Ploeg, Durk Hak, Watching the seaside. Essays on maritime anthropology. A. H. J. Prins; Festschrift on the occasion of his retirement from the Chair of Anthropology, University of Groningen, University of Groningen, 1984, 251 pp., ill., diagr., Ybeltje Kroes, Hans Schneymann (eds.) - Rien Ploeg, Ladislav Holy, Actions, norms and representations. Foundations of anthropological inquiry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. VIII + 134 pp., Milan Stuchlik (eds.) - Rien Ploeg, Nancy L. Hamblin, Animal use by the Cozumel Maya, Tucson, Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, 1984. 206 pp. - Ronald H. Poelmeijer, Lilly Eversdijk Smulders, Een jaar bij de yogiýs van India en Tibet, Deventer 1983. - Ype H. Poortinga, Dean Peabody, National characteristics, Cambridge/Paris: Camnbridge University Press/Editions de la Maison des Sciences de lýHomme, 1985. - Karen Portier, Khin Thitsa, Nuns, mediums and prostitutes in Chiengmai: A study of some marginal categories of women (41 pp.). - Karen Portier, Signe Howell, Chewong women in transition: The effects of monetization on a hunter-gatherer society in Malaysia (34 pp.). - Karen Portier, Maila Stivens, Sexual politics in Rembau: Female autonomy, matriliny and agrarian change in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia (50 pp.) - R. de Ridder, Dennis Tedlock, The spoken word and the work of interpretation, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983. ix + 365 pp., 8 ill. - R. de Ridder, Dennis Tedlock, Popol Vuh, The definitive edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. 380 pp., 32 ill. - G. van Roon, Dietmar Rothermund, Die Peripherie in der Weltwirtschaftskrise: Afrika, Asien und Lateinamerika 1929-1939, Paderborn: Ferdinand Schýningh, 1983, 295 pp. - Thilo C. Schadeberg, Gýnter Dabitz, Geschichte der erforschung der Nuba-Berge, Arbeiten aus dem Seminar fýr Výlkerkunde der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitýt Frankfurt am Main, Band 17, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1985. 280 pp., maps, tables, illus. - L. van Vroonhoven, Ger van Roon, Derde Wereld in depressie, Leiden: Nijhoff, 1985, 139 p. - Wim van Zanten, Nigel Phillips, Sijobang, sung narrative poetry of West Sumatra, Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture, no. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. xi + 255 pp., photos, texts and translations, short glossary of Minangkabau words, Bibliography, index.

The relationship between environmental conditions and the decisions and actions of historical agents is the central issue of this thesis. In a brief review of the role that social and environmental factors have played in archaeological explanation, I describe the scope for a form of archaeological ethnography in which particular attention is paid to the contrast between the different worlds of meaning in and through which historical agents address their environments. In the context of a debate over the impact of sweet potato upon society and environment in the New Guinea Highlands, the history of wetland use emerges as a focus for competing positions on the nature of explanation for relationships between societies and their environments. My study addresses this debate through consideration of the recent history of Huli-speaking communities of the Tari region, in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Part B sets out an ethnographic model of the relationship between Huli people and their environment. External and Huli perceptions of landscape, society and agricultural production are presented in order to permit explanations for change that encompass both the intention of the Huli agents of the recent historical past, and the broader social environmental processes of which those historical individuals cannot have been aware. The roles of cosmology and ritual in the relationship between Huli and their environment are singled out for the contrast they evince between an external, Western concept of historical progress and a Huli notion of continuous, entropic decline in the world and in society. The history of a particular landscape, The Haeapugua basin, is addressed in Part C. Detailed oral historical accounts of land tenure and wetlands use set a context for the archaeological investigation of the Haeapugua wetlands and wetlands margins. On the basis of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence, it is possible to demonstrate the significance of environmental change in placing broad limits on the possibility of wetland reclamation; this leaves unanswered, however, the more complex issue of human agency and decision-making in the processes and actual timing of wetland reclamation and abandonment. Through reference to the role of ritual in the relationship between Huli and their environment, as set out in Part B, Part D attempts an explanation for wetland reclamation at Haeapugua. The oral history of migration from the central Huli basins is shown to reflect an increase in population consequent upon the local adoption of sweet potato. While acknowledging the importance of population pressure on dryland resources, I suggest that the more significant imperative for the Huli who undertook the reclamation of the Haeapugua wetlands was the increased demand for fodder with which to augment the production of pigs. Pressure on dryland resources, decline in soil quality and increases social conflict were all interpreted by Huli as tokens of entropic decline, of the death of the land. Within the framework of Huli cosmology, the appropriate response to these changes was the innovation and elaboration of ritual and it was greater requirements of pigs for sacrifice and for exchange in ritual contexts that provided the immediate impetus for wetland reclamation.

Abstract This article considers some of the uncertainties about the position of oral traditions in relation to historical studies with written texts and in the narrative studies derived from archaeological evidence that may be called archaeohistories. There are issues about the ways in which we learn about Indigenous peoples, sometimes using non-Indigenous people as intermediaries and sometimes, though rarely, in the direct voices of Indigenous peoples. This article discusses the relationships among oral history, oral tradition, history from written texts, and archaeohistory, including the role of sanctification in the survival of knowledge. This discussion includes some consideration of the accuracies of these sources given the different time and personal scales over which they operate. Illustrating the argument with examples of Indigenous oral knowledge from communities in different parts of eastern Australia, it then discusses the possibility that other Indigenous accounts include narratives about different sea levels around Australia. The article concludes with a discussion of the complex interplay of memory and forgetting, verifiable secular knowledge and ritual beliefs, and different classes of historical knowledge. Application of different cultural knowledge to these sources by different agents produces different accounts of the past.