This two-volume work from 1914 presents William Halse Rivers' theory of the diffusion of culture in the south-west Pacific. Volume Two details the many similarities and differences among the societies of Melanesia and the possible ways in which these contrasts could have arisen.

Volume 2 of a 2 volume set. For individual volumes in the set seeCIHM nos. 66018 - 66019.

This volume examines the way objects and images relate to and shape notions of temporality and history. Bringing together ethnographic studies from the Lowlands of Central and South America and Melanesia, it explores the temporality inhering in images and artefacts from a comparative perspective. The chapters focus on how peoples in both regions ‘live in’ and ‘navigate’ time each through their distinctive systems of images and the processes and actions by which these come to be manifest in objects. With original theoretical and ethnographic contributions, the book is valuable reading for scholars interested in visual and material culture and in anthropological approaches to time.

David Hilliard's God's Gentlemen, originally published in 1978, remains the only detached and detailed historical analysis of the work of the Melanesian Mission. Starting with its New Zealand beginnings and its Norfolk Island years (1867-1920), the work follows the Mission's shift of headquarters to the Solomon Islands and on until the beginning of the Second World War. The Mission, which grew out of the personal vision of the first Church of England Bishop of New Zealand, George Selwyn, formally defined its field of work as 'the Islands of Melanesia' although its activities were confined almo.