Fifty years ago the New Guinea highlands were isolated and unknown to outsiders. As the highland peoples of New Guinea are among the last large groups to be brought into the world community, they are of major interest to ecologists, social anthropologists and cultural historians. This study synthesises previous anthropological research on the New Guinea highland peoples and cultures and demonstrates the interrelations of ecological adaptation, population and society. In describing, analysing and comparing the technology, culture and community life of peoples of the highland and the highland fringe, Professor Brown shows the special character of these societies, which have developed in isolation. In addition to examining the unique regional development of the New Guinea highland peoples, this book, a study in ecological and social anthropology, brings together theses two analytical fields and demonstrates their interrelationships.

Life on the frontier suggests excitement, danger, and heroism, not to mention backbreaking labor. All these aspects of exploring the unknown enliven Ethnographic Presents, where the frontier is the Highlands region of what is now Papua New Guinea - a part of the world largely unseen by Westerners as late as 1950. In the next five years a dozen or so pioneering anthropologists followed closely on the heels of "first contact" patrols. Their innovative fieldwork is well documented, and now, in an autobiographical collection that is intimate and richly detailed, we learn what these ethnographers experienced: what being on the frontier was like for them. The anthropologists featured in these seven new essays are Catherine H. Berndt, Ronald M. Berndt, Reo Fortune (by Ann McLean), Robert M. Glasse, Marie Reay, D'Arcy Ryan, and James B. Watson. Their pioneering ethnographic adventures are put in historical context by Terence Hays, and a concluding essay by Andrew Strathern points out that this early work among the peoples of the Central Highlands not only influenced all subsequent understanding of Highland cultures but also had a profound impact on the field of anthropology.

Explorations into Highland New Guinea, 1930-1935 is the diary of five years spent in hot pursuit--not of honor and glory, but of excitement and riches--by one such adventurer, Michael "Mick" Leahy, his brothers Jim and Pat, and friends Mick Dwyer and Jim Taylor.

D. K. Feil's study focuses on the divergent regions of the eastern and western highland of Papua New Guinea.

The myths of the Gimi, a people of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, attribute the origin of death and misery to the incestuous desires of the first woman or man, as if one sex or the other were guilty of the very first misdeed. Working for years among the Gimi, speaking their language, anthropologist Gillian Gillison gained rare insight into these myths and their pervasive influence in the organization of social life. Hers is a fascinating account of relations between the sexes and the role of myth in the transition between unconscious fantasy and cultural forms. Gillison shows how the themes expressed in Gimi myths—especially sexual hostility and an obsession with menstrual blood—are dramatized in the elaborate public rituals that accompany marriage, death, and other life crises. The separate myths of Gimi women and men seem to speak to one another, to protest, alter, and enlarge upon myths of the other sex. The sexes cast blame in the veiled imagery of myth and then play out their debate in joint rituals, cooperating in shows of conflict and resolution that leave men undefeated and accord women the greater blame for misfortune.

This book presents a detailed account of the lives of the Baruya, a tribal society in highlands of Papua New Guinea and will interest scholars and students of anthropology.

On the remote, steep slopes of the grassland and rain forests of Highland Papua New Guinea, live the Awa, subsisting on root crops and raising domestic pigs. Like many cultures, the Awa must deal with and find solutions to the problems of human social existence: inevitable and rapid culture change, interpersonal squabbles, lying and deceit, adultery, sorcery, and unexpected death. They wait ambivalently for the building of a road that would put them in direct contact with the encroaching world of trade stores, outdoor markets, schools, and the government station. In the middle of this walks an anthropologist who learns that fieldwork is first and foremost about understanding lives, both his and theirs. This book is a personal narrative that provides an intimate glimpse of the actual conduct of fieldwork among diverse individuals with remarkably distinct views of their own culture. It is an account of intertwined lives—of living anthropology—and a road of hope and promise, despair and tragedy.