This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

Of all the anomalous phenomenon reported, ghost sightings are by far the most common. The words "ghost" and "spirit" are used interchangeably in American English but in other cultures the lingering souls of the departed are not to be confused with ancestral spirits, demonic spirits, numens or poltergeists. This encyclopedia lists hundreds of entities of the spirit realm--from aatxe to zuzeca--from world mythology and folklore.

Proposing a new theoretical framework, this book explores Shamanism’s links with violence from a global perspective. Contributors, renowned anthropologists and authorities in the field, draw on their research in Mongolia, China, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, India, Siberia, America, Papua New Guinea, Taiwan to investigate how indigenous shamanic cultures dealt, and are still dealing with, varying degrees of internal and external violence. During ceremonies shamans act like hunters and warriors, dealing with many states related to violence, such as collective and individual suffering, attack, conflict and antagonism. Indigenous religious complexes are often called to respond to direct and indirect competition with more established cultural and religious traditions which undermine the sociocultural structure, the sense of identity and the state of well-being of many indigenous groups. This book explores a more sensitive vision of shamanism, closer to the emic views of many indigenous groups.

Melansia boasts over one-quarter of the world's distinct religions and presents the most complex religious panorama on earth. The region is famous for its unusual new religious movements that have adapted traditional beliefs to modernity in surprising ways. As the first bibliographical survey to comprehensively cover the entire region, Religions of Melanesia is an invaluable research aid for anyone interested in this growing field. Trompf's work is a complete listing of scholarly publications and provides readable and concise descriptions that will clearly guide the researcher toward the most relevant sources. This survey covers 2188 entries organized topically and regionally. Trompf covers such subjects as traditional and modern belief systems and the emergent indigenous Christianity that has taken root. Regional coverage includes Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Fiji.

In ancient Mediterranean cultures, diamonds were thought to endow their owners with invincibility. In contemporary United States culture, a foreign-made luxury car is believed to give its owner status and prestige. Where do these beliefs come from? In this study of craft production and long-distance trade in traditional, nonindustrial societies, Mary W. Helms explores the power attributed to objects that either are produced by skilled artisans and/or come from "afar." She argues that fine artisanship and long-distance trade, both of which are more available to powerful elites than to ordinary people, are means of creating or acquiring tangible objects that embody intangible powers and energies from the cosmological realms of gods, ancestors, or heroes. Through the objects, these qualities become available to human society and confer honor and power on their possessors. Helms’ novel approach equates trade with artistry and emphasizes acquisition rather than distribution. She rejects the classic Western separation between economics and aesthetics and offers a new paradigm for understanding traditional societies that will be of interest to all anthropologists and archaeologists.

A meaningful homage to an extraordinary anthropologist