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By discussing the Hubula prior to the Damal and the Lani, I depart from the west-east sequence that I started with my discussion of the Me and the Moni. I do so because there is reason to regard the way of life of the Lani as an offshoot of that of the Hubula. And as regards the Damal, it seems likely that they adopted several elements of the Lani way of life. Hence I proceed by discussing the Hubula first, then the Lani and then the Damal. The Grand Valley of the Baliem was, with the Paniai ...

This monograph is a comparative study of eight ways of life of highlanders in West Papua. It consists of ten sections: an introduction, a conclusion and eight ethnographic chapters, each dealing with a separate way of life. I chose this presentation since I wanted to make clear the individuality of each of them. In the book I attempt to trace the changes in these ways of life as they were occurring just previous to the settlement of colonial outsiders. This attempt proved feasible since for seven of them first contact accounts are available.

The Damal were a much smaller ethnic group than the Me, the Hubula and the Lani. Ellenberger (1996: 21) accepted Silzer & Heikkinen Clouse’s estimate of 14,000 Damal (1991: 45 [1984: 83]). This figure likely refers to the situation around 1980, hence almost 25 years after first settlement of Europeans among these people. Cook arrived at a slightly lower figure (1995: 45). She estimated that at the time of her research, in 1992, there were about 12,000 Damal. I take it that the number of Damal...

This book is a comparative, anthropological study focussing on eight ways of life found among highlanders living in western New Guinea on the eve of the colonial intrusion and incorporation. With the term “highlands” I follow English usage, since the Dutch use the expression “central highlands” for the area concerned, so as to distinguish it from the Van Rees Mountains, in between the north coast and the Meervlakte, the Lake Plain and also the highlands in the Bird’s Head peninsula. I use the...

1. Directions of change The eight ways of life that I have attempted to characterise in this book show a diverse picture of differences and resemblances, the outcome of endogenous changes combined with cultural adoptions from other peoples. As regards the endogenous changes, I assume a parallel, however distinct, with the changes that have taken place in the languages that formed part of these eight ways of life. At issue are at the least eight languages, belonging to five language families (...

Moni and Me were neighbouring ethnic groups, with the Moni living to the east of the Me. In the northeast of the Me territories the boundary was the Isa River, a southerly tributary of the Kema (Roushdy 1940: 63-64; Boelen 1955: 4 and map on outside back cover; De Bruijn 1978: 90-91, 100). Farther south lay an inhospitable, very sparsely populated area that bordered on the high mountains of the southern range. It is unclear to me to what extent the Isa River was also an ideological boundary. ...

The Eipo are a small group of people living north of the main divide, in the valley of the Eipo River, the Eipomek (Helmcke 1983: 30). They are speakers of a Mek language and have become known to the outside world primarily thanks to a massive research project undertaken from 1974 by a sizeable group of German researchers. For some of them, it became a project that lasted for decades. It was set up and started by two anthropologists, Gerd Koch and Klaus Helfrich, but in the course of the year...

1. Overview The Lani were the most populous ethnic group in all western New Guinea. In a book published in 1980, Hayward estimated their number at 134,000 (1980: 5-6). This figure may be an overestimate, since Silzer & Heikkinen Clouse put their number at 129,000 in their 1991 language index, while it seems likely that the partial abandonment of warfare and the equally partial provision of elementary medical services since first contact in the early 1960s had resulted in some population incre...

The term Ngalum has several referents. Linguists use it to denote a language, the westernmost language belonging to the Ok family of languages. But the term also refers to people; however depending on who uses or used it, it may indicate different groups or categories of people. In this book I use the term for the speakers of the Ngalum language, and mostly for the minority of Ngalum speakers about whom ethnographic data are available. In their 1981 index, Silzer and Heikkinen Clouse estimate...

1. Introduction Groups of Me were first contacted fleetingly in the mid-1930s by overland expeditions, but colonial interest increased sharply when Frits Wissel noticed from the air the three lakes, which were first called after him, and the dense population in the surrounding areas. From first contact onwards, the way of life of the Me intrigued Europeans. Their dense population, their sophisticated agriculture, their preoccupation with cowry shells that they had graded and used as a currenc...

The spelling I use here for the name of this ethnic group is the current, Indonesianised version. Older publications, including Koch 1974a and Zöllner 1977a, use the Dutch-inspired spelling Jalé, or Jalî. The term is an exonym, applied by both the Hubula and the Yali themselves, to the people living east of them. So far the Yali have accepted the term as a name for themselves (Zöllner, pers. comm. 2014). The Yali are the first people discussed in this book who live in the eastern highlands, j...

La civilisation de l’Indus marque les esprits par une apparente uniformité de la culture matérielle sur la totalité de son territoire (environ 1 million de km carré) durant sa période d’apogée (2600-1900 av. J.-C.). Cette étude cherche à tester deux hypothèses qui pourraient expliquer cette homogénéité : 1) Un pouvoir centralisateur contrôlant la production artisanale; et 2) Un vaste réseau d’échanges et de distribution de la production. Dans ce but, la grande majorité des publications accessibles portant sur la production artisanale d’objets en céramique, en pierres semi-précieuses, en coquillage et en métal ont été inventoriées et analysées. Axée sur la spécialisation du travail artisanal, l’étude a identifié quelques objets dits de prestige (perles classiques harappéennes, bracelets en grès cérame) très probablement liés à une élite. La nature de cette élite est ensuite examinée et un nouveau modèle d’organisation sociopolitique de cette civilisation est proposé., The Indus civilization puzzles archaeologists in that it shows a seeming uniformity in its material culture during the period from 2600 to 1900 BC and over its huge geographical extent (approximately 1 million square km). In this study two hypotheses are tested: 1) This uniformity in material culture is due to a central political force monitoring craft production; or 2) This uniformity results from an extensive trade and distribution network of craft production. In order to assess these, all available data concerning the craft production of ceramic, lapidary, shell-working and metal artefacts were inventoried and analyzed. A study of craft specialization identified a few wealth items (long carnelian beads, stoneware bangles), which were most probably related to an elite. After reassessing the nature of this elite, a new model of sociopolitical organization for this civilization is proposed.