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Article Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
Researchers at Field Museum, Chicago, have analysed the distribution of over 6,000 ethnographic objects collected mainly by A.B. Lewis during 1909-10 along the north coast of New Guinea, from Jayapura (West Papua) to Madang (Papua New Guinea) (see Terrell & Welsch 1990; Welsch 1996; Welsch & Terrell 1994, 1998; Welsch, Terrell & Nadolski 1992). The geographic region examined by the Chicago team's project is relatively uniform, being primarily coastal with small nearby islands and hills hinterland. Although linguistically diverse with 55 languages belonging to 5 unrelated language phyla along 700 kilometres of coastline, the people share a more or less homogeneous material culture complex, having a common pool of resources, material products, and cultural practices.
The focus of the Chicago team's analysis was on how trade and inherited friendship networks contributed to the interdependence of people on a far wider scale than one might suppose given the linguistic diversity of these societies. They have stated (Welsch, Terrell & Nadolski 1992: 587):
We question the value of parsing New Guinea's people into 'ethnolinguistic' groups, as if differences in language automatically translate into differences in culture. Simply knowing that two neighbouring communities speak unrelated languages does not allow us to assume that there are important and meaningful differences in their respective cultures.
Until the Chicago study, information about the extent of the correlation of material cultural and linguistic differences has been haphazard and scattered throughout the literature, with examples suggesting both high and low correlation. The Chicago study is therefore a welcome introduction of rigour into study of the subject. But there have been critics questioning how the data were analysed and, in particular, the statistical methods used (Moore & Romney 1994, 1995, 1996; Roberts, Moore & Romney 1995). A more recent study based at the South Australian Museum (the Upper Sepik-Central New Guinea Project--see http://uscngp.sai.net.au) is in the process of testing the conclusions reached by the Chicago team utilising data from some 10,000 objects collected in the upper Sepik and central New Guinea regions but results are not yet available.
A recent survey of Melanesian war shields (Beran & Craig 2005) brings together all the types of shields then known to the authors and editors. Implicit in that survey is the question of the correlation of material culture and language, so the locations of all the shields covered by the survey are linguisticly identified. A typology of shields based on formal characteristics is presented (ibid.:19-25) and the distribution of the types indicated (ibid., Map 2). But the shields were not examined in sufficient numbers or detail to contribute substantially to the debate raised by the Chicago study. What does seem to be emerging is that conclusions reached from the results of the Chicago study, questionable on the grounds of analytical categories and statistical method, may also turn out to be questionable on the grounds of the location and nature of the cultures examined. What might prove true for communities linked lineally by a vigorous maritime trade network might not be true for land-based communities scattered across two, rather than one, geographical dimensions. Further, the detail of material culture difference is certain to be crucial--differences obscured by analysis of categories defined too broadly (eg. particular types of string bag looping techniques obscured by analysis based on the presence or absence of looped string bags).
This paper, reviewing examples of certain war shields in the collections of the South Australian Museum, the Australian Museum, the PNG National Museum, the Museum der Kulturen in Basel and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, with reference to fieldwork in the Torricelli Mountains by all three authors, is an admittedly anecdotal contribution to the above debate. Certain formal and graphic design details of a number of well-provenanced war shields of the Lumi-Anguganak area of the Torricelli Mountains (see map, Fig. 1) will be examined and plotted against the distribution of languages in the region.
We propose an addition to the four types of Torricelli shields as reported in Beran & Craig (2005: 38-42), report on a looped string protective device worn by warriors in the vicinity of Anguganak, and describe a type of pigskin war shield to the south-east of Anguganak. Ethnographic data relating to the use of the shields are provided.
It should be noted that our considerations are only of the shields that we are aware of; there may be examples of shields from among the One speakers north-west of the Olo speakers, and from among the Elkei, Au, Yil and Alu speakers to the south-east of the Olo speakers, of which we are unaware.
THE TORRICELLI REGION
The Torricelli Mountains are inhabited by populations speaking many different languages, mainly of the Torricelli Phylum, with a few Sepik languages located at the south-east end of the range (Table 1). (2) The largest language group is Olo, with speakers numbering over 10,000, called the Pai on the northern fall of the Torricelli Mountains, and the Wape (3) on the southern fall. There are almost 5000 Urat speakers and 4000 Au speakers, but most of the other languages are spoken by only a few hundred people each (Laycock 1973).
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
The region is characterized by a highly dissected landscape rising abruptly from the north coast to about 1900 metres, then falling away more gradually towards the plains and swamps of the upper Sepik to the south. Local and provincial government services and Christian missions are mostly based around the airstrip at Lumi, located near the western end of the road running from the East Sepik Province capital at Wewak, through Maprik in the Prince Alexander Mountains and then through Nuku and Anguganak in the Torricelli Mountains. Only two of the Torricelli groups have been intensively studied by anthropologists (for Gnau speakers, see Lewis 1975, 1980, 2000; for Olo speakers, see Mitchell 1978, 1988, 1990, 2004, and McGregor 1982 for a missionary account).
TORRICELLI SHIELD TYPES
Craig (Beran & Craig 2005:38-42 and Figs 3.14 to 3.17) identified four types of shields (4) in the Torricelli Mountains. The first, third and fourth types need not detain us here. (5) The second of the types identified by Craig is the well-known 'Lumi' shield, hereafter referred to as the Olo shield type as it is made, so far as we know, only by Olo speakers. A newly recognized fifth type is represented by several examples from Rauit and Wamil, to the south-east of Anguganak, and is hereafter referred to as the Gnau shield type.
THE OLO SHIELD TYPE
Perhaps the earliest notice of the Olo shield type was by E.A. Briggs (6) whose expedition from the University of Sydney was the first to collect artefacts, and to record cultural activities by photographs and cine film, among the Olo speakers of the Torricelli Mountains. (7) In November 2004, in the course of doing other research in the collections of the Australian Museum, Craig came across two shields from the Torricelli Mountain, which had been acquired from the University of Sydney (via the Institute of Anatomy in Canberra) with the provenance recorded as 'Epiyu, Wapi, New Guinea' (Figs 2, 3). He realised that these two shields would most likely have come from Briggs; it is highly unlikely that anyone else from the University of Sydney would have collected. artefacts from Epiyu. (8) Epiyu was one of the villages Briggs visited and where he stayed overnight on 15 and 16 January 1926. One of Briggs's photographs held by the National Geographic Society shows two shields (reproduced in Benitez & Barbier 2000:182--see Figs 4, 5). (9) In his over-dramatised, even derogatory, published account of the expedition, Briggs wrote (1928: 266):
These primitive savages of the Sepik Valley arm themselves with long bows and bone-tipped arrows,...
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