Stone-Faced Ancestors: The Spatial Anchoring of Myth in Wamira, Papua New Guinea

Kahn, Miriam

doi:10.2307/3773481

Cited by 51 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…23-31). Such features are not only named places, but represent what might be known in anthropological discourse as a form of emplaced myth (see Rumsey and Weiner 2001): a way of understanding the world where knowledge is anchored in space (Lahn 1990). In Torres Strait, Nietschmann (1989, pp.…”

Section: Stone Arrangementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Local community members know the site as the petrified figure of the ancestral culture-hero, Puapun (also known as Poapun). The transformation of ancestral figures into stone is a key element of Melanesian and Aboriginal cosmologies regionally (Lahn 1990) and is often a result of their death due to engagements with malevolent otherworldly spiritual forces. On Mua, there are many such examples of transmogrification: the fisherman Im who transformed into a rock just off Totalai, as were Takamulai, Buziauwar, Zangagudan, the giant Karakarkula, and the seven blind brothers on the south coast (see Lawrie 1970, pp.…”

Section: Stone Arrangementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Lining the Path: A Seascape Perspective of Two Torres Strait Missions, Northeast Australia

Ash

Manas²,

Bosun³

2010

Int J Histor Archaeol

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This paper compares the socio-spatial characteristics of two missions dating from different periods in Torres Strait, northeastern Australia. It builds upon previous archaeological research which correlates settlement-subsistence systems with the seascape cosmologies of marine specialists. Against the backdrop of profound changes in colonial governance and religious commitment (from mission to church) from the late nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries, we map the changing structure of two Torres Strait missions, and reflect upon these changes relative to lived sea-space. We use this approach in the belief that "local" histories provide meaningful context to broader colonial narratives.

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Section: Stone Arrangementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Stone Arrangementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lining the Path: A Seascape Perspective of Two Torres Strait Missions, Northeast Australia

Ash

Manas²,

Bosun³

2010

Int J Histor Archaeol

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“…Usually construed in terms of an apparently stable, objective, and material reality, space has been understood in recent scholarship more in terms of relationality, proliferation, and construction, and as a property of social relationships, material practices and symbolic meaning‐making (Corsin Jiménez ; Kahn ; Leach ; Myers ; Rodman ). Jeff Malpas argues that the very ontological status of space is disrupted in this kind of research (:5–7).…”

Section: Belonging and Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

Putting Belonging into Place: Place Experience and Sense of Belonging amongEcuadorian Migrants in anItalianAlpine Region

Raffaetà

Duff

2013

City & Society

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This paper explores the meaning and mechanics of belonging with a particular focus on the role of place and place-making. It explores the ways people come to achieve a sense of belonging with reference to recent theoretical treatments of place, territory, and mobility. We ground our discussion in analysis of an ethnographic case of Ecuadorian families who have migrated to Trentino in northern Italy. Most families miss the social relationships and places they left behind, but have decided to stay permanently in Italy, giving up the "myth of return" (Anwar 1979). Trentino offers more opportunities in term of employment, education, and access to services than Ecuador. Yet the decision to stay in Trentino is based on more than a simple assessment of economic advantage. Participants spoke of a slowly unfolding sense of belonging to Trentino, with strong affective dimensions born of a specific attachment to the very materiality of place in Trentino. This attachment may be regarded as an assemblage of social, material and affective resonances, experiences and resources, revealing something of the place and feeling of belonging. Hence, the Ecuadorian sense of belonging does not rely on an abstract conception of cultural affiliation, nor is it a purely psychological response. Rather, belonging accrues in particular practices and material attachments. We unpack these practices by documenting the work participants put into inhabiting an unfamiliar place as "their" place, while at the same time questioning the ontological status of space.

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“…At Titamnga, the Kamea village where I conducted most of my fieldwork, land is inscribed with the identities of those who have worked it. Men and women move through a ‘mosaic of special places, each stamped by human intention, value and memory’ (Buttimer 1976: 283; see also Kahn 1990; Maschio 1994; Rodman 1987). Throughout the region, all features of the landscape are named, from the smallest stream or limestone outcrop, to an old abandoned garden long overgrown with weeds.…”

Section: Land and The Elicitation Of Intergenerational Continuitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceiving relatedness: non‐substantial relations among the Kamea of Papua New Guinea

Bamford

2004

Royal Anthropological Inst

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This article considers the implications of imagining kinship as a non‐embodied relation. In recent years, it has become commonplace to argue that relatedness is a gradually acquired state that can be built over time and by non‐sexual means. In this view, relationships of consanguinity are not given at birth but are created through purposeful acts of feeding and caring. Here, I address a question that has been less commonly asked by anthropologists: need kinship always be imagined as entailing an embodied connection? Is there a way of thinking about cross‐generational relationships that does not ground them in bodily connectedness, or, at the very least, one that imagines contexts in which they are not embodied as a substantial link between people? Drawing upon data collected among Kamea of Papua New Guinea, I describe a world in which the parent‐child tie is conceptualized as one that is inherently non‐embodied.

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Stone-Faced Ancestors: The Spatial Anchoring of Myth in Wamira, Papua New Guinea

Cited by 51 publications

References 13 publications

Lining the Path: A Seascape Perspective of Two Torres Strait Missions, Northeast Australia

Lining the Path: A Seascape Perspective of Two Torres Strait Missions, Northeast Australia

Putting Belonging into Place: Place Experience and Sense of Belonging amongEcuadorian Migrants in anItalianAlpine Region

Conceiving relatedness: non‐substantial relations among the Kamea of Papua New Guinea

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