Ethnographic Presents: Pioneering Anthropologists in the Papua New Guinea Highlands
Terence Hays
Abstract
Life on the frontier suggests excitement, danger, and backbreaking labor. In this book, the frontier is the Highlands region of what is now Papua New Guinea—a part of the world largely unexplored by Westerners as late as 1950. In the next five years, a dozen pioneering anthropologists followed closely on the heels of “first contact” patrols. Their innovative fieldwork is well documented, and now, in this intimate and detailed autobiographical collection, we learn what being on the frontier was like for the ethnographers themselves. The concluding chapter to this book points out that early work ... More
Life on the frontier suggests excitement, danger, and backbreaking labor. In this book, the frontier is the Highlands region of what is now Papua New Guinea—a part of the world largely unexplored by Westerners as late as 1950. In the next five years, a dozen pioneering anthropologists followed closely on the heels of “first contact” patrols. Their innovative fieldwork is well documented, and now, in this intimate and detailed autobiographical collection, we learn what being on the frontier was like for the ethnographers themselves. The concluding chapter to this book points out that 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.
Keywords:
frontier,
Highlands region,
Papua New Guinea,
Central Highlands,
Highland cultures,
anthropology
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 1992 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780520077454 |
| Published to California Scholarship Online: May 2012 |
DOI:10.1525/california/9780520077454.001.0001 |
