scholarly journals Ben Bohane's portrayal of spirit and war in Melanesia

2006 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-174
Author(s):  
Ben Bohane ◽  
Bec Dean

As a photojournalist, writer and producer of television documentaries, Ben Bohane has spent the past 12 years posting stories about life on the islands of Melanesia to the Western media—illuminating the struggles and the spirit worlds behind the news. Melanesia is as close to Australia as a 150km cruise from the tip of Cape York across the Torres Strait to Papua New Guinea, connecting Australasia to the rest of Oceania and Asia. Until recently, though, these islands have seemed distantly removed from Australia and New Zealand’s notion of its international community.

Author(s):  
Ian J. McNiven

Cultural interactions between Aboriginal peoples of northeastern Australia and Melanesian peoples of southern New Guinea have caught the attention of anthropologists and archaeologists since the nineteenth century. Moving away from older models of one-way diffusion of so-called advanced cultural traits from New Guinea to mainland Australia via Torres Strait, this article elaborates the concept of the Coral Sea Cultural Interaction Sphere (CSCIS) as a framework to investigate two-way interactions, gene flow, and object movements across Torres Strait. The CSCIS centres on a series of ethnographically known, canoe-voyaging, and long-distance maritime exchange networks that linked communities over a distance of 2000 km along the south coast of mainland Papua New Guinea and the northeast coast of Australia. Archaeological evidence for temporal changes in the geographical spread of pottery and obsidian use indicates that the CSCIS was historically dynamic, with numerous reconfigurations over the past 3000 years. The CSCIS developed as the confluence of major cultural changes and demographic expansions that took place in northeastern Australia and southern mainland Papua New Guinea.


Radiocarbon ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Chris Urwin ◽  
Quan Hua ◽  
Henry Arifeae

ABSTRACT When European colonists arrived in the late 19th century, large villages dotted the coastline of the Gulf of Papua (southern Papua New Guinea). These central places sustained long-distance exchange and decade-spanning ceremonial cycles. Besides ethnohistoric records, little is known of the villages’ antiquity, spatiality, or development. Here we combine oral traditional and 14C chronological evidence to investigate the spatial history of two ancestral village sites in Orokolo Bay: Popo and Mirimua Mapoe. A Bayesian model composed of 35 14C assays from seven excavations, alongside the oral traditional accounts, demonstrates that people lived at Popo from 765–575 cal BP until 220–40 cal BP, at which time they moved southwards to Mirimua Mapoe. The village of Popo spanned ca. 34 ha and was composed of various estates, each occupied by a different tribe. Through time, the inhabitants of Popo transformed (e.g., expanded, contracted, and shifted) the village to manage social and ceremonial priorities, long-distance exchange opportunities and changing marine environments. Ours is a crucial case study of how oral traditional ways of understanding the past interrelate with the information generated by Bayesian 14C analyses. We conclude by reflecting on the limitations, strengths, and uncertainties inherent to these forms of chronological knowledge.


2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathy MacKinnon

Papua New Guinea (PNG) occupies the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and still boasts 33 million hectares of closed natural forest (77% of the country), home to numerous endemic species. Overall PNG is sparsely populated with some 700 distinct cultural/ language groups. Economic growth over the past two decades has been spurred by large-scale mining, petroleum and logging operations though the majority of the population continues to rely upon subsistence agriculture (swidden) and collection and utilization of forest products. Some 15 million hectares of forests are accessible for logging, of which 1.5 million hectares have already been logged, generally in an unsustainable manner. Of the over 6 million ha of approved timber blocks more than 1.5 million hectares have been located in areas of high biological value. Forest loss and degradation is now becoming a serious problem.


1990 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-288
Author(s):  
M.M. Stevens

AbstractThe genus Mitelloides Evans is revised. Three species are recognised and described; M. moaensis Evans (the type species) and two new species, M. thorntonensís and M. mouldsi. A key to the males of the genus is provided, and the known distributions of all species are mapped. The genus is known only from north-east Queensland, the Torres Strait Islands, and Papua New Guinea.


1987 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-148
Author(s):  
William K. A. Agyei

SummaryData collected on fertility, mortality and family planning in two surveys in Papua New Guinea are presented. The first survey was conducted in rural and urban areas between November 1979 and March 1980 in eight provinces of Papua New Guinea, and the second between late June and early July 1981 in the Lae urban area. The unadjusted total fertility rates suggest that fertility is lower in the Lae urban area than in the rural and provincial urban areas. However, the adjusted rates indicate that fertility is higher in the provincial urban areas than in the rural and Lae urban areas. The results also confirm a trend towards lower infant and child mortality over the past 15 years, as well as the existence of moderate differentials between rural, provincial urban and the Lae urban areas.


2002 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Boulton-Lewis ◽  
Hitendra Pillay ◽  
Lynn Wilss ◽  
David Lewis

Health is considered to be a fundamental human right and developing a better understanding of health is assumed to be a global social goal (Bloom, 1987). Yet many third-world countries and some sub-populations within developed countries do not enjoy a healthy existence. The research reported in this paper examined the conceptions of health and conceptions of illness for a group of Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, and Papua New Guinea university students studying health science courses. Results found three conceptions of health and three conceptions of illness that indicated these students held a mix of traditional/cultural and Western beliefs. These findings may contribute to overcoming the dissonance between traditional and Western beliefs about health and the development of health care courses that are more specific to how these students understand health. This may also serve to improve the educational status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and potentially improve the health status within these communities.


2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (8) ◽  
pp. n/a-n/a ◽  
Author(s):  
Liang-Jian Shiau ◽  
Min-Te Chen ◽  
Steven C. Clemens ◽  
Chih-An Huh ◽  
Masanobu Yamamoto ◽  
...  

Zootaxa ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 2680 (1) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
MATTHEW SHAW

While certain ecological groups of trombiculid mites are thought to be specialised for nest occupation, supporting evidence is rare. A putatively nest-specialised trombiculid is here described in detail. Larvae, a deutonymph and adults of the trombiculid genus Ascoschoengastia were collected from three tree hollow nests occupied by Eclectus parrots (Eclectus roratus) and Sulphur-crested Cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) at Iron Range, Cape York Peninsula. The larvae are A. (Laurentella) lorius (Gunther), a species originally described from an Eclectus parrot in Papua New Guinea. Deutonymph and adult Ascoschoengastia are also assigned to this species based on their co-occurrence with larvae in this specific and isolated microhabitat. A. (L.) lorius is inferred to have a nest-based life history. Active stases are described with attention to sensory setae. The previous synonomy of A. (L.) daria with A. (L.) lorius is rejected. A key to Australian species of Ascoschoengastia is presented.


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