Monica Minnegal

Hunting in Lowland, Tropical Rain Forest: Towards a Model of Non-Agricultural Subsistence

It has recently been argued that hunter-gatherers do not, did not, and could not live in tropical rain forest without some access to agricultural produce. This opinion challenges models of past non-agricultural subsistence patterns that are based in analogies derived from modern rain forest dwelling groups. In this paper, the socio-ecological bases of the hunting system of the Kubo people of lowland Papua New Guinea are described. It is argued that this system lacks necessary dependence upon the agricultural system with which it co-occurs and, in fact, can be connected with a system of carbohydrate procurement that is not agricultural. The hypothesized connection provides the basis of a model of non-agricultural subsistence in lowland tropical rain forest.

Ecology and community dynamics of Kubo people in the tropical lowlands of Papua New Guinea

Kubo producer-units (families and independent bachelors) could have been self-sufficient in the production of bananas but chose not to be. Nor did they seek self-sufficiency in the production of any combination of staple carbohydrate foods (bananas, tubers, sago flour) or, in the long term, strive for balance in the exchange of food with other producer-units. Despite the fact that bananas, which provided 50% of peoples energy needs, were a delayed-return crop Kubo communities were very unstable. This instability and the failure to choose the option of self-sufficiency were connected and were mediated through intense intracommunity sharing that, ultimately, served to negotiate a concern with sorcery. The people grew bananas in the way they did, not out of environmental necessity, but to accommodate the crop to the needs of sharing and, thereby, facilitate community living.

Are kubo hunters ‘show offs’?

Abstract The ‘show off’ hypothesis proposed by K. Hawkes, and tested using data on Ache foragers, makes important connections between food resource choice, reproductive strategies, and food sharing by human foragers. We test predictions derived from that hypothesis concerning contexts of meat acquisition, association between individuals, mobility, and reproductive success among Kubo hunter-horticulturalists of the interior lowlands of Papua New Guinea. Application of the hypothesis to both the Kubo and Ache cases is questioned. Differences between Kubo males in means and variances of returns from hunting arise as a consequence of differential target specialization; they do not map onto variation in reproductive success.

Responses to a drought in the interior lowlands of Papua New Guinea: a comparison of Bedamuni and Kubo-Konai.

The ways that people experience, respond to and pattern recovery from major climatic aberrations must be understood within the context of existing socioeconomic arrangements and the ethos that informs these. This paper describes immediate and longer term impacts of a major drought on two populations—Bedamuni and Kubo-Konai—in the interior lowlands of Papua New Guinea. Though they occupy similar environments, are culturally related and reliant on similar technology and resources, these two populations differ in density, intensity of land use, and social complexity. The drought of 1997 affected one of the populations much more severely than the other. A comparison of effects on subsistence regimes, mobility and social life in the two areas suggests that these were mediated by understandings people held of relationships with both the environment and other people. Bedamuni pattern their lives around an expectation of favorable returns on effort, emphasising security of tenure to protect those returns. Kubo-Konai, in contrast, pattern their lives around an expectation that availability of resources will be often in flux, and emphasise means of ensuring security of supply. These understandings are reflected, respectively, in risk-prone and risk-averse strategies of subsistence and sociality which directly influence vulnerability and responses to disruptive events.

Rereading Relationships: Changing Constructions of Identity among Kubo of Papua New Guinea

Through a ten-year period and in contexts of increased sedentism and monetization, Kubo people have altered the emphases of identity construction. An emphasis upon the social identity of individuals as a basis for action has shifted toward expressions of the importance of groups. An emphasis upon the future in the constitution of personal relationships and identity has shifted toward expressions of the importance of the past. And an emphasis upon personal action as the basis for establishing relationships and rights to land has shifted toward expressions of the importance of prior convention. These changes are seen as reflecting the disembedding tendencies of modernity. (Kubo, Papua Nesv Guinea, social identity, social change, modernity)

Bower birds, bones and archaeology

Objects collected by the Australian great bower bird, Chlamydera nuchalis, may include artifacts and human food debris. The birds could affect the shape and interpretation of some archaeological assemblages. Bones from two bower collections are described according to: (1) their sizes and shapes; (2) the taxa and elements represented; and (3) marks and damage. The potential relevance of the birds for archaeological interpretation is assessed and ways of recognizing bias caused by the birds are discussed.

The Transformation of Use-Rights: A Comparison of Two Papua New Guinean Societies

Use and ownership of land and resources in two related societies of lowland Papua New Guinea are shown to covary with residence, gender, marriage, kinship, and local understandings of rights that are accorded by either conventions of practice or conventions of inheritance. We argue that the articulation of these material and social relations is predicated on the potential for a lack of congruence between discourse and behavior. Differences between the societies, and changes observed in one of them, inform a model of the transformation of use-rights in nonhierarchical and communally based systems. Under that model, an ideal of free access gives way to an ideal of restraint, an expectation that permission will be sought gives way to a requirement that an invitation be offered, and an understanding that women are exchanged in marriage gives way to an understanding that it is both women and their rights to use land and resources that are exchanged.

Andaman Islanders, Pygmies, and an Extension of Horn's Model

Horns model is generalized to state that the “optimal” pattern of distribution for foragers will correlate with the degree of resource patchiness; in particular (1) where resource attributes are less patchy, the “optimal” distribution for foragers is to be dispersed, and (2) where resource attributes are more patchy, the “optimal” distribution for foragers is to be aggregated. “Optimality” is assessed as the minimum round-trip distance from the foragers home base to a resource item. Patchiness is assessed according to the state taken by any of four resource attributes: dispersion (in space), supply (in time), particle size, and lasting properties. Horns original contrast between (1) stable and evenly dispersed resources, and (2) mobile and clumped resources is shown to have been internally contradictory; that is, the “optimal” distribution for foragers would have been the same in both cases.

A sea of small names: Fishers and their boats in Victoria, Australia

This article does not have an abstract

Wild dogs and village dogs in New Guinea: were they different?

Recent accounts of wild-living dogs in New Guinea argue that these animals qualify as an ‘evolutionarily significant unit’ that is distinct from village dogs, have been and remain genetically isolated from village dogs and merit taxonomic recognition at, at least, subspecific level. These accounts have paid little attention to reports concerning village dogs. This paper reviews some of those reports, summarises observations from the interior lowlands of Western Province and concludes that: (1) at the time of European colonisation, wild-living dogs and most, if not all, village dogs of New Guinea comprised a single though heterogeneous gene pool; (2) eventual resolution of the phylogenetic relationships of New Guinean wild-living dogs will apply equally to all or most of the earliest New Guinean village-based dogs; and (3) there remain places where the local village-based population of domestic dogs continues to be dominated by individuals whose genetic inheritance can be traced to precolonisation canid forebears. At this time, there is no firm basis from which to assign a unique Linnaean name to dogs that live as wild animals at high altitudes of New Guinea.