436 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST
Reference Cited
Kehimkar, H. S .
1937 The History of the Bene-Israel of
India. Tel Aviv: Dayag Press.
Self-Decoration in Mount Hagen. ANDREW
STRATHERN and MARILYN STRATH-
ERN. Art and Society Series. Buffalo &
Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1971. xi + 208 pp., figures, map, plates,
tables, 3 appendices, references and
notes, b i b 1i ography , index. $17.50
(cloth ) .
Reviewed by PHILLIP H.LEWIS
Field Museum o f Natural History
Study of primitive art overemphasizes
sculpture and painting, the counterparts of
our “fine arts.’’ Other art forms present
greater difficulty and thus are not much
dealt with. The more ephemeral the art
form, the less likely it is to be studied. As
ethnological observers of the self-decoration
of Mt. Hageners, the Stratherns have been
able to see the living, perishable, transitory
elements of self-decoration as it occurred in
an ongoing social context.
The Stratherns carried out their study
while the people still decorated themselves
in traditional ways, and before they changed
over to plastic belts, trade beads, colored
paper and cigarette pack labels. Also they
discovered what many of the specific decora-
tions mean and their place-value in the cere-
monial life of which they are part. Their
aim, the Stratherns say, is to
explain. . . the behaviour of Hageners;
a n d . . . understand what it means to a
row of men t o dance in a proud amalgam
of dark and bright decorations before
their allies, rivals, enemies and spectators
[p. 1701.
The decorations and the methods of
making them are described in detail and
their sources in the environment given, such
as the various species of fauna and flora
used. The decorations are presented as they
vary in the several contexts; the different
cults, the men’s and women’s decorations.
The excellent photographs, many in color,
give us glimpses of incredible finery. We
were saddened t o think of the undescribed
[76,1973]
decorations of myriad other peoples whose
indigenous self-decoration has already suc-
cumbed to the influx of European trade
goods and ideas.
The Stratherns report that men do not
decorate themselves as much as they used to
because they are ashamed before the
Europeans, that baptised Lutherans are ex-
pected to take up European clothes, that
local government councillors are expected
by their advisers to change from traditional
dress and to wear clean shirts, shorts, and
shoes. It seems wicked to insist upon such
changes among these people.
Obviously the decline of such splendid
adornment into the drabness of European
garb will not be reversed. The Mt. Hagener’s
bristling peacock finery of feathers, furs, and
paint is already on the way out. The
Stratherns’ fine study enables us to see some
of it before it is gone forever.
A d o p t i o n in Eastern Oceania. VERN
CARROLL, ed. Association for Social
Anthropology in Oceania, Monograph
Series 1. Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1970. viii + 422 pp., diagrams,
figures, tables, chapter notes, references,
contributors. $10.00 (cloth).
Reviewed by IVAN BRADY
University of Cincinnati
This is the first in what promises to be an
e x c e l l e n t series of symposia-cum-
monographs by the newly formed Associa-
tion for Social Anthropology in Oceania.
The significance of Eastern Oceania (island
Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia) as a re-
search area-defined long ago as a laboratory
of small, often closely-related societies
isolated from each other by miles of open
ocean-languished somewhat after the pio-
neering works of Malinowksi, Fortune and
Firth. Improved communication, a greater
availability of research funds, an unpre-
cedented number of new students in cultural
anthropology, the development of rigorous
new methods for studying language and cul-
ture in micro-environments, and the need for
carefully controlled comparisons, have com-
bined since World War I1 to rekindle an
interest in this vast region. The presence of