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Maring Hunters and Traders: Production and Exchange in the Papua New Guinea Highlands

By Dr. Christopher Healey

University of California Press

Copyright © 1990 Dr. Christopher Healey
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0520068408
Introduction

The island of New Guinea nudges the equator at its western extremity. Yet between the steamy coastal plains the land is compressed and heaped up into a series of high ranges and temperate valleys. On the northern and southern fringes of the highlands in particular, the topography is heavily dissected. Here it is possible for the traveler to move within a day's march through several resource zones spanning many hundreds, even thousands, of meters from major valley floors to the mountain peaks. Such close-packed environmental differences are paralleled by cultural diversity.

Despite their sometimes forbidding habitats, no New Guinea societies were ever truly isolated. Exchanges of goods and people across cultural boundaries assumed great importance in many areas. This natural and cultural diversity encouraged considerable traffic in material objects, and studies have clearly shown that trade is most highly developed between communities of differing ecological or cultural regions with specialized natural or manufactured resources. It is such locally specialized products that provide the bulk of goods traded across regional divisions (Gewertz 1983; Harding 1967; Hughes 1977; Keil 1974; Schwartz 1963; Tueting 1935). This book is concerned with the social, cultural, and ecological dimensions of the production of valuables and trade among the Maring people on the northern fringe of the central highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Trade is but one aspect of regional and intergroup relations and

must be understood in the context of other kinds of dealings, such as marriage, warfare, ceremonial exchange, and their political-economic dimensions. But trade is also bound up with humankind's interaction with the environment—the economics and ecology of production or exploitation, by which the supply of trade goods is affected, as well as the distribution and consumption of goods whereby continued demand is generated.

Although there are numerous studies of intergroup relations throughout the New Guinea region, systematic attention to trade has concentrated on the lowlands and islands. Numerous ethnographies of the highlands make passing reference to trade. The only substantial treatments are by Hughes (1973; 1977) for a large area of the highlands and foothills, and Keil (1974) for the Benabena region of the Eastern Highlands. Other briefer descriptions and analyses of note include those provided by Rappaport (1968) for the Maring, Strathern (1971) for the Melpa, Heider (1970) for the Dani, Kelly (1977) for the Etoro, Reay (1959) for the Kuma, and Godelier (1977; 1986) for the Baruya.

Highland trade can be characterized by a constellation of features: traditionally a virtual absence of any form of organization approaching markets (but cf. Keil 1977) and a general lack of communal or cooperative activities beyond expeditions of men traveling for companionship and protection; the short distances individual traders travel; the passage of goods in small consignments, generally in one-for-one exchanges; the overwhelming concentration of trade in the hands of men; and the general restriction of goods to valuables or luxuries other than food. Even within these limits on goods, the range of items is quite astonishing, though highly variable from one region to another. In aboriginal times trade goods included stone axes, a variety of marine shells, salts, live animals (notably pigs and cassowaries, but also dogs, fowls, and marsupials), plumes of numerous species of birds, furs and skins of several marsupials, animal-tooth and vegetable-bead necklaces, cosmetic tree oil and pandanus oil, tobacco, pigments, medicinal and magical earths, weapons, drums, string bags, kilts, bark capes, bone daggers, fiber belts and armbands, besides other handicrafts. Luxury foods were seldom distributed in trade, and staple foods never. With the exception of pigs, the great bulk of high-value goods were produced exclusively by men and were generally for the use of men in ceremonial gifts, decorations, or ritual observances.

The organization of trade and the range of items traded is, perhaps, more varied in lowland and island New Guinea. The most obvious contrast with the highlands are the great maritime trading systems of the north coast (Barlow 1985; Hogbin 1951; Lipset 1985; Tiesler 1969), Admiralties (Schwartz 1963), Vitiaz Strait (Harding 1967), Massim (Belshaw 1955; MacIntyre and Young 1982; Malinowski 1922; Seligman 1910), south coast of Papua (Dutton 1982; Malinowski 1915), and the Fly-Torres Strait region (Landtman 1927). Some of these systems, notably the Vitiaz Strait, involve specialist middlemen traders. Trade importantly depends on cooperation between groups of individuals, not least because of the technical requirements of sailing. Besides a great variety of valuables similar to those traded in the highlands, numerous luxury and everyday items of manufacture were traditionally traded in lowland and island New Guinea. Importantly, luxury and staple foods were, and still are, commonly traded.

Where trade systems were dominated by high volumes and frequent consignments of staple foods, rather than other goods, markets were significant institutions, and the bulk of transactions were conducted by women. The lower and middle Sepik and the Tolai area of New Britain are examples of such female-dominated, subsistence-food-oriented traditional markets (Barlow 1985; Epstein 1968; Gewertz 1983; Salisbury 1970).

Although trade has been a neglected field of study in the highlands, a great deal of attention has been focused on systems of the distribution of great volumes of valuables—primarily pigs and shells—in ceremonial exchange (e.g., Bulmer 1960; Feil 1984; 1987; Josephides 1985; Lederman 1986; Meggitt 1974; Sillitoe 1979; Strathern 1971). In some regions ceremonial exchange may indeed have developed at the expense of trade, or by the transformation of trading relations (cf. Healey 1978a ), but I suspect that highland trade has attracted so little attention not because it is of limited material significance, but because in comparison to ceremonial exchange it appears so utterly mundane. And whereas the analysis of the exchange of valuables continues to concentrate on its more dramatic and ceremonialized forms (e.g. Lederman 1986), the study of production has concentrated on subsistence foods rather than valuables. The pig, of course, is a paramount valuable that has figured prominently in analyses of production, if only because it is largely nurtured on garden produce. There are, nonetheless, massive amounts of other objects variously known as valuables,

wealth objects, and prestige goods which require considerable labor to produce, are consumed in very different ways from subsistence items, and which are redistributed in prestations and trade.

This work examines the interconnection between the ecology of the production of valuables through the exploitation of nonsubsistence goods and the social and cultural organization of production and exchange. An important focus is the dynamic operation of production and trade through time. Although synchronic studies illuminate the functions of trade (or other activities) in effecting the distribution of specialized goods between ecologically and culturally distinct provinces, they do not allow us to test for the temporal stability or otherwise of trade systems. Equilibrium in functional models, ecological and anthropological, does not imply constancy but a dynamic balance of forces (Kormondy 1969; Rappaport 1979). Simply because a system has been identified does not presuppose that it is in equilibrium. The capacity of a trade system to achieve a degree of permanence and stability through the balance of supply and consumption depends not only on the proportions of different goods in circulation but also on the ecology of initial production. Where trade goods are derived from plants or animals, the ability of those producing or extracting the goods to maintain supply becomes theoretically infinite; the raw materials are self-perpetuating. The demand of populations desiring these goods sets a base level or rate at or above which these goods must be supplied, whereas the capacity of the animals or plants to reproduce sets an upper limit on supply. If the producers or exploiters attempt to inject more of these goods into the trade system than natural regeneration can replace, then the system must at best be interrrupted and at worst be destroyed with the extinction of the resources if substitutes cannot be found.

Products of animal and vegetable origin, such as bird plumes, marsupial pelts, bows and arrows, tree oil, and net bags, are still highly desired and traded in many parts of the highlands. It is therefore still possible to study the ecological bases of production—to discover the mechanisms whereby demand can be met and balanced within the limitations of supply set by the capacities of the raw materials to reproduce themselves. It is also possible to explore the social and cultural forces that, in conjunction with ecological factors, give a trade system its distinctive geographic shape, modes of operation, and historical dynamics.

Trade as an Analytic Category

At this point some indication of what I mean by trade is essential. There are two prevailing uses of the term in anthropology: it is applied loosely and generally to refer to any passage of goods by a variety of means, and it is applied in a more limited sense as a category distinct from ceremonial or gift exchange or prestation. Indeed, some ethnographies and undergraduate texts even set trade apart from exchange—referring to "trade and exchange"—which is at once an unfortunate imprecision, for what is really meant is "ceremonial exchange," and an absurdity, for trade is obviously one form of exchange.

Theoretical and ethnographic understandings of ceremonial exchange, gift exchange, or prestation have achieved a degree of elaboration and sophistication. Trade, barter, or commodity exchange have fared less well. In some ethnographies trade is implicitly everything that gift exchange is not. Those works that deal with trade explicitly commonly characterize it as being "more economic," "commercial," or less sociable than gift exchange; an activity engaged in by calculating, self-interested individuals out of crudely utilitarian and materialistic motives of private gain (see e.g., Tueting 1935; Podolefsky 1984). Trade thus hovers on the boundary between hostility and friendship and can be made a positive force of social (as distinct from regional) integration by inflecting the practice of trading in the direction of gift exchange through such acts of sociability as entering into formal partnerships with others, honoring trade partners with gifts or favored terms of trade, and the like (e.g., Sahlins 1972). This view may adequately characterize the practice of trade in some areas, but it may obscure as much as it reveals. Certainly, as the present ethnography will show, the presumption that trade is essentially grounded in utilitarian and materialistic forces is unacceptable as a generalization.

Anthropologists have long distinguished between ceremonial exchange and trade, following native practice. The most notable example for Melanesia is the Trobriand distinction between kula and gimwali (Malinowski 1922), but there are many similar instances. Sahlins (1972: 185 ff.) has developed a general framework for the discussion of exchange of material goods in his scheme of reciprocities. He identifies certain factors—kinship distance, rank, relative wealth or need, the types of goods transferred—which among others influence the na-

ture of reciprocity. His discussion of the continuum of forms from generalized through balanced to negative reciprocity points to the difficulties of separating one form of exchange from another for definitional purposes. This conclusion is important in that it derives from a consideration of the interplay of social forces acting on the parties to an exchange, rather than from a comparison of the observable character of different forms of exchange.

Some ethnographers, however, have attempted to distinguish trade from other forms of exchange on the basis of the outward or observable form of exchange, rather than on the basis of the relationship of the actors. Such definitions may consist of a list of characteristics demarcating trade from prestation (e.g., van Baal 1975; Hughes 1977). Such definitions are inadequate because they refer to the actual conduct of the transaction by which goods are exchanged—the nature of the objects, the relationships of those involved, the relative amounts of ceremonialism, publicity, corporation, magic, or politics involved during the exchange. In societies where economic activities, ceremony, politics, and so forth are not sharply demarcated but are infused in many institutions and situations, this kind of definitional view of trade and prestation necessarily overlaps. Using this approach it is not always easy to classify a material transaction observed in the field. An unceremonial, private, delayed exchange of dissimilar goods of equal value between affines combines descriptive attributes of both trade and gift. Although what is normally understood as trade, barter, or commodity exchange falls within the categories of balanced or negative reciprocity in Sahlins's scheme, his approach to the question of definitions offers no clear way out of the problem. But it does provide a useful theoretical model for a consideration of the structural and economic implications of different substantive forms of exchange. Nonetheless, I argue that if we are to gain a proper understanding of production, distribution, and consumption of goods in sociological terms, a distinction between fundamental forms or modes of exchange must be made. In nonmarket exchange (cf. Polanyi 1968) there are two such modes, which I term trade and prestation. I use the latter term in a general sense, derived from Mauss (1954), to include a diversity of reciprocal gifts transacted by individuals or collectivities on specific formal occasions, such as moments in an individual's life cycle, as well as informal occasions when gifts are not normatively prescribed. For the moment, I take refuge in a particular ethnographic understanding—that of the Maring

who are the subject of this book. The Maring term munggoi rigima (literally "valuables exchange"), which I translate as trade, refers to transactions explicitly concerned with the acquisition and distribution of goods whereas munggoi awom (literally "valuables give"), or prestations, refers to transactions explicitly concerned with the establishment, continuation, or discharge of social relations, rights, and obligations. Trade is thus overtly concerned with relations between material objects mediated by social relations, and prestations, with relations between people mediated by material goods. (The Maring concepts are examined more fully in chap. 4.) This distinction is fundamental to what follows, though it would be naive to expect it to be recognized explicitly in all precapitalist societies. Boldly stated, it has clear applicability to different forms of exchange elsewhere but is hardly profound. The rest of this book, however, amounts, among other things, to an elaboration and explication of the nature and significance of this distinction. In the final chapter I arrive at some important modifications of this definition of trade which soften the rigidity of the present position.

A Model of Trade

A striking feature of central-highlands societies is the richness of their ceremonial decorations (see Strathern and Strathern 1971). The most impressive element is often a headdress of bird of paradise plumes, parrot skins, and eagle, hornbill, and other feathers. Plumes are not only highly prized as items of visual splendor but are wealth objects redistributed in bridewealth and other prestations. It is in a relatively limited area of the central highlands—the Simbu and eastern Wahgi Valleys—that plume use is most highly developed in terms of the quantities and varieties desired. Because of extensive deforestation, many densely settled communities lack access to what forest remains in narrow belts above the level of agriculture (about 2,200 meters). Since the majority of bird species most highly valued for their plumes live either in high-altitude forest or in lower altitudes on the northern and southern highland fringes, the central highlanders are unable to satisfy their own requirement for plumes from their own forests and must obtain the bulk of feathers from communities on the fringes with easy access to wild birds. In the latter areas population densities are generally lower and extensive forests support a rich and diverse fauna,

including birds of paradise, parrots and hawks, marsupials, and other forest products.1

These conditions set the parameters for an analysis of trade that takes as its focus the provision of one class of goods: forest products, most especially bird plumes. Simply stated the model is a center-periphery one consisting of a trading network of plumes and their exchange goods made up of concentric rings arranged around a core of communities I call ultimate consumers of plumes. Feathers, mammal skins, live cassowaries, and other such products of the forest are traded toward this central area where they remain until worn out or destroyed. They may be redistributed in trade or prestation but not exported beyond the center. At the extremities of the model are located numerous primary suppliers of plumes and skins who obtain all of their stocks for local use and trade by hunting. Intervening areas are occupied by intermediate suppliers who receive plumes in trade from the periphery and augment the volume sent on to ultimate consumers by adding more feathers by local hunting. Such communities may also be intermediate consumers to a greater or lesser degree and are therefore critical for the volume of plumes delivered to the central consumption area.

This scheme clearly involves two "systems" of exchange that are only partially connected. One involves the socially and culturally mediated passage of dissimilar goods in opposing flows—the organization of trade. The relative kinds, quantities, and values of different categories of goods and the demand for them may vary through time and from one sector of the trade sphere to another, so engendering a degree of internal tension that may be necessary for the continued functioning and survival of trade as a means of supply. The second system involves the ecological relationship between human communities and the wild populations of birds and other resources on which they prey to sustain their position in the trade network.

The overall structure of trade is articulated in terms of patterns of distribution of plumes. Their supply is thus critical, and ultimately the number of plumes available for trade—and so the volume of exchange goods in passage—rests on the recruitment rate in wild-bird populations. To maintain trade humans must not reduce bird populations below certain critical levels by destruction of habitat or by predation rates that exceed recruitment rates. This scheme does not necessarily imply homeostasis in the system of exploitation and trade, but it does require that the birds are not eradicated without compensatory shifts

to new supply areas. This means that in particular locations birds may be subjected to extreme under- or overexploitation provided that the volume of plumes delivered to ultimate consumers remains much the same. The model does not therefore involve any necessary stable or dynamic equilibrium between human activity and bird populations, either overall or in particular locations. It is possible, then, for some suppliers to pass out of the trade network entirely by destroying their resource base, since there are no negative feedback loops connecting goods received in exchange for plumes (from consumers) with the subsystem of plume production that rests on the breeding biology of birds.

From this concentric structure of networks it follows that the products of a multiplicity of primary suppliers become fed into progressively fewer or more densely packed channels. Loss rates of plumes from damage and age may vary in different parts of the network, but all things being equal this funneling effect results in the delivery of massive quantities of plumes to the center, even though the contribution of individual supply communities might be quite small.

The dynamics of this scheme can be elaborated considerably.2 For the moment, the point to stress is that the model provides a focus for the detailed analysis of specific ethnographic data on trade. From an initial concentration on the production of one class of valuables for use in trade, one can expand the analysis to encompass the wider social, cultural, and ecological context within which that production occurs.

Elsewhere I have documented the trade in bird plumes in the New Guinea region and shown that the pattern of distribution in the interior—roughly encompassing the Papua New Guinea highlands—conforms broadly to the geographic structure of the model sketched above (Healey 1980). The purpose of the present work is to examine the organization of production and exchange at the level of the local community. In that respect it differs from most other studies of trade that take a regional perspective. I seek to show how local production and exchange are articulated in sociocultural and ecological dimensions with wider regional forces.

This book, then, explores, through the example of the Kundagai Maring, how goods enter, move in, and leave the larger sphere. In the absence of markets or centralized organization, trade networks of the kind dealt with here are always managed at the local level, and ultimately by individuals who may be quite unaware of their economic and ecological role in the region as a whole. What sustains production and trade at the local level cannot, therefore, be accounted for by reference

to the larger structure. That structure is the consequence of the interconnections of local producers and transactors, not the determinant of their activities.

A further caution must be added. The scheme just outlined treats plumes as the products of ecologically specialized peripheral regions. For consumers to signal effectively a demand for plumes they must offer in exchange goods that are desired by plume suppliers. In general, the exchange items are also specialized products unavailable locally to plume suppliers for ecological or cultural reasons. The goods in demand may vary from one area to another. Further, there is no necessity that ultimate plume consumers be primary suppliers of other goods. One may imagine several patterns of trade in a variety of goods superimposed on a landscape so that their boundaries overlap. Thus, the model is not one of a trade system as such, but of one category of goods passed in trade. Indeed, to speak of systems is to suggest that there are boundaries of a reasonably determinate nature. Empirically it may be possible to demarcate the patterns of distribution of material goods, but the degree of noncongruence in these geographic patterns, added to the variable sociological means of distribution, make it impossible to define trade systems. There are no isolated, impervious trade systems in operation in Melanesia, if anywhere. It is clear, nonetheless, that there are areas where there is a concentration of most exchanges within certain geographic and sociological limits, and I shall refer to them as trade regions.

This book deals with the operation of a segment of one such region, which is indeterminate in extent but centered on the major highland valleys. Hughes (1977) has ably described the ecological structure of the region on the eve of the colonial era. The segment in question consists of a number of communities on the rugged northern fringe of the highlands, whose place in the wider trade region is assured by virtue of their privileged place as one of the major supply areas of various forest products in trade directed toward ultimate plume consumers. The particular focus is on the Kundagai of Tsuwenkai, a group of some three hundred Maring speakers.

Much of what follows amounts to the construction of a more elaborate model of trade in terms of ethnographic and ethnohistorical evidence. The picture just outlined is one couched largely in ecological and functional terms. It is important, however, to avoid allowing such formulations to dominate the process of producing an ethnography—both

in the field situation and, more importantly, in the final presentation and analysis of data.3 It is well, then, to state the general perspectives adopted. The model is essentially one of equilibrium. This study, however, does not assume homeostasis as a necessary tendency of the complex of transactions examined. I am concerned to discover the capacity for trade to be sustained, but this does not involve any presumption of steady states. Besides, even to discover an equilibrium is not to show that it is systematically achieved.

Second, although production and exchange occur in particular ecological contexts, I accept that all activity is crucially shaped by cultural factors. Ecological conditions, therefore, cannot be determinants of individual or collective repetitive action, nor of features of culture. Finally—and flowing from this attention to the cultural order—the analysis rejects formalism in the explanation of exchange, most especially its common appearance in ideas of material utility.

The following two chapters set the context for an examination of hunting and trade. Chapter 1 outlines critical features of the Kundagai physical environment and aspects of social organization. Such data are obviously necessary for a fuller understanding of the social and cultural organization of production and exchange. Chapter 1 also outlines Maring concepts of spirits and their place in the natural world within which hunting occurs. Finally, I provide a discussion of the historical dimensions of settlement of the Kundagai village of Tsuwenkai and of transfers of rights to land, events that clearly have contributed to the contemporary social and geographic patterns of exploitation of the environment.

In chapter 2 I seek to show the cultural significance of bird plumes among the Maring as objects of decoration. The uses of plumes and other forest products are a significant but not sole impetus to local production. An important point that emerges from this chapter, moreover, is that many kinds of feathers retained for decorations are not available locally but must be obtained from elsewhere. Just how this is organized is the focus of later chapters.

Ecologically focused studies of production in agricultural societies have, understandably, concentrated on subsistence foodstuffs. Little systematic attention has been paid to either the production of nonsubsistence valuables, on the one hand, or to the exploitation of non-domesticated resources, on the other hand. Marks's (1976) study of big-game hunting among the central-African Bisa is a rare exception.

Chapter 3 takes up these issues and provides an examination of the ecology of hunting of birds for their valuable plumes and the social and cultural organization and regulation of hunting.

The remainder of the book is concerned with the ecology and sociocultural organization of aspects of the distribution and consumption of material objects. In particular, I seek to show how levels of production and exchange of one class of goods—forest products—relates to the total flow of goods by a variety of means. This involves specifying the kinds of goods, material and otherwise, that are transferred parallel to or in opposition to forest products, their patterns of ownership, and the kinds of transactions in which they are passed. Chapter 4 introduces this analysis, presenting data on valuables, their ownership, and their redistribution in prestations. An important aspect of this chapter is the analysis of gross levels and directions of passage of goods in prestations.

The following chapters are devoted to the analysis of trade. Chapter 5 provides an ecologically oriented description of trading patterns over time and an analysis of mechanisms for the maintenance of a more or less constant passage of goods in the absence of any regulatory institutions. Chapter 6 provides an overview of the historical dimensions of trade, pointing to the importance of European penetration of the central highlands for the consolidation of changing trade patterns in the northern fringe of the highlands and the significance of plume trade in the contemporary cash economy. In chapter 7, I develop an analysis of exchange value and suggest the mechanisms by which rates of exchange of some trade goods remain stable while others have changed.

The concluding chapter shifts the focus from the relationship between objects passed against one another, which characterizes the preceding chapters, and concentrates on the social relationships between the traders themselves. Through a discussion of the manner in which trade may be employed as a communicative means expressive and constitutive of social relationships, I argue that prevailing utilitarian understandings of trade require some reappraisal.

The general objectives of this study are twofold. Substantively, this work provides an added dimension to the ethnography of the Maring and of hunting and trade in the highlands in general. Theoretically, the book is an attempt to develop a more thorough understanding of the articulation of production and exchange, combining the insights of ecological and economic anthropology.

Continues...

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