436 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [76,1973]

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 1 i ograph y , 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 to 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 to think of the undescribed

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 exce l l en t ser ies 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