Roy A. Rappaport

Ritual Regulation of Environmental Relations Among

a New Guinea People

Author

Roy Rappaport

(1926 – 1997)

Religious Ritual

- the prescribed performance of conventionalized acts manifestly directed toward the involvement of the nonempirical or supernatural agencies in the affairs of the actors

Tsembaga

Location: Papua New Guinea

Location

map adapted from Rappaport 1968, 1984 p. 11

http://jablonko-maring.pacific-credo.fr/ethno2.html

Tsembaga Territory

• Total surface area: 3.2 square miles

• Elevation: 2,200 ft. from Simbai River – 7,200 ft. at the ridge crest

• Rainfall: 150 inches/year

Tsembaga Territory

Tsembaga

• Adult males

– Ave. weight: 101 lbs

– Ave. height: 58.5 inches

– Adult females

• Ave. weight: 85 lbs

• Ave. height: 54.5 inches

Tsembaga

• Distributed among 5 patrilineal clans

• Highly egalitarian

• Swidden horticulturalists

Staples include:

Garden types:

– Taro-yam gardens

– Sugar-sweet potato gardens

• Pig Husbandry

– Pigs keep residential areas free of garbage and human feces

– Limited number of pigs rooting in secondary growth may help hasten the development of that growth

Tsembaga Ritual Cycle

• Placing the opposing side in the formal category of “enemy”

Taboos

Prohibitions on:

– Sexual intercourse

– Ingestion of certain things:

• Food prepared by women

• Food grown on the lower portion of the territory

• Marsupials

• Eels

• Any liquid

• Eating of heavily salted pig fat

• Consuming lean pork

ROUT

TRUCE

• Planting of rumbim

“We thank you for helping us in the fight and

permitting us to remain on our territory. We place our

souls in this rumbim as we plant it on our ground. We

ask you to care for this rumbim. We will kill pigs for

you now, but they are few. In the future, when we have

many pigs, we shall again give you pork and uproot the

rumbim and stage a kaiko (pig festival). But until there

are sufficient pigs to repay you the rumbim will remain

in the ground.”

• Sexual intercourse

• Ingestion of any liquid

• Food from any part of the territory

Time of the bamp ku

• bamp ku

– “fighting stones”

– actual objects used in the rituals associated with warfare

• time of debt and danger

Time of the bamp ku

• Taboos:

• Marsupials

- pigs of the ancestors of the high grounds

• Eels

- pigs of the ancestors of the low ground

• All intercourse with the enemy

• A group may not attack another group

To uproot the rumbim = to have sufficient pigs

“Good” place = 5 years

“Bad” place = 10+ years

“Good” place

- Rapid increase of the pig herd

“Bad” place

- Misfortunes (warfare, illness, injury, death) are frequent

- Pigs sacrifices are frequent

• During warfare, only men participating in the fighting may eat the pork

• In case of illness or injury, only the victim and certain near relatives eat the pork

• Cognized environment

– environment which includes as very important elements, the spirits of ancestors

• Operational environment

- material environment specified by the anthropologists through operations of observation

Kaiko

- Pig festival

- Commences at the planting of the stakes at the boundary

- Uprooting the rumbim

• Rule of land distribution:

If one of a pair of antagonistic groups is able to uproot its rumbim it may occupy the latter’s territory.

• Rule of population distribution:

A man becomes a member of territorial group by participating with it in the planting of the rumbim

• Uprooting the rumbim

KaikoCourtship Displays

KaikoMassed Dancing

KaikoTrading

Kaiko facilitates trade by providing a market-like setting in which large number of traders can

assemble

Most frequently exchanged items are:

axes, bird plumes, shell ornaments, baby pig

Kaiko

- Concludes with major pig sacrifices

- Public presentation of salted pig belly

Kaiko

Relation of the Tsembaga with their environment as a complex system

• Local Subsystem

– derived from the relations of the Tsembaga with the nonhuman components of their immediate or territorial environment.

Relation of the Tsembaga with their environment as a complex system

• Regional Subsystem

– derived from the relations of the Tsembaga with neighboring local populations similar to themselves.

Relation of the Tsembaga with their environment as a complex system

Ritual cycles of the Tsembaga, and of other local territorial groups of Maring speakers living in the New

Guinea, play an important part in regulating the relationships of these groups with both the nonhuman components of their immediate environments and the

human components of their less immediate environments.

Relation of the Tsembaga with their environment as a complex system

• maintain the biotic communities existing within their territories

• redistributes land among people and people over land

• limits frequency of fighting

• provides a means for mobilizing allies when warfare may be undertaken

• mechanism for redistributing local pig surpluses in the form of pork throughout a large regional population while helping to assure the local population of a supply of pork when its members are most in need of high quality protein

Thank you!!