University of Pittsburgh- Of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education

Stone-Faced Ancestors: The Spatial Anchoring of Myth in Wamira, Papua New GuineaAuthor(s): Miriam KahnSource: Ethnology, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Jan., 1990), pp. 51-66Published by: University of Pittsburgh- Of the Commonwealth System of Higher EducationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3773481 .Accessed: 23/01/2011 06:44

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STONE-FACED ANCESTORS: THE SPATIAL ANCHORING OF MYTH

IN WAMIRA, PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Miriam Kahn

University of Washington

A village of about 450 inhabitants, Wamira lies on the northeast coast of

Milne Bay Province in Papua New Guinea.1 Immediately behind the hamlets, which are scattered under trees along a stony beach, a grassy plain extends

to the base of the mountains that begin their ascent a few kilometers inland.

About two kilometers to the west of Wamira, perched on top of a lofty plateau, is Dogura, the headquarters of the Anglican Mission in Papua New Guinea.

On my first walk through Wamira, in 1976, I noticed several arrangements of stones, all various shades of gray, some small and round, others large flat

slabs, some composed in circles, and others standing individually. Some of

the arrangements were prominently located on the pebbly surface of the

neatly swept hamlets. Others were shrouded by trees and bushes in areas that used to be hamlets but were since overgrown with vegetation. None of them seemed to be natural occurences, nor did they seem to be placed

arbitrarily. Each time I walked past these stones, people would point them out to me and tell their stories. Some stones were said to be sitting circles where important elders sat in the olden days. Some were reminders of

mythological events. Some were said to be specific ancestors or ancestresses. And some were even known to walk around!

In Melanesian societies, mythological events are often articulated with

places in the landscape. Various aspects of a people's past are perceived, recorded, and experienced spatially in terms of geographical features. These

tangible, visible forms may be hills, mountains, rivers, lakes, or other features in the landscape. Often they are stones like those just mentioned. Stones that have mythical significance are said to be the paraphernalia of ancestral heroes or heroines?or the ancestors or ancestresses themselves?that have turned to stone. In noting this "enlivening influence of myth upon the

landscape," Malinowski (1922:330) said:

The mythical world receives its substance in rock and hill, in the changes in land and sea. The pierced sea-passages, the cleft boulders, the petrified human beings, all these bring the

mythological world close to the natives, make it tangible and permanent. On the other hand, the story thus powerfully illustrated, re-acts on the landscape, fills it with dramatic

happenings, which, fixed there forever, give it a definite meaning.

I examine this humanized, petrified, and immortalized landscape in Wamira in order to gain insights into larger epistemological concerns that are

applicable to the whole of rural village societies in Melanesia. For example, an understanding of the cultural use of place and landscape sheds light on

51

52 ETHNOLOGY

the process by which past events are recorded and rendered permanent, the

way in which empirical evidence is established and truth is known, and how

concepts of time and temporal continuity are, in part, perceived and expressed in terms of place. It is these concerns that I address here.

The past is often anchored to recognized, tangible, and named forms in the

landscape. In rendering geography sacred, people are able to reap the

harvest of the historical landscape in their contemporary lives. Geographical features are instrumental as sources of living tradition that inform, modify, and are modified by ongoing relations. Moreover, such physical markers of the past may serve as mnemonic deviees for individuals and groups, thus

helping to establish their identity (Harwood 1976). These landmarks then have two functions; they mark the ancestral itinerary, and they serve as a

physical memorial.

Such a physically represented past, in the eyes of the inhabitants of the

landscape, also bears testimony to truth. Possessing knowledge of physical forms becomes tantamount to possessing knowledge of the events those forms

symbolize. These immortalized places become details of facts, the accuracy of which is necessary to give credence to events.

Furthermore, actions are recorded and recalled in terms of space. Whereas

people of the Western world emphasize temporal relationships between events, Melanesians appear to emphasize spatial relationships. Events are anchored to

physical places and the relationship between them is seen as linked points in

space. It is the physical place, its tangibility and, as we shall see, its

negotiability, which join the past to the present and provide a sense of

history, continuity, and identity.

Although anthropologists have long been interested in peoples' pasts and in how those people view their past, it has only been more recently that attention has turned to the interpretation of that history in terms of how

concepts of the past illuminate knowledge about the people who retell the events (Gewertz and Schieffelin 1985; Carrier 1987).

Formerly, anthropologists generally tended to present a somewhat simplified and static view of the concept of time in other cultures, even denying that the "other" exists in the same time as ours (Fabian 1983). For example, Evans-Pritchard (1939) drew a distinction between historical time and

mythological time, claiming that the Nuer had no sense of the passage of time for the category he called mythological. As he (Evans-Pritchard 1939:215) stated, "Beyond tradition lies the horizon of myth which is always seen in the same time perspective. One mythological event did not precede another mythological event." Gellner (1964) drew a distinction between two time perspectives: episodic (or eternal); and temporal (or durational). In the former, life is analyzed as being lived on a "horizontal plane," relatively unconnected with anything in the past. The past is not seen as directly responsible for the present, nor the present as in any way predictive of the future. As Leach (1961:126) has said about episodic time, "in such a scheme the past has no 'depth' to it, all past is equally past; it is simply the opposite of now." A temporal time framework, on the other hand, is akin to that held by Westerners.

Melanesianists have been greatly influenced by Gellner's ideas and have applied them to their analyses of concepts of time in Melanesia. Based on analyses of oral narratives, they have often subscribed to the view that the

STONE-FACED ANCESTORS 53

indigenous people have "no historical tradition," "little chronological perspective," and an "absence of the idea of time depth" (Lawrence 1964:32-3). It has even been said that "there is a series of beings, but no becoming... there is no temporal connection between objects... neither is there a temporal connection made... between events" (Lee 1950:91). Melanesian mythology has been ascribed to an episodic time frame (Errington 1974; Lawrence 1964). McDowell (1985) has argued that for the people of Bun, in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, the dominant mode of perceiving the past is episodic.

More recently, anthropologists have begun to counter the approach that

presents societies as having "no historicity, or that historical processes are

unimportant or epiphenomenal to the real business of structural arrangements" (Gewertz and Schieffelin 1985:2). Native accounts of the past are now viewed as validation of the others' way of viewing the past; i.e., as data. It has been noted that such concepts as temporal linearity, naturalistic canons of

evidence, or material causality may not be universal. Carrier (1987:115), for

example, states that "stories need to be seen... as edited, ideological accounts that tell us more about the people doing the telling than they do about the events retold."

In this vein, of viewing a people's conception of their past as data that inform us about their historical consciousness, let us turn to the people of Wamira and try to understand what their vibrant and visible sense of their

past tells us. Specifically, let us look at as seemingly gray and colorless an

aspect of their past as stones, memorials to history that anthropologists have noticed but to which they have paid little analytical attention. I suggest that

anthropologists' lack of concern with stones as significant data is, in part, because anthropologists come from literate societies and are trained in a

discipline that acknowledges language as the communicative vehicle of culture

par excellence. They have focused primarily on what they, in their Western

tradition, would acknowledge as mythology--namely, oral accounts of events

chronologically linked in time. Other than granting it the briefest mention, they seem to neglect the very ground over which they stumble while

recording ancestral myths. For a richer, more dynamic understanding of a Melanesian sense of mythology, and for one more in keeping with the recent focus on historical consciousness as an aspect of a people's culture, anthropologists must look not only at oral accounts of origin myths, which are limited to particular literary genres, but also at the way in which these

myths are recorded and recalled by other devices, such as physical forms in the landscape. Stones, while not the only type of physical marker, provide pertinent and interesting examples of the Melanesian attachment to place and the recording of myth and history in terms of space.2

ANCESTRAL STONES IN MELANESIA

All across Melanesia, are traces of peoples' mythology recorded in the

landscape, especially in stone (Riesenfeld 1950). Evidence of historically important stones exists as far east as Vanuatu (Rodman 1985; Rubinstein 1981) and New Caledonia (Clifford 1982; Leenhardt 1930). In New Caledonia, Leenhardt (1930:241) notes that

54 ETHNOLOGY

each stone has a name, a history, a life, we might even say a personality, resulting from the

spirit enclosed within it. Often in [remote] valleys I've asked the name for every detail of

the land, each notable tree; and the landscape transposes itself into a scheme it would be

impossible to transcribe on a map, in which each name is title to a chapter.

Further west, in Papua New Guinea, the use of stones as powerful historical

markers has been observed in regions as physically diverse as the North

Solomons Province (Blackwood 1935; Spriggs personal communication), Morobe

Province (Schmitz 1960:153-63), Madang Province (Lutkehaus 1982), the

Western Highlands Province (Strathern 1979), and the Western Province (Ayres personal communication; Laba personal communication).

In Milne Bay Province, stone arrangements with mythological significance are particularly common (Malinowski 1922; Munn 1986; Young 1971:22-4,

1983a). In the Trobriand Islands, megaliths that the inhabitants say were erected by "long-ago people" puzzled researchers for decades (Papuan Villager 1936:49-51). In writing about the Trobriands, Malinowski (1922:298) noted

A stone hurled by one of the heroes into the sea after an escaping canoe; a sea passage broken between two islands by a magical canoe; here two people turned into rock; there a

petrified waga [canoe]--all this makes the landscape represent a continuous story or else the

culminating dramatic incident of a familiar legend.

and

In mythical times, human beings come out of the ground, they change into animals, and these become people again; men and women rejuvenate and slough their skins; flying canoes speed through the air, and things are transformed into stone (Malinowski 1922:302).

On the coastal mainland of Milne Bay Province, the area with which I am most familiar, stone arrangements exist all along the northeast coast from Boianai to East Cape and around the bay to Wagawaga (Papuan Villager 1930:3; Seligmann 1910). Of the ancient stones on the northeast coast, Newton (1914:170-1) relates the following:

We were shown various things that had virtues, stones... that had an influence on the life and health and prosperity of the people... In all the villages there are stones which are reverenced, and which may not be moved... There are others, short stunted obelisks stuck in the ground with rude markings. All these are really tabu; they may not be interfered with or trouble will follow. Whence they came no one knows, they were here in the time of our ancestors, they remain forever...

Of the places I visited on the northeast coast, Boianai is the village with the most fascinating stone memorials to its past. One cannot walk more than a few paces without encountering an important stone or group of stones. Several of the village's stones are deeply incised with geometric designs, the meanings of which are not known by the inhabitants today3. Each stone has a connection with Boianai's unwritten past. Usually they represent the paraphernalia of a mythical hero or heroine who turned into stone. One such example is the myth of Wakeke, a totemic snake whose house foundation

STONE-FACED ANCESTORS 55

remains in stone in the village. In the middle of the foundation is a small

stone bowl; the pot in which Wakeke is believed to have cooked his food.

Occasionally, the stones themselves played a prominent role (as stones) in

the mythological narrative. For example, the following myth explains why the

people of Boianai are related to the cassowary. In the myth, some stones are

boiled into broth and others are hurled at the fleeing cassowary. The

contemporary record of these facts lies strewn over the landscape. The oral

account is as follows:

Long ago, a young woman lived with her husband and child. Every day her husband went to the garden, but returned without any food. Being hungry, the woman boiled stones. She and

her child drank the broth from the cooked stones. One day, angered by her husband's

behavior, she decided to turn herself into a cassowary and leave. She constructed wings for

herself from coconut fronds, knee caps from coconut husks, and legs from black palm sticks.

That day, when her husband returned, she spread her wings and fled. In an attempt to call

his wife back, he tempestuously hurled stones after her. But she escaped and now lives as a

cassowary in the mountains behind Boianai.

Today, one can still see the stones in the village. There is a massive pile of stones, a full meter high, that is said to have accumulated as the hungry woman, each day, boiled them and tossed them aside. The boulders that her

husband threw after her lie scattered along the path that leads from the

village towards the mountains. In Wamira, some 30 kilometers further east along the coast, mythologically

significant stones, while slightly less numerous than in Boianai, are viewed in an equally important light. As in Boianai, these stones anchor mythological narratives to the land. Some serve the additional purpose of being charters for proper social behavior. For example, in one myth two women, named Maradiudiva and Marakwadiveta, turned to stones; the stones' presence today reminds Wamirans about the proper etiquette for sharing food. As the myth relates, each time Maradiudiva went down to the sea to fetch salt water, her

sister, Marakwadiveta, with whom she lived, gobbled up all the food and later fabricated lies about relatives who had come and eaten it. Hungry and hurt, Maradiudiva walked into the sea and turned into stone. Now, with her stony countenance, she stands all alone in the bay. As the tide rolls in and out, the Wamirans perceive Maradiudiva rising and descending; a steady reminder to all that social living hinges on the sharing of food. Her sister,

Marakwadiveta, also turned to stone and today is perched on the hillside

overlooking the sea from where her sister rises and descends.

By far the most remarkable and spirited stone in Wamira is Tauribariba. It

is to his tale that I now turn in greater detail and upon which I base much of my later analysis of how myth is anchored in space and recalled, and

altered, in the present.

TAURIBARIBA, THE STONE THAT WANDERED

FROM THE CATHEDRAL

Tauribariba, a Wamiran ancestor, turned into stone when Wamira was first founded. In 1936, missionaries removed his stone form from the village and cemented him into the pulpit wall of the cathedral at the nearby mission

56 ETHNOLOGY

station of Dogura. The narrative illustrates the Wamirans' mode of

describing, recording, and relating to their past in an oral fashion, as well as

the way in which they anchor oral narrative to physical places and landmarks.

It also illustrates how their sense of identity as a culture hinges on

something so seemingly inconsequential to outsiders as a stone. This

particular account is an abridged version of that narrated to me in 1976 by Osborne Kaimou, a member of the Maibouni lineage to which the myth

belongs. Believed to be a true story, it describes the original settling of

Wamira by various lineages and the establishment of the relationship between these lineages, as well as providing an account of their ancestral leader, Tauribariba.

Long, long ago our ancestors inhabited many distant places. The members of the different

lineages, such as Aurana and Maibouni, journeyed forth from these places with their leaders. The Aurana lineage settled at Boeka (see Figure l). The Maibouni lineage, with its leader, Tauribariba, and his sister, Tauanana, first went to Lamogara. Then they moved to Kwakwairo. They finally settled at Iveive. There, Tauribariba and his sister went ashore and lit a fire. The Aurana lineage had already settled near Iveive at Boeka. But they did not know how to make fire.

After both lineages had settled, the Aurana people said to one of their little boys, "Go to the Maibouni people and ask for fire." The boy went to Tauribariba and Tauanana and said, "Oh, elder brothers, give us fire" and the Maibouni people gave him fire. The boy returned to his

people and related what he had said. When the Aurana people heard that the boy called the Maibouni people "elder brothers" they were upset. They, in fact, had settled first and thought they should be called "elder brothers." They sent the boy back to the Maibouni people to correct his mistake, but it was too late. The Maibouni people said, "You already called us 'elder brothers' and thus it will be. We already gave you fire." From then on the Maibouni

people were considered elder brothers of the Aurana people.

Later both lineages moved to Irere and Imara. When they arrived they looked around and noticed that their leader, Tauribariba, was not with them. Someone explained, "Tauribariba is still at Iveive." They paddled a canoe to Iveive where Tauribariba and his sister climbed into it. They paddled back past Kwarara. At Araravuna, where the spring water comes out at the

beach, they pulled ashore.

As they tried to land, waves thrashed at their canoe and Tauanana fell into the sea. Everyone rushed to get Tauribariba and carry him ashore. They set him in the center of the hamlet of Irere where he still is today. He lives there and walks around at night. He watches over all the taro gardens. One sees traces of smoke curling up in the air wherever he goes because he can make fire without using anything to light it.

But, look, today he is not there! Several years ago my mother's brother was approached by Mr. Bodger from the mission station. Mr. Bodger said, "My friend, are you the chief of these stones?" My mother's brother answered, "Yes, I am." Mr. Bodger said, "Give us that stone so I can cement it in the cathedral wall." My mother's brother responded, "Oh, all right."

STONE-FACED ANCESTORS 57

Figure 1: Map of the Original Settling of Wamira

When Osborne Kaimou finished narrating the story to me he wistfully

added, MWhen Father Bodger took Tauribariba he did not just take a stone.

He took the entire identity and spirit of the Wamiran people." Tauribariba is a small stone, about fifteen centimeters long. Before being

placed in the cathedral wall, he formed part of a large circle of stones, about

five meters in diameter, in the center of the Wamiran seaside hamlet of Irere.

His sister, Tauanana, is a sizable boulder, about half a meter in diameter.

She sits in the middle of the circle, surrounded by their "children;" numerous

small stones, most of which are no more than six or seven centimeters in

diameter. All of them are believed to have the ability to walk around, and

their favorite time for this activity is at night. Wamirans say that

occasionally new children appear at the shore, having surfaced from the sea

at night. When children appear in this manner they are added to the circle

of stones, which is thus continually fluctuating in number.

In 1936, when the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul was completed at

Dogura, Father John Bodger decided to cement Tauribariba into the pulpit wall. This move was seen by the missionaries as symbolizing the transference

of the Wamirans' "worship of stone" to that of God. From a report in the

Anglican records, I quote the following about the transportation of the stone

58 ETHNOLOGY

to the cathedral. The difference between Wamirans' and missionaries'

accounts about the Wamirans' willingness to place the stone in the cathedral

is striking.

Two native men from the villages of Wedau and Wamira... came up to the Sanctuary, each

bearing a large piece of stone or rock in his hands, and presented them to the priest, who took them, blessed them, and offered them at the Altar.

One of the stones was a curiously striped slab of rock resembling nothing so much as a slice of chocolate cake with layers of icing. These two stones were treasured memorials of the old heathen days, one belonging to a special family in Wedau and the other, the striped one, to Wamira. Their present owners or guardians, being Christians, had voluntarily removed them from their places and brought them to God's House. They are set in the walls of the new Cathedral together with stones sent from Abbeys and Cathedrals in England, there to be silent witnesses to the Faith which has proclaimed that God alone is Giver of all good things.

The Wamiran stone is known by the name of Tauribariba... It has been an object of veneration to its owners of many generations, who believed that on its presence in the village depended the prosperity of their gardens and good and plentiful food crops. Those who have inherited the care of the stone are all Christians and have brought Tauribariba also to his

resting place. It is safely embedded in concrete and its wandering days are over.

Even so have the children of darkness and superstition become living stones in the House of God's building--His Church (Anglican Archives 1936).

The above account from the mission records, however, fails to relate the

following event, in spite of the fact that the mission was cognizant of it. As numerous Wamirans claimed, that night, after Tauribariba had been put in the

cathedral, he walked back to Wamira to join his fellow stones.6 The following day Father Bodger fetched the stone from Wamira. This time, he cemented it into the wall upside down with Tauribariba's face turned towards the wall.

According to government records, the stone was "turned upside down as a symbol that the magic had been emptied out of it, and that it was now fitted to occupy a place in the Christian Church" (Papuan Annual Reports 1936/37:5). Ever since, upside down and shackled by cement, Tauribariba has remained

firmly and faithfully within the pulpit wall. The ideological tug-of-war over altering Tauribariba's location, however,

was not yet resolved. The day he was permanently removed, waves of discontent rippled through Wamira. According to oral tradition, as a result of his disappearance his grief-stricken sister, Tauanana, "walked back into the sea with many of their children." Wamirans say that it was not until August 1974 that Tauanana surfaced from her maritime hideaway, at which time she silently appeared on the beach. When the people of Irere recognized her they immediately helped her ashore and placed her in the circle of stones "where she belonged." Over the next several months, the children also wandered up from the sea.7

In May 1975, two Melanesian students from the History Department of the University of Papua New Guinea visited Wamira to view the stones. One history student noted in Irere that the "female stone could not be found but is regarded as still being at the site of the stones when not moving around"

STONE-FACED ANCESTORS 59

(Loeliger 1975).8 It is interesting to note that the student, who had come to

examine the sacred stones, ended his report with the following comment:

"From here we walked back along the beach towards Wedau, to the monument

[a cement shrine] commemorating the landing of the first Anglican missionaries in 1891" (Loeliger 1975). Little did he realize, perhaps, that

Tauribariba and Tauanana were also such physical monuments. Nor did he

realize that the Melanesians' need to record significant events in durable

ways (a fact that was thought interesting enough to warrant a picture in a

textbook and an educational outing for university students) was not that

different from the missionaries' need to erect monuments.

Now, let us explore what all this--an ancestral brother and sister who

turned into stone, their determined and spirited mobility, and the struggle between villagers and missionaries over the placement of one of the stones?

tells us about the Wamirans. Specifically, what does it tell us about how

they objectify mythology, how they rewrite it as the need arises, and how

they represent the passage of time?

PLACE AS RECORD OF THE PAST AND VALIDATION OF FACT

We have seen that significant events of the past are anchored to physical

places in the landscape. This anchoring occurs when ancestral figures move

through the landscape or settle in it. Each geographical spot of past

importance is named and marked by a physical form. These forms?stones,

lakes, hills, etc?become landmarks of experience and sentiment in the

articulation of ancestral journeys. For example, the Maibouni people did not

settle directly at Irere, but first travelled to Lamogara, then to Kwakwairo, then to Iveive, and only later (by way of Kwarara and Araravuna) to Irere.

The accurate naming of each place is necessary when a narrator relates a

myth. As seen with the Tauribariba myth, the narrative is best visualized if

accompanied by a map to indicate the sinuous progression from place to place.

Occasionally, landmarks represent personal paraphernalia that were left behind

on journeys and were then transformed into stone. For example, places where an ancestor came ashore, sat down, set down a garden basket, ate

some food, chewed betel nut, took off a layer of shredded-leaf skirt, and so

on, become permanently marked. Items such as garden baskets, lime pots, and

shredded-leaf skirts turn into stone and remain visible today for all to see

and utilize in evoking, relating to, and often "proving" history.

Recording and recalling the past is important in providing a group with a

sense of collective identity. In Melanesia, mythological plots are often shared

over wide geographical areas. Terrain, however, is not. Each village uses

local landscape to make the myth its own. Specific points in the landscape are not only visual reminders of the mythical characters and their actions, but become details of knowledge, the accuracy of which validates the

narrator's and group's ownership of the story. For example, while recording

myths, I was told on several occasions that a version narrated by someone

else was totally inaccurate because, in the circuitous progression of place

names, one of the names was wrong. Or, I was often told that individuals

discovered they were related to one another because they knew the identical

details of place names in mythological narratives.9

60 ETHNOLOGY

Physical anchoring of facts is used not only to give authority to one's

knowledge, but also to prove truth. For example, when having to account for

an action, a Melanesian might say, "Yesterday when I stood next to the

mango tree at such-and-such a creek, I saw so-and-so going to her garden."

By thus anchoring themselves in the environment, they verify their words for

those who hear. This manner of lending credence to one's actions and

statements is extremely important when such heated topics as sorcery accusations or insinuations of food theft are disputed. From a Melanesian

perspective, once the words are voiced aloud and anchored geographically to a

place they take on a literal and credible quality. This belief is widespread in Melanesia. Of the Trobriand Islands,

Malinowski (1922:330) said, "it must be noted also that the mythically changed features of the landscape bear testimony in the native's mind to the truth of

the myth." And of Normanby Island in Milne Bay Province, Thune (1981:10)

says, "If people want to demonstrate the truth of such a story... they usually point to features of the landscape which were altered or created in the course of the story's development." On Malo, in Vanuatu, Rubinstein

(1981:153) finds that "telling where one was when something was alleged to

happen helps validate the truthfulness and objectivity of the events in

question." We may turn to the Tauribariba myth to examine the process by which

events become anchored to physical objects. The critical moment in which Tauribariba was transformed from human being to stone occurred after the waves thrashed against the canoe and Tauanana fell into the sea. The

metamorphosis took place when people rescued Tauribariba and lifted him to shore. "Everyone rushed to get Tauribariba and carry (pawei) him ashore.

They set (tonei) him in the center of the hamlet where he still is today." The word pawei means to carry by strapping onto a pole. Pigs or heavy loads (and also people, in the days of cannibalism) are transported in this

way. The word tonei means to stab, pierce, or spear. In recalling their past, Wamirans perceive Tauribariba as sitting in the canoe as a person, as being transported from the shore in an inhuman way, and as being put down and

jabbed into the ground like a stone. Thus, in the process of being carried onto land and being set down, Tauribariba is transformed from human lineage leader to stony ancestor and permanent marker of the group's history and

identity. The Maibouni people thus immortalized the events of their settlement in spatial context and physical form.10 Interestingly, the arrival of the Maibouni people as a group is not yet immortalized when they come ashore as individuals. They record the event only when they collectively fetch their leader, the symbol of their group, and carry him onto land.

In Wamira, the sea is often endowed with the sacred character of creator, transformer, immortalizer, or recycler of life. In many instances where, in a myth, a person turns to stone, such as with Maradiudiva and Marakwadiveta or Tauribariba and Tauanana, the transformation takes place as the individual

emerges from, or wanders into, the sea. The sea also plays an important role

during transitional phases of growth and decay. For example, the umbilical cord of a newborn infant, the cutting of which indicates the beginning of an individual's independent growth, is ritually tossed out to sea. People who come in contact with a dead body must wash in the sea to cleanse what they view as contamination with decay and death. After a corpse is buried,

STONE-FACED ANCESTORS 61

relatives of the deceased throw stones into the sea, explaining that this

action is meant to parallel the departure of the deceased's spirit across the

sea. Moreover, the pungent salty odor of the sea is taboo for the growth of

taro plants. This pungent sea odor is likened to that of menstrual blood, believed to be the ultimate creative substance of human life. Thus, the sea is

endowed with sacred qualities during phases of transition from fetus to

infant, from life to death, and from death to afterlife. The passage of time

itself, in its most naturally occurring and visible form, is marked by such

transitions of growth and decay in people, animals, and plants. Symbolic markers of growth and decay are all brought back to the sea in Wamiran

thought and action. In this light, it is not surprising that the transformation

of human beings or their paraphernalia into stone (i.e., the immortalization of

that which is mortal, the transference of life from one form to another, or

the embodiment of the passage of time) also takes place in the sea.

THE PASSAGE OF TIME AS MOVEMENT IN SPACE

Like notions of the past, Melanesian ideas about the passage of time are

conceived of in a spatial framework. Perhaps the most meaningful way to

understand the Melanesian use of spatial metaphors to express the passage of

time is to compare their conceptual framework to a Western one.

Westerners, in recording and recalling their past, mainly emphasize the

temporal relationship between events. Western history is punctuated and

recorded by chronologically linked and causally related dates of discoveries, battles, treaties, revolutions, changes in leadership, turning points, and the

like. Chronological exactness is extremely important. To link an event to an inaccurate date renders the account false; it ceases to be fact. Indeed, the

way in which events of the past shape the present and influence the future

provides the backbone of Western historical analysis. In general, Westerners locate their sense of the past in time. Likewise, events are verified primarily by reference to time. For example, an individual suspected of a crime can

plead innocent by saying that he saw so-and-so at 8:15, but not by saying that he saw so-and-so when he stood next to the mango tree. In sum, a

Western concept of the past is primarily linear, cumulative, and progressive,

consisting of events linked in a temporal and causally connected manner. Even fairy tales, devoid of a fixed temporal setting, employ temporality as a mode of producing credibility. They usually begin with "once upon a time"

and end with "and they lived happily ever after," thus rendering them believable by locating them in time (Harwood 1976:791).

In Melanesia, on the other hand, where the past is primarily marked by

objects on the ground, the passage of time is seen in terms of linked points in space. The intellectual emphasis is on how an event is anchored to a

physical and visible form in the landscape. "Life... is perceived, in theory, to be a progression punctuated by a series of significant stops" (Rubinstein

1981:155). Autobiographies, for example, are construed as a "sequence of

movements in social as well as physical space" (Young 1983b:495). This

concept is wonderfully illustrated by a Wamiran high school student's

perception of me and the content of my work. Having been given the

assignment of interviewing "an important person in her village" for her high school newspaper, she chose me and wrote:

62 ETHNOLOGY

The first place she stopped was Tahiti. After that she went to American Samoa then to

Western Samoa and then on to Fiji, from Fiji to the New Hebrides [now Vanuatu] and then to

Sydney, Australia. From there she took a plane to Port Moresby and then took a boat and

came all the way to Dogura... While she is here, she has to talk to the people and learn the

names of the places. She also has to make a map of the whole village and write its history...

(Giurina 1976:4).

Another example of the importance of spatial orientation occurs in the Melanesian form of greeting. As individuals cross paths with one another, they customarily ask, "Where are you going?... Where are you coming from?"

Or, they greet those they encounter by reporting, "I'm coming from place X, I'm on my way to place Y." It is the spatial relationship that defines people and events, and links past and present, and in doing so gives a sense of

continuity and identity.

THE MALLEABLE NATURE OF MYTHIC "WORDS"

"But," every Westerner who hears the tales of Tauribariba and the

wandering stones exclaims, "the stones don't really move, do they?" The answer is, "yes, they do." In almost every region of Melanesia where stones are markers of past events, they are also described as being capable of movement. For example, Strathern (1979:50) discusses the "itinerant quality" of the stones in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Near Buka, in the Solomon Islands, stones are known not only to walk about at night, but to fish, swim, dance, and even grow (Blackwood 1935). In the North Solomon Islands' village of Arawa, one man, in order to demonstrate his disbelief in the power of stones, heaved several ancestral stones over a cliff. When they reappeared the next morning, his skepticism disappeared (Spriggs personal communication).

Perhaps an even more accurate response than "yes, the stones move" would be to say that the stones are helped in their movements. When Wamira was first settled, the people probably found a stone on the beach and placed it on the ground to commemorate their successful landing, or even returned to Iveive to fetch the appropriate stone. Likewise, we can assume that Tauribariba was assisted during his nighttime jaunt back from the cathedral to the village. And Wamirans readily say that when they see the children stones on the beach, they put them where they belong.11

In examining the fact of the stones' movements, concern should be focused less on how the stones move and more on why it is necessary that they move, or be moved, at all. The answer, I suggest, has to do with mythology being negotiable and subject to revision. It also has to do with the difference between literate and nonliterate societies' ways of recording events. After recording the past, one must occasionally amend and alter it in order to live with it in the present. Literate societies, which record their past primarily in books, can rewrite their books. They can ban them or revise them. Even their concrete or metal monuments can be altered, defaced, torn down, rebuilt, blown up, or quietly ignored. Nonliterate people who record their past in stone, however, must grant their stones some freedom of movement. The Wamiran past, like everyone else's, is not static, but represents a dynamic, ongoing relationship between past events and the

STONE-FACED ANCESTORS 63

present. Events that are recorded in stone can most easily be changed by the movement of the stones. A past recorded and illustrated by stones that

walk up from the sea, wander in the night, disappear from cathedral walls,

jump from boats bound for Australia, and so on, is dynamically and

dramatically receptive to alterations and additions. Because a stone can mark

time, like time, it can move.

People the world over, no matter how they conceive of the passage of time, mark important events in relatively permanent forms, whether these be

cement columns, bronze statues, engraved plaques, or ordinary-looking stones.

A superb example of how various cultures combined efforts and symbols to

record a significant event occurred in 1978 when the centennial of Maurice

Leenhardt's birth was celebrated in New Caledonia.

Leenhardt's monument is a white cement column about seven feet high... On the stele the

missionary's profile... has been modeled in bronze by a noted Paris artist. An engraved

plaque has been supplied by the powerful mining conglomerate... At the narrow summit of the

monument the local committee [of Melanesians] has placed an ordinary-looking smooth stone

(Clifford 1982:226).

In its accounts of the centennial, the press dwelled on the speeches, the

dignitaries who attended, and the monument. However, "the stone was

ignored" (Clifford 1982:226). This is unfortunate because, to quote Leenhardt's biographer,

Rocks are forms of local history, mythic "words." Traditionally, the spirit of an ancestor could

be seized and solidified in the form of a rock gathered from a riverbed. The stone atop Leenhardt's monument is taken from a stream in the home valley of one of the missionary's

original pastoral students. It solidifies, gathers, symbolizes the presence of the ancestors, of

Leenhardt, and of the Melanesians who made his work possible. It gathers the landscape's

past. Rocks are crucial in New Caledonia... They stake out the habitat, providing permanent markers around and over which flow the ongoing currents of social, historical, and natural life

(Clifford 1982:226-7).

In the same way that reporters neglected the stone at Leenhart's

centennial, anthropologists, on the whole, have neglected an essential

ingredient in their analyses of Melanesian mythology. By focusing analyses of

local mythology primarily on oral narratives, or by assuming that notions of

the past are expressed in terms of temporality, they have restricted their

understanding of the people. A much richer, deeper, more versatile and

vibrant past might emerge if anthropologists also attend, as Melanesians

themselves do, to what is physically in front of them on the ground.

NOTES

1. The fieldwork upon which this paper is based was conducted in Papua New Guinea from

June 1976 to March 1978 and from August 1981 to March 1982 (Kahn 1986). The major

portion of time was spent in the village of Wamira on the northeast coast of the mainland in

Milne Bay Province. Short-term comparative work was conducted in Boianai, also on the

northeast coast, in February 1978 and November-December 1981. The research trips were

made financially possible by generous support from the National Science Foundation, the

64 ETHNOLOGY

National Institute of Mental Health, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the Institute for Intercultural Studies. I am grateful to the officers of the Anglican Church in Papua New Guinea who kindly granted me access to their archives in Port Moresby. This article, first presented at an ethnohistory session at the meetings of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania in March 1983, has benefitted greatly from the ideas of Steven

Albert, Robert Borofsky, Deborah Gewertz, Jane Goodale, Alice Pomponio, Robert L.

Rubinstein, Matthew Spriggs, and Richard Taylor. For help with my fieldwork in Boianai, I am

deeply grateful to Biddy Gugara, Slayman Dodoama, and both their families. Most of all, I thank my many friends in Wamira who patiently and magnanimously helped me with my work.

My deepest gratitude goes to Alice Dobunaba, Aidan Gadiona, and the late Sybil Gisewa. I alone accept responsibility for any errors in facts or interpretation. 2. It must be noted that this desire for concrete expression of events as a way of recalling the past, substantiating knowledge, and creating a sense of identity is not unique to Melanesians. To name only a few examples among many, Christians point to the blood-stained cloth in the Cathedral of Orvieto to recall the miracle demonstrating the transubstantiation of wine into Christ's blood during the Communion. Or they cite the Holy Shroud of Turin in the Cathedral of San Giovanni (albeit recently proclaimed a fake) to demonstrate the existence of Christ. American families, especially those with children to whom to pass on historical

knowledge and cultural traditions, make frequent journeys to historical markers. Although most are man-made, many, such as Plymouth Rock, occur naturally. 3. Incised stones have also been found in other regions of Melanesia. In most cases the local inhabitants can no longer interpret the designs (Blackwood 1935). 4. The importance of the sibling relationship in Pacific origin myths has been discussed elsewhere (see, for example, Marshall 1981). 5. Note that the placement of the stone in the cathedral is a fine example of a Westerner's desire to record a historical event in a physical, durable and symbolic manner. 6. There are several versions of this event. According to Father Bodger, the stone had not

yet been cemented into the wall, but was lying on a table in the cathedral (Bodger personal communication). According to a Wamiran version, it had been cemented into the wall with its face looking out towards Wamira. As my informant said, "It saw the village and was drawn back to its home." Yet another, more embellished, Wamiran version claims that the stone was carried to England and Australia. When it arrived in Australia, it jumped from the side of the boat and swam back to Wamira because "that is where it belonged." 7. I was given no explanation for her surfacing at that time, 38 years after her disappearance into the sea. 8. When I first arrived in Wamira in 1976, she was again present in the oval of stones. I saw her there in 1981 as well. 9. The idea that sharing mythological knowledge demonstrates proof of past relationship, of course, works best when narratives are unwritten and privately owned. 10. Here we are again reminded of the missionaries who came ashore and later erected a cement monument at the spot where they first arrived. 11. The movement may also take the form of an upright stone "falling down." For example, in one Wamiran hamlet there exists a group of stones called Aritabu. These stones commemorate a lineage's collective action in the past and still symbolize its feelings of cohesion in the present. Several years ago, one of the Aritabu stones "fell down because the members of the lineage were not working together harmoniously" (i.e., sorcery among the members threatened the cohesion of the group). I was told that if the lineage members "work together the stone will prop itself up once again." Upon further inquiry, I realized that the erection of the stone would, in fact, be accomplished by lineage men pouring pork broth into the ground below the stone while raising it into its place. Thus, the broth would physically soften the ground for

STONE-FACED ANCESTORS 65

the stone's upraising while simultaneously and symbolically indicating group unity through communal feasting on pork.

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