Abstract
Leadership forms in New Guinea spanned a political spectrum from egalitarian forager bands through trans-egalitarian cultivators to petty chiefdom fisher-foragers. Drawing comparative data from 92 of these communities, this chapter finds that emergent political complexity in small-scale societies is primarily driven by male status competition. Although the forms this competition took varied, the most important were warfare and material display (the conspicuous distribution of material goods). Warfare was by far the more common and highly valued source of male status , a function of the chronic military threat to which New Guineans were exposed. At population densities above about 20–25 people/km2, however, material display––the political hallmark of the classic Big-man ––became increasingly prevalent and important as an avenue to status , a function of the unusual relationship between status and power in these societies. Material displays were a means of demonstrating in concrete form individual and collective power . and in competing to outdo one another’s material displays, Big-men and their groups were competing for status by demonstrating their power . This circumstance explains why the emergence of material display as a channel of status competition depended on rising population density. In small-scale communities, the ability to amass power depends heavily on density. At low densities, this ability is constrained, limiting the importance of material distribution as a mode of status competition. As densities rise, however, these constraints erode until, at a threshold of around 50–55 people/km2, power –– manifest in material displays––becomes the main channel of status competition.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
As I have noted elsewhere (Roscoe 2000a), ascribed leadership was far more common in New Guinea than Sahlins’s (1963) distinction between Melanesian big-men and Polynesian chiefs would suggest. In a few communities, such as the Koriki (Maher 1967) and War open (Held 1957) ascription even appears to have prevailed over achieved leadership . In this paper, though, I focus on those societies, the majority, where achieved leadership was the dominant mode.
- 2.
In a couple of cases––communities where more than one ethnographer conducted fieldwork––I found explicit ethnographic statements about status and power to be at variance (e.g., Görlich 1998: 152, cf Jackson 1975: 200. I interpreted these cases as indicating that the pursuit or qualification in question is marginal to status or influence.
- 3.
Although early census records for New Guinea are often incomplete, difficult to procure, and taxing to analyze, they provide an unparalleled source of demographic data on so-called “band” and “tribal” societies under early colonial influence. Most of the density figures used in this paper were derived from these registers––those compiled by Australian patrol officers for Papua New Guinea and by Dutch authorities for West Papua.
From detailed analyses of runs of these registers, it is possible to establish the point at which administrative officers had achieved a more or less full census, and I have used the earliest available ‘full’ census to compute the density figures for the societies in the database. Census figures, of course, refer to various periods after first contact and ‘pacification,’ and we know that New Guinea population levels were seriously affected by diseases and other mortal processes in the early years of contact (Roscoe 2009b: 606–608). Unfortunately, it is rarely possible to establish just how accurately post-contact census figures reflected contact-era population levels. An analysis of cases in which both early and later census records have survived provides some reason to believe that the figures I use are not greatly off the mark as proxies for contact-era populations (Held 1957: 24–25; cf. Groenewegen and van der Kaa 1965: 9; NNG 1937–1961; Roscoe, n.d.; 2000b: 606–608; but cf. Maher 1961: 105). To the extent that post-contact census data do not match contact-era figures, however, they do at least provide a common temporal baseline for the purposes of comparison. In other words, if the population figures I use to compute densities are faulty as absolute measures of contact-era population, they still retain some value as relative measures.
- 4.
In a surprising number of further cases, ethnographers who have published voluminously about small, low-density New Guinea communities have been all but mute on the subject of leadership , suggesting perhaps that there was nothing to write about. For all of his distinguished writings about the Kaluli, for instance, Schieffelin has mentioned nothing about male status rivalry, influence, power , or leadership beyond noting the absence of Big-men (Schieffelin 1991: 61).
- 5.
A number of other pursuits or achievements that neither Sahlins nor Godelier refer to also provided a path to eminence of influence. These include visual and plastic artistry, long-yam production, singing, dancing, polygyny, numbers of offspring, and trading. Figure 8.3 omits these avenues because of their relatively low incidence.
- 6.
A community was judged to award status to performance in war if: (a) an ethnography described it as conferring “esteem,” “fame”, “glory”, “honor”, “prestige”, “renown”, “reputation”, “respect”, “symbolic capital”, “standing”, “status ” (in the sense of prestige as opposed to office), or (positive) “worth”; (b) if a successful warrior was “admired”, “revered”, or “valued”; or (c) if he became a “hero” or “distinguished” himself in war .
- 7.
A successful warrior was judged to have influence or power if: (a) he was said to have “influence”, “power” (or be “influential” or “powerful” in the sense of social power ), or “followers” or “a following”; (b) his “opinion carried (greater) weight”; (c) he “exerted (social) control” or “made the decisions in tribal and clan affairs”; or (d) other people “submitted to” or “supported” him in his endeavors.
- 8.
Offensive warfare to annex neighboring territory and its resources might ensure survival in the event of extreme resource shortage, but as a number of anthropologists have pointed out, New Guinea ns did not commonly go to war for land (see summary in Sillitoe 1977: 72–74, though cf. Ember 1982). In the highlands, for instance, one community might displace another in war but the victors seldom moved into take over the vacated property. Indeed, after they had spent a few years in refuge, the remnants of a vanquished population were often allowed or invited back to reoccupy their domains (see, e.g., Brown and Brookfield 1959: 41; Rappaport 1968: 145; Reay 1959: 6–7). The main guise in which offensive warfare sometimes functioned as defensive––was as an attack to preempt a military threat on one’s doorstep.
- 9.
If an absence of evidence is assumed to be evidence of absence, then the frequency differences between warriorhood and material display as modes of status competition are highly significant (p < 0.001, Chi-squared test for independence). The evidential assumption is sufficiently fraught, however, as to cast doubt on this result.
- 10.
- 11.
A close textual analysis of Godelier’s comparison of Great-men and Big-men shows that he, too, tactitly associated Big-men with power . In talking of Great-men, his references are almost exclusively to men of “high status ,” “renown,” “prestige,” “stature,” to “opportunities for distinguishing” oneself, and to names that “spread far and wide” (Godelier 1986: 98, 105–106, 107, 109, 122, 129). The Great man is a “ status for the taking” (1986: 96; emphasis added). Only once does he mention “authority” and “social power ” in relation to Great-men (1986: 109). In stark contrast, his descriptions of classic Big men refer as much or more so to their “power” and “influence” as to their status or prestige (e.g., 1986: 162–167): the Big man is “a man who has acquired power through his own merit” (1986: 163; italics added).
- 12.
References
Alexander, Richard D. 1979. Darwinism and Human Affairs. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.
Alexander, Richard D. 1987. The Biology of Moral Systems. Hawthorn, NY: de Gruyter.
Bergmann, W. 1971. The Kamanuku: The Culture of the Chimbu Tribes, 4 Vols. Harrisville, Qld: H.F.W. Bergmann.
Bourdieu, P. 1986. The Forms of Capital. In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. J. Richardson, 241–258. New York: Greenwood.
Brandewie, Ernest. 1981. Contrast and Context in New Guinea Culture: The Case of the Mbowamb of the Central Highlands. St. Augustin: Anthropos Institute.
Brown, Paula. 1971. The Chimbu Political System. In Politics in New Guinea: Traditional and in the Context of Change: Some Anthropological Perspectives, ed. by Ronald M. Berndt and Peter Lawrence, 207–223. Nedlands and Seattle: University of Western Australia Press and University of Washington Press.
Brown, Paula and Brookfield H. C. 1959. Chimbu Land and Society. Oceania 30: 1–75.
Bulmer, Ralph N. H. 1960. Leadership and Social Structure among the Kyaka People of the Western Highlands District of New Guinea. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation. Canberra: The Australian National University.
Burridge, Kenelm O. L. 1975. The Melanesian Manager. In Studies in Social Anthropology: Essays in Memory of E. E. Evans-Pritchard, edited by J.M. Beattie and R.G. Lienhardt, 86–104. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Clarke, John E., and Michael Blake. 1994. The Power of Prestige: Competitive Generosity and the Emergence of Rank in Societies in Lowland Mesoamerica. In Factional Competition and Political Development in the New World, ed. Elizabeth M. Brumfiel, and John W. Fox, 17–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ember, Melvin. 1982. Statistical Evidence for an Ecological Explanation of Warfare. American Anthropologist 84: 645–649.
Eyde, David Bruener. 1967. Cultural Correlates of Warfare among the Asmat of South–west New Guinea. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation. New Haven: Yale University.
Fitz-Patrick, David G., and John Kimbuna. 1983. Bundi: The Culture of a Papua New Guinea People. Nerang, Qld.: Ryebuck Publications.
Forge, Anthony. 1990. The Power of Culture and the Culture of Power. In Sepik Heritage: Tradition and Change in Papua New Guinea, ed. Nancy Lutkehaus, Christian Kaufmann, Wlliam E. Mitchell, Douglas Newton, Lita Osmundsen, and Meinhard Schuster, 16–170. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Godelier, Maurice. 1986. The Making of Great Men: Male Domination and Power among the New Guinea Baruya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Görlich, Joachim. 1998. Between War and Peace: Gift Exchange and Commodity Barter in the Central and Fringe Highlands of Papua New Guinea. In Kinship, Networks, and Exchange, ed. Thomas Schweizer, and Douglas R. White, 303–331. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Görlich, Joachim. 1999. The Transformation of Violence in the Colonial Encounter: Intercultural Discourses and Practices in Papua New Guinea. Ethnology 38: 151–162.
Groenewegen, K., and D.J. van der Kaa. 1965. Resultaten van het Demographisch Onderzoek Westelijk Nieuw-Guinea, Deel 3. The Hague, Netherlands: Government Printing and Publishing Office.
Harrison, Simon. 1993. The Mask of War: Violence, Ritual and the Self in Melanesia. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Held, G.J. 1957. The Papuas of Waropen. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Henrich, Joseph, and Francisco Gil-White. 2001. The Evolution of Prestige: Freely Conferred Deference as a Mechanism for Enhancing the Benefits of Cultural Transmission. Evolution and Human Behavior 22: 165–196.
Jackson, Graham. 1975. The Kopon: Life and Death on the Fringes of the New Guinea Highlands. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Auckland, Auckland.
Kaberry, Phyllis M. 1971. Political Organization among the Northern Abelam. In Politics in New Guinea: Traditional and in the Context of Change: Some Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Ronald M. Berndt, and Peter Lawrence, 35–73. Nedlands and Seattle: University of Western Australia Press and University of Washington Press.
Keesing, Roger M. 1985. Killers, Big men, and Priests on Malaita: Reflections on a Melanesian Troika System. Ethnology 24: 237–252.
Kelly, Raymond C. 1993. Constructing Inequality: The Fabrication of a Hierarchy of Virtue among the Etoro. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Knauft, Bruce M. 1985. Good Company and Violence: Sorcery and Social Action in a Lowland New Guinea Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Langness, L.L. 1971. Bena Bena Political Organization. In Politics in New Guinea: Traditional and in the Context of Change: Some Anthropological Perspectives, ed. R.M. Berndt, and P. Lawrence, 298–316. Nedlands and Seattle: University of Western Australia Press and University of Washington Press.
Lawrence, Peter. 1971 “Introduction.” Politics in New Guinea: Traditional and in the Context of Change: Some Anthropological Perspectives, edited by R.M. Berndt and P. Lawrence, 1–34. Nedlands and Seattle, University of Western Australia Press and University of Washington Press.
Lederman, Rena. 1986. What Gifts Engender: Social Relations and Politics in Mendi, Highland Papua New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lindstrom, Lamont. 1981. ‘Big Man’: A Short Terminological History. American Anthropologist 83: 900–905.
Maher, Robert F. 1967. From Cannibal Raid to Copra Kompani: Changing Patterns of Koriki Politics. Ethnology 6: 309–331.
Maher, Robert F. 1961. New Men of Papua: A Study in Culture Change. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Meggitt, M.J. 1965. The Lineage System of the Mae-Enga of New Guinea. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd Ltd.
Meggitt, M.J. 1973. The Pattern of Leadership among the Mae–Enga of New Guinea. Politics in New Guinea: Traditional and in the Context of Change: Some Anthropological Perspectives, ed. by R.M. Berndt and P. Lawrence, 191–206. Nedlands and Seattle, University of Western Australia Press and University of Washington Press.
Meggitt, M.J. 1977. Blood Is Their Argument: Warfare among the Mae Enga Tribesmen of the New Guinea Highlands. Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company.
Newman, Philip Lee. 1965. Knowing the Gururumba. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
NNG. 1937–1961. Netherlands New Guinea Administrative Reports, 1938 to 1961, Sarmi Division.The Hague, Netherlands: Algemeen Rijksarchief.
O’Hanlon, Michael. 1989. Reading the Skin: Adornment, Display and Society among the Wahgi. London: British Museum.
Oosterwal, G. 1961. People of the Tor: A Cultural-Anthropological Study on the Tribes of the Tor Territory (Northern Netherlands New–Guinea). Assen: Royal van Gorcum.
Oosterwal, G. 1963. Die Papua: Von der Kultur eines Naturvolkes. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
Philsooph, H.A. 1980. A Study of a West Sepik People, New Guinea, with Special Reference to Their System of Beliefs, Kinship and Marriage, and Principles of Thought. Ph.D. Dissertation. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh.
Rappaport, Roy A. 1968. Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Reay, Marie. 1959. The Kuma: Freedom and Conformity in the New Guinea Highlands. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press.
Riches, David. 1984. Hunting, Herding and Potlatching: Towards a Sociological Account of Prestige. Man (N.S.) 19:234–251.
Roscoe, Paul B. (n.d.). A Plague in the Sepik: The Demographic Consequences of Colonialism in the Middle and Lower Sepik. Orono, ME: Files of the Author.
Roscoe, Paul B. 2000a. “Typologies and Hierarchies in Action.” In Hierarchies in Action: Cui Bono? ed. by Michael W. Diehl, 113–33. Carbondale, IL, Center for Archaeological Research, University of Southern Illinois.
Roscoe, Paul B. 2000b. New Guinea Leadership as Ethnographic Analogy: A Critical Review. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 7: 79–126.
Roscoe, Paul B. 2005. Foraging, Ethnographic Analogy, and Papuan Pasts. In Papuan Pasts: Cultural, Linguistic, and Biological Histories of Papuan-speaking Peoples, ed. by Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Jack Golson, and Robin Hide, 555–584. Pacific Linguistics, Vol. 572. Canberra, Australia: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University.
Roscoe, Paul B. 2009a. Social Signaling and the Organization of Small-Scale Society. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 16: 69–116.
Roscoe, Paul B. 2009b. On the ‘Pacification’ of the European Neolithic: Ethnographic Analogy and the Neglect of History. World Archaeology 41: 578–588.
Roscoe, Paul B. 2012. Before Elites: The Political Capacities of Big-Men. Before Elites: Alternatives to Hierarchical Systems in Modelling Social Formations, Vol. 1, ed. by Tobias L. Kienlein and Andreas Zimmerman, 41–54. Universitätsforschungen zur prähistorischen Archäologie, Vol. 215. Bonn: Rudolp Habelt.
Roscoe, Paul B. 2013. War, Collective Action, and the ‘Evolution’ of Polities. Cultural and Evolutionary Dynamics of Cooperation, edited by David Carballo, 57–82. Boulder, CO: Colorado University Press.
Roscoe, Paul. 2016. War and the Food Quest in Small-Scale Societies: Settlement Pattern Formation in Contact-Era New Guinea. In The Archaeology of Food and Warfare: Food Insecurity in Prehistory, ed. Amber M. VanDerwarker and Gregory D. Wilson, 13–39. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Sahlins, Marshall D. 1963. Poor Man, Rich Man, Big-Man, Chief: Political Types in Melanesia and Polynesia. Comparative Studies in Society and History 5: 285–303.
Schieffelin, Edward L. 1991. The Great Papuan Plateau. In Like People You See in a Dream: First Contact in Six Papuan Societies, ed. Edward L. Schieffelin, and Robert Crittenden, 58–87. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Schwoerer, Tobias. 2014. The Red Flag of Peace: Colonial Pacification, Cargo Cults and the End of War among the South Fore. Anthropologica 56: 341–352.
Sillitoe, Paul. 1977. Land Shortage and War in New Guinea. Ethnology 16: 71–81.
Strathern, Andrew. 1966. Despots and Directors in the New Guinea Highlands. Man (N.S.) 1:356–367.
Strathern, Andrew. 1971. The Rope of Moka: Big-Men and Ceremonial Exchange in Mount Hagen, New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Townsend, Patricia Kathryn Woods. 1969. Subsistence and Social Organization in a New Guinea Society. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Michigan.
Tuzin, Donald F. 1976. The Ilahita Arapesh: Dimensions of Unity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Vicedom, Georg F. and Herbert Tischner. n.d. The Mbowamb: The Culture of the Mount Hagen Tribes in East Central New Guinea, Vol. 2. I.Social Organisation. II.Religion and Cosmology, translated by F.E. Rheinstein and E. Klestadt. Canberra: Menzies Library, Australian National University.
Watson, James B. 1971. Tairora: The Politics of Despotism in a Small Society. In Politics in New Guinea: Traditional and in the Context of Change: Some Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Ronald M. Berndt, and Peter Lawrence, 224–275. Nedlands and Seattle: University of Western Australia Press and University of Washington Press.
Watson, James B. 1983. Tairora Culture: Contingency and Pragmatism. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Westermann, Ted. 1968. The Mountain People: Social Institutions of the Laiapu Enga. New Guinea Lutheran Mission: Wapenamanda.
Wormsley, William Edward. 1978. Imbonggu Culture and Change: Traditional Society, Labor Migration and Change in the Southern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. Ph.D. Dissertation. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh.
Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to Bob Carneiro, Rick Chacon, and Terry Hays for comments on earlier versions of this paper. None of these people, of course, is responsible for the errors and idiocies I have surely perpetrated.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Roscoe, P. (2017). The Emergence of Sociopolitical Complexity: Evidence from Contact-Era New Guinea. In: Chacon, R., Mendoza, R. (eds) Feast, Famine or Fighting?. Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48402-0_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48402-0_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-48401-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-48402-0
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)