Aboriginal settlement a few miles from Somerset, pearl fisheries of Torres Straits Is., life of natives, physical description, shelters, hunting and fishing gear.

Excerpt from New Guinea Polynesia: Discoveries Surveys in New Guinea and the D'entrecasteaux Islands; A Cruise in Polynesia and Visits to the Pearl-Shelling Stations in Torres Straits of H. M. S. Basilisk None of the navigators who did good service in the South Seas and on other parts of the New Guinea coast, neared the coast-line laid down by the Basilisk within these bounds, a fact as singular as it is inter esting. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.

The communities of south coast New Guinea were the subject of classic ethnographies, and fresh studies in recent decades have put these rich and complex cultures at the centre of anthropological debates. Flamboyant sexual practices, such as ritual homosexuality, have attracted particular interest. In the first general book on the region, Dr Knauft reaches striking new comparative conclusions through a careful ethnographic analysis of sexuality, the status of women, ritual and cosmology, political economy, and violence among the region's seven major language-culture areas. The findings suggest new Melanesian regional contrasts and provide for a general critique of the way regional comparisons are constructed in anthropology. Theories of practice and political economy as well as post-modern insights are drawn upon to provide a generative theory of indigenous social and symbolic development.