Global Journal of Human Social Science, D: History, Archaeology and Anthroplogy, Volume 23 Issue 3

ethnographic description was published: the year 1929 saw the publication of The Kiwai Papuns of British New Guinea , a heavy text of some 487 pages. It appears as a very long time, but it is really normal, the process of digesting and editing ethnographic observations is long and drawn out: Radcliffe-Brown did his fieldwork in 1905 and 1906, but he did not publish his Ph. D. thesis until 1922, A M. Hocart did his fieldwork a little later, in 1908, and started publishing his ethnographies from the Solomon Islands also in 1922. Layard went into the field in 1914, and published his ethnography in 1942. This slowness not only characterizes the British anthropologists: the French missionary-ethnologist Maurice Leenhardt started his fieldwork in New Caledonia in 1898, but he did not publish his ethnography of the Kanakas Do Kamo until in 1947. As already mentioned, The Kiwai Papuans of British New Guinea is a rather bulky monograph, and in its 33 chapters all aspects of the social life of the natives of the Kiwai Island are presented, or at least that is the intention. In the ENAH (Mexico´s national school of anthropology) we recommend the students to write an ample thesis, that can be “milked” afterward and its parts published as articles once the student has finished his career. And Gunnar Landtman did exactly that, during all of his life he published generously in English, Swedish and Finnish, and many of his publications were parts of his thesis. The most noteworthy detail is that the last chapter, the XXXIII, was published as a linguistic treatise dedicated to the study of the native´s Pidgin English. The use of this language in Landtman´s investigation is probably what most calls our attention, so this problema will be discussed later in the article. Another chapter that has been published later is one discussing “magic in the context of war” (Landtman, 1916). In this article, Landtman distinguishes two different kinds of war, one that we can call “domestic”, that has explicit rules and the harm inflicted upon the enemy is limited. The other kind is against neighboring villages, with equally explicit rules: the idea is to capture the enemies´ heads, as the Kiwai are headhunters, a practice that was strongly condemned by the colonial government, as well as by the missionaries. These two groups really have the same objectives, as the Christian missión is the moral and political charter of colonialism, the same way anthropology is the methodological weapon of colonialism. In relation with headhunting, we learn about the rites conncted with this practice, the instruments used – bamboo knives – and the related costums. All of chapter XI turns around the problem of totemism; due to the importance of this phenomenon in those years, this will be discussed in more detail further on. Chapters XV, “Birth”, XVI “Puberty”, XVII “Courtship and marrriage”, and XVIII “Death and Burrial” deal with the stations of human life and are curiously similar to the works of some of the members of the American “Culture and Personality” movement and, as it has been mentioned already, it is no wonder that Margaret Mead after Landtman´s death included one of his texts in a publicatioon of hers (Landtman, 1953). A curious detail is that the kinship problem receives very scant attention in this rather exhaustive ethnographic description, which is very strange in view of the fact that Landtman was in permanent contact with W. H. Rivers in the Univerity of Cambridge, who quite recently had formulated a model for the study of kinship systems in modern anthropology, the genealogical method (Rivers, 1910). Before finishing his ethnography, Landtman had published an article about “Beliefs and Religious Pratices of the Kiwai People” in a volumen where the editor W. Beaver promised a general presentation of the peoples of New Guinea (Landtman, 1920). Chapters XXV-XXVIII, that discusses religious matters, especially rites and myths, to a certain degree contains the raw material of this article. Chapter XIII “Traffic and Commerce” deals with the communication with other parts of the world, that is with other islands, and he comes very close to Malinowski´s future subject matter, the kula and the ritual exchange between the different islands, but nowhere does he reach the level of sofistication of Malinowski´s description, and in general there is very little analysis. It would be imposible to do fieldwork in Melanesia, and maybe in other parts of the world as well, without studying the game that has been baptized “cat´s cradle”, which is the game of making string figures. Cat´s cradle was one of Haddon´s obsessions, to the degree that he and Rivers together created a terminology to standardize the study of the game, and allow comparizon between different cultures. The terminology was introduced in a book that Haddon´s daughter published about the game (Haddon, & Rivers, 1902). The first words in an article by Landtman from 1944 about cat´s cradle are: “cat´s cradle is a game that is very common among the Kiwai, who live in the River Fly delta in British New Guinea. All the men, women and children know this game very well” (Landtman, 1914: 321). We recognize two characteristics in Landtman´s ethnography: in the first place, it is solid and, so far as that is posible, it is exhaustive, in the second place, it is almost without any theory. Both characteristics have been generously commented on in various reviews, they have often been richly praised and occasionally severely criticized. Volume XXIII Issue III Version I 62 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 D © 2023 Global Journals Gunnar Landtman (1878-1940)