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

As a good British anthropologist, Gunnar Landtman dedicates all of his chapter XI (p. 185-195) to an extensive description of totemism among the Kiwai: “lo que sigue es, creo, una lista razonablemente completa de los totems de los kiwai” (p. 185), after which he presents a list of all the totems in four different places in the island, plus a list of the totems in the Eastern islands of the Torres Strait. In his very light theoretical interpretation of totemism, he states that “los totems son en primer lugar de significado social y religioso” (p. 191), and he points out that, whereas all the details of ritual life in the island are kept as a secret, the islanders speak very freely about their totems with anybody. And in spite of this openness in the discussion of the totems, it is very difficult to obtain precise information about their function: people rarely ask themselves what the character of the obligations related to the totems is. Landtman proposes the curious idea that the islanders have an instinctive attitude to their beliefs. The rules connected with totemism are usually some kind of prohibition, typically it is a prohibition against eating some edible fruit. The punishment for violating this rule is as a rule some disease, it is said that you should not kill your totem, because it is of your own blood. The rules of totemism are fading away, in earlier times they were much stronger. Landtman sees a reason in the utility in the case of dugong and coconut: they are so important articles that it would be impossible to make the prohibition cover them. If a man of the bamboo-clan needs tmake himself a bow, he does not cut a bamboo, he buys it from someone else. All the totems are of the same importance, there is no hierarchy. It is sometimes thought that the members of a clan share certain characteristics with their totem. The origin of the totem is occasionally related to a culture hero, but the myths and legends make no reference in this respect. The totems are inherited in the male line, and a marrid woman keeps her own totem. She has to abstain from doing harm to the fruit or the animal of her own totem, but she may prepare it as food for her husband. Landtman comments that on the death of the husband, a woman returns to her own family, but the children remain with their father´s family. This is probably the closest we come to a discussion of the kinship system. In the men´s house the obligations are divided according to the clans, and the functions in the important feasts are also distributed among the different totem groups. The obligations to revenge a murder are of the whole clan, and the conflicts are almost always between clans, referring evidently to the conflicts we have called “domestic”. Witchcraft is almost always directed against other clans, it does not function inside the clan. Visits from other communities are as a rule attended by members of the same clan, and the cooperation between members of the same clan, for example around a canoe, is normally much closer than between members of different clans. The marks of the totem clan are painted on the body of the clan members on occasion of the great feasts and ceremonies, and if the totem is some plant, leaves of this plant are fixed to the very scant clothing on these occasions The same way the houses are often decorated with the totem marks, I was told that this is done so that visitors from other villages can know where their “clan brothers” are to be found. Toward the end of his monograph, Landtman comes a little closer to a political theory, a reflexion of his specialization befiore he started st udying andthropology: it is said that in earlier times the numerous and important clans wanted to have their own “long house”, that is men´s house. VII. G unnar L andtman as C ollector Landtman was an untiring collector of all kinds of ítems, material as well as spiritual, “apart from his notes and manuscript, which he later published, he registered almost 500 legends and tales, more tan 900 if we count the variantes” (Landtman, 1917). It is said that this is probably the largest collection of Melanesian myths ever published (Wagner 1995: 288). Landtman also acquired a collection of more than 1300 artefacts for Finland´s National Museum ( Suomen Kansallismuseo ) (NMF VK 4902) (Landtman 1933) and he elaborated a collection of copies of almost 700 objects for the Cambridge Museum of Archeology and Ethnology (today the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) y took some 572 photos, that are also deposited in Finland´s National Museum (Landtman VKK 248). He made about 38 phonographic recordings of songs and dasnces in Kiwai and Bine (Landtman VK 4919). “It is evident that these very rare photos and recordings are objects of material culture in their own right” (Lawrence, 2010: X-XI). There is nothing incompaitble in preparing collections for museums aand writing ethnography, maybe quite the contrary. But sometimes one gets the impression of seeing Gunnar Landtman as some kind of antiquarian, just some collector. This is perhaps due to the lack of dynamism in Landtman´s photographs, as Malinowski´s critique goes. VIII. C onclusions G unnar L andtman’s R elevance T oday As already mentioned, it is interesting to compare Gunnar Landtman´s anthropology with that of his contemporary Diamond Jenness (Jenness & Balantyne, 1920, Korsbaek, manuscript), as both lean heavily on the infrastructure of the Christian missions, although in very different ways. While the anthropology and ethnography of Diamond Jenness immediately © 2023 Global Journals Volume XXIII Issue III Version I 65 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 D Gunnar Landtman (1878-1940)