These slides are about Roy Rappaport's research about the Tsembaga Maring's Ritual Cycle in Papua New Guinea.

1. Roy A. Rappaport
Ritual Regulation of
Environmental Relations Among
a New Guinea People

2. Author
Roy Rappaport
(1926 – 1997)

3. Religious Ritual
- the prescribed performance of conventionalized acts
manifestly directed toward the involvement of the
nonempirical or supernatural agencies in the affairs of
the actors

4. Tsembaga

5. Location: Papua New Guinea

6. Location
map adapted from Rappaport 1968, 1984 p. 11

8. http://jablonko-maring.pacific-credo.fr/ethno2.html

10. Tsembaga Territory
• Total surface area: 3.2 square miles
• Elevation: 2,200 ft. from Simbai River – 7,200 ft.
at the ridge crest
• Rainfall: 150 inches/year

11. Tsembaga Territory

12. Tsembaga
• Adult males
– Ave. weight: 101 lbs
– Ave. height: 58.5 inches
– Adult females
• Ave. weight: 85 lbs
• Ave. height: 54.5 inches

13. Tsembaga
• Distributed among 5 patrilineal clans
• Highly egalitarian
• Swidden horticulturalists
Staples include:

14. Garden types:
– Taro-yam gardens
– Sugar-sweet potato
gardens

15. • Pig Husbandry
– Pigs keep residential areas free of garbage and human feces
– Limited number of pigs rooting in secondary growth may
help hasten the development of that growth

17. Tsembaga Ritual Cycle

18. • Placing the opposing side in the formal category of
“enemy”

19. Taboos
Prohibitions on:
– Sexual intercourse
– Ingestion of certain things:
• Food prepared by women
• Food grown on the lower portion of the territory
• Marsupials
• Eels
• Any liquid

20. • Eating of heavily salted pig fat

21. • Consuming lean pork

22. ROUT

23. TRUCE

24. • Planting of rumbim

25. “We thank you for helping us in the fight and
permitting us to remain on our territory. We place our
souls in this rumbim as we plant it on our ground. We
ask you to care for this rumbim. We will kill pigs for
you now, but they are few. In the future, when we have
many pigs, we shall again give you pork and uproot the
rumbim and stage a kaiko (pig festival). But until there
are sufficient pigs to repay you the rumbim will remain
in the ground.”

26. • Sexual intercourse
• Ingestion of any liquid
• Food from any part of
the territory

27. Time of the bamp ku
• bamp ku
– “fighting stones”
– actual objects used in the rituals associated with warfare
• time of debt and danger

28. Time of the bamp ku
• Taboos:
• Marsupials
- pigs of the ancestors of the high grounds
• Eels
- pigs of the ancestors of the low ground
• All intercourse with the enemy
• A group may not attack another group

29. To uproot the rumbim = to have sufficient pigs

30. “Good” place = 5 years
“Bad” place = 10+ years

31. “Good” place
- Rapid increase of the pig herd
“Bad” place
- Misfortunes (warfare, illness, injury, death) are frequent
- Pigs sacrifices are frequent
• During warfare, only men participating in the fighting may eat
the pork
• In case of illness or injury, only the victim and certain near
relatives eat the pork

32. • Cognized environment
– environment which includes as very important elements,
the spirits of ancestors
• Operational environment
- material environment specified by the anthropologists
through operations of observation

33. Kaiko
- Pig festival
- Commences at the planting of the stakes at the
boundary
- Uprooting the rumbim

34. • Rule of land distribution:
If one of a pair of antagonistic groups is able to uproot its
rumbim it may occupy the latter’s territory.

35. • Rule of population distribution:
A man becomes a member of territorial group by
participating with it in the planting of the rumbim

36. • Uprooting the rumbim

37. Kaiko
Courtship Displays

38. Kaiko
Massed Dancing

39. Kaiko
Trading
Kaiko facilitates trade by providing a market-like
setting in which large number of traders can
assemble
Most frequently exchanged items are:
axes, bird plumes, shell ornaments, baby pig

40. Kaiko
- Concludes with major pig sacrifices
- Public presentation of salted pig belly

41. Kaiko

43. Relation of the Tsembaga with their
environment as a complex system
• Local Subsystem
– derived from the relations of the Tsembaga with the
nonhuman components of their immediate or territorial
environment.

44. Relation of the Tsembaga with their
environment as a complex system
• Regional Subsystem
– derived from the relations of the Tsembaga with
neighboring local populations similar to themselves.

45. Relation of the Tsembaga with their
environment as a complex system
Ritual cycles of the Tsembaga, and of other local
territorial groups of Maring speakers living in the New
Guinea, play an important part in regulating the
relationships of these groups with both the nonhuman
components of their immediate environments and the
human components of their less immediate
environments.

46. Relation of the Tsembaga with their
environment as a complex system
• maintain the biotic communities existing within their territories
• redistributes land among people and people over land
• limits frequency of fighting
• provides a means for mobilizing allies when warfare may be undertaken
• mechanism for redistributing local pig surpluses in the form of pork
throughout a large regional population while helping to assure the local
population of a supply of pork when its members are most in need of
high quality protein

47. Thank you!!