Trees, Knots, and Outriggers Studies in Environmental Anthropology and General Editor: , FBA Professor of Anthropology, University of Kent at Canterbury Interest in environmental anthropology has grown steadily in recent years, refl ecting na- tional and international concern about the environment and developing research priorities. This major new international series, which continues a series fi rst published by Harwood and Routledge, is a vehicle for publishing up-to-date monographs and edited works on particular issues, themes, places or peoples which focus on the interrelationship between society, culture and environment. Relevant areas include , the perception and representation of the environment, ethno-ecological knowledge, the human dimension of biodiversity conservation and the ethnography of environmental problems. While the un- derlying ethos of the series will be anthropological, the approach is interdisciplinary.

Volume 1 Volume 12 The Logic of Environmentalism: Anthropology, Unveiling the Whale: Discourses on Whales Ecology and Postcoloniality and Whaling Vassos Argyrou Arne Kalland Volume 2 Volume 13 Conversations on the Beach: Fishermen’s Virtualism, Governance and Practice: Vision and Knowledge, Metaphor and Environmental Change Execution in Environmental Conservation in South India Edited by James G. Carrier and Paige West Götz Hoeppe Volume 14 Volume 3 in the New Europe: People, Health Green Encounters: Shaping and Contesting and Wild Plant Resources Environmentalism in Rural Costa Rica Edited by Manuel Pardo-de-Santayana, Andrea Luis A. Vivanco Pieroni and Rajindra K. Puri Volume 4 Volume 15 Local Science vs. Global Science: Approaches Urban Pollution: Cultural Meanings, Social to Indigenous Knowledge in International Practices Development Edited by Eveline Dürr and Rivke Jaffe Edited by Paul Sillitoe Volume 16 Volume 5 Weathering the World: Recovery in the Wake of the Sustainability and Communities of Place Tsunami in a Tamil Fishing Village Edited by Carl A. Maida Frida Hastrup Volume 6 Volume 17 Modern Crises and Traditional Strategies: Local Environmental Anthropology Engaging Ecotopia: Ecological Knowledge in Island Southeast Asia Bioregionalism, Permaculture, and Ecovillages Edited by Roy Ellen Edited by Joshua Lockyer and James R. Veteto Volume 7 Volume 18 Traveling Cultures and Plants: The Ethnobiology Things Fall Apart? The Political Ecology of Forest and Ethnopharmacy of Human Migrations Governance in Southern Nigeria Edited by Andrea Pieroni and Ina Vandebroek Pauline von Hellermann Volume 8 Volume 19 Fishers And Scientists In Modern Turkey: The Sustainable Development: An Appraisal Focusing Management of Natural Resources, Knowledge and on the Gulf Region Identity on the Eastern Black Sea Coast Edited by Paul Sillitoe Ståle Knudsen Volume 20 Volume 9 Beyond the Lens of Conservation: Malagasy and Landscape : Concepts of Biotic Swiss Imaginations of One Another and Physical Space Eva Keller Edited by Leslie Main Johnson and Eugene Hunn Volume 21 Volume 10 Trees, Knots, and Outriggers: Environmental Landscape, Process and Power: Re-Evaluating Knowledge in the Northeast Kula Ring Traditional Environmental Knowledge Frederick H. Damon Edited by Serena Heckler Volume 11 Mobility and Migration In Indigenous Amazonia: Contemporary Ethnoecological Perspectives Edited by Miguel N. Alexiades Trees, Knots, and Outriggers

Environmental Knowledge in the Northeast Kula Ring

Frederick H. Damon

berghahn N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D www.berghahnbooks.com

First edition published in 2017 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com

©2017 Frederick H. Damon

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Damon, Frederick H.. author. Title: Trees, knots, and outriggers (Kaynen Muyuw) : environmental knowledge in the northeast Kula Ring / Frederick H. Damon. Other Titles: Kaynen Muyuw Description: First edition. | New York : Berghahn Books, [2016] | Series: Studies in environmental anthropology and ethnobiology ; volume 21 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016022585| ISBN 9781785332326 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781785332333 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Traditional ecological knowledge—Papua New Guinea— Woodlark Island. | Human ecology—Papua New Guinea—Woodlark Island. | Muyuw (Papua New Guinean people) | Ethnology—Papua New Guinea— Woodlark Island. Classification: LCC GN671.N5 D36 2016 | DDC 305.8009953—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022585

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78533-232-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-78533-320-0 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-78533-233-3 (ebook) To Grace, Nancy, and Kate

Contents

List of Figures, Graphs, Maps, and Tables viii Acknowledgments x

PART I. Among the Scientists: New Perspectives on the Massim Introduction. Changes and Last Chapters 3 Chapter 1. Return to the Garden: Gwed, Locating Intentions, and Interpretive Puzzles 36

PART II. Toward an Ethnography of Trees Chapter 2. The Trees: Classifi catory Forms, Landscape Beacons, and Basic Categories 81 Chapter 3. The Forests and Fire: Tasim, Inverted Landscapes, and Tree Meanings 121 Chapter 4. A Story of Calophyllum: From Ecological to Social Facts 180

PART III. Synthesizing Models Chapter 5. Vatul: A Life Form and a Form for Life 247 Chapter 6. Geometries of Motion: Trees and the Boats of the Eastern Kula Ring 296 References 353 Index 364 Figures, Graphs, Maps, and Tables

Figures 2.1. Tree Parts and Terms 114 3.1. Multivariate ENSO Index 148 4.1. Keel Design and Its Consequences 233 4.2. Wag/Bab Shape 234 5.1. Muyuw Fishing Net Structure 280 6.1. Kaynikw Structure 309

Graphs 1.1. pH vs. Fallow and Forest Type 70 1.2. P vs. Fallow and Forest Type 71 1.3. K vs. Fallow and Forest Type 72

Maps 0.1. The Voyage of 2002 9 1.1. Okaibom takulamwala 48 1.2. Extensive versus Intensive Resources Bases 50 2.1. Fractal Representation Of Base/Tip Contrasts 116

Tables 0.1. GPS Readings from Ole to Panamut; Panamut to Nasikwabw; and Nasikwabw to Waviay 10 1.1. 1995–96: Gwed [Rhus taitensis] Samples Sorted by Ascending ΔN 65 1.2. 1998 Gwed [Rhus] Harvest Experiment 65 1.3. Tabnayiyuw (“Tab.,” D. Papuanum ) Comparisons 67 1.4. Surface/Subsurface C&N Readings 68 Figures, Graphs, Maps, and Tables | ix

1.5. Code Key for Soil Types 69 1.6. pH and Fallow Forest Types 69 2.1. Muyuw Life Forms 89 2.2. Grouped Trees and Their Western Determinations 95 2.3. Grouped Trees and Their Western Determinations 96 2.4. Grouped Trees and Their Western Determinations 98 2.5. Grouped Trees and Their Western Determinations 99 2.6. Grouped Trees and Their Western Determinations 99 2.7. Grouped Trees and Their Western Determinations 101 2.8. Analysis of Variation of Tree Features 102 2.9. Grouped Trees and Their Western Determinations 105 2.10. Grouped Trees and Their Western Determinations 106 3.1. Wabunun Yam House 159 3.2. Kaulay, Central Muyuw, Yam House 160 3.3. Mwadau, Western Muyuw, Yam House 162 3.4. Iwa Yam House, Bweyma 163 3.5. Ritual Firewood Trees by Place 169 4.1. Muyuw/Western Identifi cations 190 4.2. Ayniyan/Aynikoy Comparison 211 4.3. Lavanay Anageg/Kemurua (2002) Measurements 230 5.1. Vines 251 5.2. Vine Names 257 5.3. Finger Names for String Figure Teaching 286 5.4. String Figure Moves 287 6.1. Lavanay Eyalyal Measurements 310 6.2. Talapal Measurements 310 6.3. Kaynik Measurements 311 6.4. Lavanay Nedin Measurements 313 6.5. Sail (Alit’)/Rudder (Kavavis) Dynamics 318 6.6. Lavanay Kavavis Dimensions 319 6.7. Star Courses (Kut) 348 Acknowledgments

As an analytical ethnography, this book combines anthropological tradi- tions with several of the earth sciences, botanical systematics, geochemis- try, ecology, and recent work in climatology concerning El Niño Southern Oscillation, ENSO. The work testifi es to the willingness of the University of Virginia to sponsor serious interdisciplinary research when its outcome is far in doubt. Support through an initial Dean’s Grant, a sequence of Summer Grants, and a fi nal grant from Arts, Humanities, and Social Sci- ences Research is greatly appreciated, as is a critical 2009 American Philo- sophical Society Franklin Research Grant that enabled a late exploration of the outrigger canoe form that, in the last analysis, carries this work. In the fi rst analysis, however, are a set of scientists who gave me the time and attention to learn from their endeavors. Many of these people are named in the text as my arguments unfurl. I note two to represent many others. One is H. Hank Shugart, a forest ecologist and ecological modeler, who, long before I sought him out, realized there needed to be more interaction among natural scientists and social and historical scien- tists/scholars if we are to make sense of and be engaged with our com- plex world. Shugart often talked with me about ecological models as I picked them up from his work and the historical ecologists who also play an enormous role in this book. We attended each other’s seminars and taught one course together. Everything I have published since 1998 shows his infl uence; this has also been a two-way street (see Shugart, 2014). The second scientist is Stephen A. Macko, the geochemist who tutored me in stable isotopes and helped me think through some of my data; our joint labors continue. My engagement with these two people, and what they represent, has been as taxing and as stimulating as any engagement with another culture can be. And as hoped, we have managed to send graduate and undergraduate students between our departments. During the research that resulted in this book, Roy Wagner was a con- tinuing presence; his bountiful enthusiasm for outrigger canoe technical- ities testifi es to his fertile mind. My teaching also never strayed far from issues addressed herein. That teaching also animated the research for and writing of this book. Two masters guided my way. One is Steve Lansing Acknowledgments | xi with his splendid contributions to Austronesian (Balinese) and ecological studies, Priests and Programmers (1991) and Perfect Order (2006). The less than perfect order in this book derives in part from the question I see Lan- sing as having defi ned: how do we describe the complex models inherent in many non-Western social systems? Lansing’s passage from Balinese temples to computer simulation helped me move from Kula Ring forests and fi elds to the ways by which outrigger canoes model a regional social system’s complexity. The second master is Anthony Wallace. His brilliant historical ethnographies of the nineteenth-century United States, Rockdale and St. Clair, profoundly and elegantly discuss interrelationships among a society’s technical and social forms. While teaching Wallace’s books and conducting the research reported here, “Materiality” and “Science and Technology Studies” became signifi cant subjects in anthropology and related disciplines. A contribution my effort makes to these endeavors partly comes by means of Wallace’s patient brilliance. An aspect of Wallace’s work leads to one attempt in this study. The sum- mation of a section of Rockdale and decade in the nineteenth century (1825– 35), “Thinking about Machinery,” describes the thought of what Wallace calls the “mechanician.” This refers to a category of people enmeshed in the early Industrial Revolution in the United States (and world); I have in- creasingly come to think he characterizes the thought found in Kula Ring, if not far beyond it. “The thinking of the mechanician,” Wallace writes, “in designing, building and repairing tools and machinery had to be primarily visual and tactile … and this set it apart from those intellectual traditions that depended upon language, whether spoken or written.” If Wallace has correctly typifi ed two orders of thought, then a problem in anthropology is that the anthropologist is a language-dependent person whereas many of the people he or she describes have been visual and tactile people. “The product of the mechanician’s thinking,” Wallace writes, “was a physical object, which virtually had to be seen to be understood; descriptions of machines, even in technical language, are notoriously ambiguous and ex- tremely diffi cult to write, even with the aid of drawings and models. … If one visualizes a piece of machinery, however, and wishes to communicate that vision to others, there is an immediate problem. Speech (and writing) will provide only a garbled and incomplete translation of the visual im- age. One must make the thing—or a model, or at the least a drawing—in order to ensure that one’s companion has approximately the same visual experience as oneself” (237–38). As I pursued trees and the things Kula Ring people did with them I be- came increasingly convinced that much of their understanding was visual and tactile. Late in my 1996 research I began to consider more seriously the pictures I was taking, then mostly of fl ora; as the years moved along and xii | Acknowledgments my boat investigations intensifi ed, increasingly these pictures were about what people turned their fl ora into, their outriggers. This passion deep- ened as my canoe advisers—Adrian Horridge, Geoffrey Irwin, Pierre- Yves Manguin, and Erik Pearthree—encouraged, advised, and suggested I was dealing with a unique and complex sailing tradition. Realizing how important these pictures were to the audiences I have been presenting this material to since 2000, in 2013 I decided that a photographic compo- nent needed to accompany this text. Through the University of Virginia’s renowned Sciences, Humanities, & Arts Network of Technological Ini- tiatives (SHANTI), Rafael Alvarado connected me to Renee Reighart, a digital scholarship and services librarian. Since the spring of 2013 we have assembled an online photographic essay to accompany this text. Orga- nized by chapters and their sections, as this work goes to press there are approximately three hundred captioned images meant to augment and extend this written account. These may be viewed at https://pages.shanti .virginia.edu/Trees_Knots__Outriggers/. More will be added to this study and additional photographic, online essays are planned. Beyond the University of Virginia’s context a number of individuals and institutions must be thanked. I begin with Maurice Godelier, who has served as my root to French Anthropology since he fi rst brought me to Paris in 1982. Leaving aside his infl uential writings, several times he has welcomed me to his village and sponsored sympathetic audiences for my intensely ethnographic presentations. He introduced me to André Iteanu. Defi ned in relation to Dumont’s work, Iteanu’s voice—one knowledge- able about wind and boats—backgrounds this study. Initial versions of chapters 5 and 6 were delivered in front of groups composed of people Iteanu assembled from the Dumont equip, ERASME. I hope the honor I received from being associated with that group is modestly repaid in what attends here. Long ago, also through Godelier, I met Pierre Lemonnier. But it was not until 2000 that we connected concerning my boat material, some incorporated in Lemonnier (2012), much more in this volume. Then I only knew that it was important, but not really how or how to go about pursu- ing it. Lemonnier’s gentle encouragement and critical friendship—along with his associates like Ludovic Coupaye—have been pivotal for fi nishing this book. On my ways to and from Papua New Guinea, Canberra and the Aus- tralian National University have been stopping-off points since the very beginning of this project in 1991. Part of this association was through my long-term personal and professional relationships to Chris Gregory and Mark Mosko. But increasingly ANU became for me the institutional center of the Pacifi c and Austronesian studies with which this book is aligned. The people I have been fortunate to meet and discuss my developing Acknowledgments | xiii material with—Michael Bourke, Shirley Campbell, James J. Fox, Bill Gam- mage, Robin Hide, Adrian Horridge, Andrew Pawley, Kathryn Robinson, Malcom Ross—are masters who kindly steered and encouraged this inter- loper. In time Fox’s Austronesian Project will be recognized as one of the great intellectual contributions of the late twentieth century, and this work is a modest contribution to it. I initiated this project in 1991 when I fi rst went to Taiwan and then Kun- ming in Yunnan Province, the intended place in China for the other half of my planned research. Ho Ts’ui-p’ing, then my student, now my friend, colleague, and adviser, was my introduction to things Chinese. And what an introduction it has been, if fi rst to Yunnan with its many likenesses to the Austronesian world, now to the scholarship of China in general and Fujian Province in particular. If in the Malinowskian tradition I look at China as if it was the Kula Ring, thanks to Ho Ts’ui-p’ing I reciprocate the perspective. And by the aid of the artists and scholars I met through her, I number among my associates Ken Dean, Stephan Feuchtwang, Da- vid Gibeault, Zhang Bin, and, far from the least, Wang Mingming. Wang Mingming and his legion of students have kindly brought another for- eigner into their midst, increasing our understanding not only of East and West, but the passage between East Asia and the Austronesian world. That infl uence leads into this work’s closing chapters. Ho Ts’ui-p’ing also introduced me to Susanne Küchler’s work on knots (2001) after my 2002 return to Muyuw. That enabled what now appears as chapter 5 in this book. Our conversations also brought me to Taiwan for part of a year in 2004, allowed me to complete chapter 2, and gave me a more sustained understanding of forests, patches, attentions to detail, and modeling pro- cedures—arguably great themes in the cultural systems that swirl across the Indo-Pacifi c. As my ties to China continued the concluding chapter in this book was fi rst drafted in Quanzhou in association with the Quanzhou Maritime Museum and its delightful staff. Muyuw, what some call Woodlark Island, is in Milne Bay Province in Papua New Guinea. Many provincial government offi cials, especially in Alotau, have said yes and given enthusiasm to this study. Standing for many of them is Mr. Titus Philemon, Governor of Milne Bay Province as this book goes to press and a politician whose name has been on the lips of Muyuw people for most of the present century. Some government person was always on Muyuw while I was there: among those that stand out and helped me the most are John Alesana and David Mitchell. Their support and friendship helped make this the study it is. Simon Bickler and I have been together on things pertaining to Muyuw since we fi rst met in 1991. We not only shared months on the island in 1995 and 1996, but have been engaged together over the island and its peoples xiv | Acknowledgments on a weekly if not daily basis since then. Some of this entailed a three-way conversation with archaeologist Roger Green; some of it is represented in the maps and charts Bickler contributed to this volume. With many thanks the conversation continues. The people of Muyuw island and I have now shared four years of our lives together. We are family. Nancy Coble Damon, my wife these long years, was with me for my original research on Muyuw and listened to much of the material presented here too frequently to tell. She brought her own rich life into my world of research, and, with our children, returned to the island with me in 1998. In 2009 my son, David, joined me for an important two months, effectively becoming a member of Wabunun—his observation that I was talking about the boat form that centers this work as if it was a mathematical expression defi nes a key contribution to this study. This book sums a complex twenty-fi ve year research period. Special thanks are due to Berghahn Books for taking on its challenge. In particular I thank Marian Berghahn, Duncan Ranslem, Jessica Murphy and Ryan Masteller. For their efforts this book is closer to the piece of literature I would like it to be. Ashley Carse also deserves thanks for a helpful reading of the Introduction and a useful comment about the book’s title. My immediate Muyuw hosts are now the grandchildren of the men and women who fi rst tutored me in their culture. One of those elders, Aisi, blessed my research when I returned in 1995 to say I was going to study trees—he knew how important the topic was and that neither I nor any other Kula Ring anthropologist had pursued it. His sons, especially Di- bolel, Ogis, and Amoen, are major sources for this book’s contribution to Pacifi c studies. Aisi brother’s children, fi rst Milel then Leban Gisawa, and their wives, have been seeing me in and out of the country since 1991. We debate the wisdom, or lack thereof, of mining, timbering, oil palm plan- tations, and traditional versus modern practices. All of us have laughed and cried together with life’s tragedies, and we shall continue to do so. Although I have never found it easy to leave my US home and to go to my home in Muyuw, whenever I leave there I marvel at the life these people have allowed me to share. Muyuw is the “basis” of my life. For this I pass profound thanks to its future. Part I Among the Scientists New Perspectives on the Massim

“Like all savages, the natives are suspicious of strangers.” C. M. Woodford*

*C. M. Woodford, A Naturalist among the Headhunters London: Philip George & Son P. 8. quoted in Damon (MS). Charles Morris Woodford was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; corresponding member of the Zoological Society; Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of Australia; and Fellow of the Linnæan Society of New South Wales. He visited the Solomon Islands three times in the 1880s.