Culture of Stone: Sacred and Profane Uses of Stone Among the Dani

Front Cover
Texas A&M University Press, 1999 - Science - 331 pages
When O. W. "Bud" Hampton made his first visit to the peoples in remote parts of the Highlands of Irian Jaya in 1982 and 1983, he found that their ancient stone-based technologies and culture remained virtually intact. During repeated and extended visits over twelve years, Hampton had unparalleled and irreproducible opportunity to observe the development, use, and cultural meaning of stone tool assemblages in their traditional contexts.

In this unique study, Hampton describes the complete cultural inventory of both secular and sacred stones, ranging from utilitarian stone tools and profane symbolic stones through symbolic spirit stones, power stones with multiple functions, and medicinal power stone tools, as they were being used in the culture of this long-isolated people. Hampton portrays the complete cycle of quarrying, manufacture, trade, and uses of the stones. Specific archaeological questions are addressed in the context of a culture that provides the answers: What stimulates production? How are tool and symbolic stones manufactured? What is the role of women in quarrying and production? What kinds of trade mechanisms are at work? Are the distributions of stone tool types reliable language and cultural boundary markers? How are sacred stones created and what are their uses? The answers contain rosetta stones of information for worldwide application.

Hampton examines the complexities of the Highlanders' unseen spirit world and its symbiotic relationship with the world of the seen. The dual worship of ancestor spirits and the sun within the same belief system is described, with all of the attendant material props.

This extensively illustrated, carefully documented, holistic ethnography presents a detailed study of rarely observed behavior associated with traditional stone tools and sacred objects practiced by living people within their integrated society. Archaeologists, anthropologists, other scholars, as well as inquisitive general readers will find Culture of Stone: Sacred and Profane Uses of Stone among the Dani a valuable contribution not only to the ethnography of the New Guinea highlands but to archaeology and anthropology in general.
 

Contents

Setting the Stage Evolutionary Cultural and Environmental Contexts
3
From Foraging to Horticulture and the Neolithic
4
Neolithic Defined and the Rest of the World
6
The People
8
Birth to Death
17
Stone Tools and Profane Uses
51
Nomenclature
53
Methods of Determining Rock Lithologies
55
Integrated Operation and What Prompts Production
235
Uses of Quarry Sites in Wano Territory by Others than Wano
237
Tagime Quarries
241
Geologic Setting
243
Kinds of Stone Goods Produced and Their Classification
244
Stimulation of Production and Distribution of Product
249
LangdaSela Quarries and Sources of Opportunity
251
Geologic Setting
252

Grand Valley and West
59
Yali and East
82
Stationary Grinding Slabs and Mobile Hand Stones
93
Symbolic Stones and the Sociopolitical Framework in Which They Move
99
Sociopolitical Organization
100
Profane DisplayExchange Stones
104
Sacred Symbolic Stones and Empowered Stone Tools
125
Ownership of the Stones
127
Both Profane and Sacred Space
128
Spirits within Sacred Space
160
The Ganekhe Hakasin Ceremony
161
Supernaturally Powered Objects for Social Uses
185
Miscellaneous Sacred Stones in the Yali and East Region
215
Yeineri Quarries
221
The Wano People
224
Kinds of Stone Goods Produced and Their Classification
225
The Manufacturing Process
226
Quarry Ownership
227
Quarry Sites within the System
228
The SevenStep Manufacturing Process
257
Trade
275
The Traders
277
Trade Goods
279
ValueSetting
282
Movement of Goods
283
Concluding Comments
291
Relationship of the Highlanders Seen and Unseen Worlds
292
Quarrying and Manufacturing
297
Trade and Exchange
300
Creation and Uses of Sacred Symbolic Stones and Sacred Stone Tools
301
Cultural Flow of Stones from the Profane to the Sacred
305
Areal Distribution of Stone Tools and Symbolic Stones
306
Why No Pottery Chiefs or a Civilization?
307
Variances of ReligioMedical Kits and Power Stones
309
References
313
Index
321
Copyright

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Page xiii - The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be 'Voluntarily
Page xvii - translating' the static, material stone tools found on an archaeological site into the vibrant life of a group of people who in fact left them there

About the author (1999)

Bud Hampton, Adjoint Curator Anthropology, University of Colorado Museum, Boulder, holds five degrees with multiple honors, including a doctorate of anthropology from Texas A&M University and a master's in geology from the University of Colorado. After some thirty years of accumulated experience with diverse indigenous people in remote areas on three continents, Bud has published five anthropological-archaeological articles.