ARTIFACTS OF SEPIK CULTURE :
THE LAWRENCE ETHNOGRAPHIC COLLECTION
Text by Kathleen Barlow, Gustavus Adolphus University
Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin
Lawrence University's collection of masks, armbands, figures, drums, and other artifacts representing New Guinea ethnographic art came to campus in 1982 through the generosity of three alumni - G. Jack Gevaart, '55, Carol Golossey Gevaart, '58, and J. Russell Podzilni, '53. The objects, which are from an area known as the Sepik region, were part of a larger group of artifacts collected by the Center for International Cultural Exchange - a venture supported by residents of Wisconsin's Janesville-Beloit area, including the Gevaarts and Podzilni. Fifteen years ago, the center launched its collecting expeditions in collaboration with an Australian anthropologist and trader who had devoted most of his professional life to collecting, identifying, and appraising artwork from the South Pacific. With the opening of the Wriston Art Center last year, the university now is able to display the entire collection, which the Gevaarts and Podzilni donated to the anthropology department when the Center for International Cultural Exchange dissolved. Lawrence, along with other institutions such as the Smithsonian and Milwaukee Public Museum, is fortunate to have become beneficiary of such artifacts, which provide a valuable opportunity to gain insight into Sepik region's rich and varied culture.
The Context and Meaning of Art in the Sepik/ North Coast Region
This exhibition presents a variety of objects from a complex cultural region of northern Papua New Guinea. This area, here referred to as the Sepik/ North Coast region, is renowned for the profusion and vitality of its art.
Ginau of Darapap village, a senior man and expert carver, working on a carving for sale to tourists (Kathleen Barlow)
The art styles and aesthetic traditions of Sepik/ North Coast cultures are deeply embedded in religion, economics, politics, and most important, gender relationships. The artwork may be the result of several artists, of a virtuoso, or a novice. Though the meanings of the objects are diverse, the often convey important messages about local identity and spiritual power and may have been created in order to perform a ritual, to trade to outsiders, to use in daily activities, or currently, to sell to tourists. This exhibition presents all these types of objects.
The collection was acquired in 1975, the year the state of Papua New Guinea became independent from Australia, yet some pieces are mysterious representations from a much earlier time. Certainly, the artistic traditions expressed in all of the pieces have been evolving for thousands of years.
Men's house, Palumbei, with sacred plants and stone. (Kathleen Barlow)
Regional history
Located at the tip of the Southeast Asian archipelago, the island today called Papua New Guinea has survived successive migrations of Asia, Australia, and the Pacific throughout the past 35,000 years. Language distribution, art styles, and other aspects of material culture provide hints of these distant origins. For example, some scholars have traced art motifs is a female figure with two animal or spirit “familiars” on either side of her. Another is the boat-shaped house of coastal Asia and Indonesia, which is typical of men’s ceremonial houses throughout North Coast region of Papua New Guinea. The largest distinct cultural tradition is that of Austronesian groups, which include all of Polynesia. Archaeological sites indicate continuities in the migrations since the earliest times, the evidence of which is called the Lapita culture. Even today, among Austronesian-speaking peoples throughout the Pacific, carving motifs and other designs are similar to those found on Lapita pottery. More varied cultural traditions, languages, and material culture among non-Austronesian groups throughout Papua New Guinea represent congeries of other linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
Pacific region and Sepik region (Maps by Michelle Richeson)
The societies of the Sepik/ North Coast region seem to be puzzling admixtures of Austronesian and non-Austronesian groups, suggesting a historical process marked by frequent change in the demographic and economic success, linguistic allegiance, and political fortunes of these small-scale societies. Combined archaeological evidence, oral histories, and myths of origin from throughout the region confirm such a history.
Although European explorers and merchants have visited the coastal regions since the 17th century, plantation settlement and missionization did not occur until the lat 19th century. The Sepik/ North Coast region was initially a German colony and the site of early efforts to establish coconut plantations. Catholic and Lutheran missionaries resided for many years in this region, documenting local traditions, and exploring much traditional art. Following World War I the region became, along with the southeastern (Papuan) portion of the island, an Australian protectorate. The British and German colonies were thus united into what now is Papua New Guinea. Local warfare was pacified by the early 1930s. The island now is divided into Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya, formerly a Dutch colony and now part of Indonesia.
During World War II, the Sepik River basin, North Coast, and offshore islands of Papua New Guinea were the scene of Japanese occupation and subsequent bombing by American and Australian forces. Despite major disruption and relocation of people during this period, most people have since accepted Western goods, educational opportunities, and medical assistance. These changes, however, have been incorporated as additional factors in local systems of prestige and opportunity rather than as primary goals that replace traditional culture and values.
Cultural Diversity and Integration
The cultural diversity of the Sepik/ North Coast region reflects both its geographic complexity and tumultuous history. The region is comprised of two major river systems (the Sepik and the Ramu), coastal mountain ranges (Prince Alexander and Toicelli), a rocky coastline interspersed with mangrove lakes, and offshore islands with occasionally active volcanoes. The Sepik, some 600 miles long, is a wide meandering river that floods annually and sometimes alters its course. At the mouth of the river, continuous infilling has produced “new” land where there once was an inland sea.
In this varied terrain, no social groups are economically or culturally self-sufficient. Instead, there are sub-regions with complementary resources and shared historical relations: Ramu, Lower Sepik, and North Coast; Middle Sepik and its tributaries; Upper Sepik; and the Sepik Hills. Within each sub-region, local groups specialize in subsistence products- fish, pigs, garden produce, sago starch, and tubers- which often are exchanged for manufactured goods- baskets, canoes, plates, and pottery. Local deficits are overcome by trade alliances. Prior to pacification, trade of essential foodstuffs sometimes occurred between groups that were otherwise at war, especially between fishing and sago-producing groups. Such trade was conducted without face-to-face contact by leaving goods at a neutral meeting place.
In other cases, trade relationships were elaborated far beyond basic necessities and were conducted primarily through gift-giving and hospitality. Today, the entire region participates in a far-flung network of exchange that ultimately enables peoples living far inland (Upper Sepik and Sepik Hills) to negotiate marriage payments in terms of coastal items such as Tridacna and Turbo shells, which coastal and island peoples design costumes replete with bird of paradise plumes from the mountainous interior. Trade partners who attend a local celebration, such as initiation or end-of-mourning ceremonies, sometimes receive gifts of art such as a named carving motif or a canoe prow design as a parting gift. This establishes a debt that the partner must fulfill on some future occasion.
Procession, ca. 1910 (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, negative no. 33515)
The Social Context of Art
Regional similarities in the production and communicative purposes of art reflect cultural features of the region as a whole. Certain social forms and practices are extremely widespread, though there is a great divergence in local emphases and interpretations. For example, in most of the region, social organization is based on a dual division (moiety) system within each village. Each moiety owes specific ritual services to the other, such as initiating each other’s youth into adult status and performing funerary and mourning obligations when someone dies. These ceremonies, along with political decision-making and conflict settlement, are accomplished through the aegis of the men’s ceremonial house, a nodal point for the religious, political, and artistic activities in each society.
Spirit House, ca. 1910 (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, negative no. 111248-11)
The work and ritual prerogatives of men and women vary greatly among the regions, but a general belief in the complementarily of men and women prevails. Women’s ability to nurture and reproduce are imitated by men in secret ceremonial societies, and certain psychological states are though to pollute men and women. In mundane life, men and women often follow strict separation, in work, and living spaces. The innermost mysteries of the men’s secret societies, however, attest to the importance, and necessity of each gender to the other, and the art associated with these societies replete with references to male and female powers.
In these subsistence economies, display of an abundance of food is a convincing and important gesture of power. Feasting is a competitive activity in which individuals, groups, and trade partners strive to build reputations and increase their prestige by presenting rivals with masses of foodstuffs and food on ceremonial occasions. Plates and bowls used for storage and presentation of ceremonial foods are often decorated with symbols of fertility and ancestral power. Among the latmul, the gorgeous and fearsome hooks used for hanging baskets of food and other valuables from house rafters convey the combined message of substantial resources and power.
Art objects, styles, and motifs play an important role in the constant negotiation of group identity, from the level of the family and clan to allied villages and far-flung trade relationships. Original ancestors and ancestresses, as well as the mythic heroism of gods, are thought to have produced the local landscape and its plants and animals. Many elements of design are condensed references to myth and local history. The faces found on Aibom pots are one example. The pig, bush spirit, and human face are forms taken by the spirit woman and her brothers who originally supplied the Aibom with the knowledge of how to make pottery. Motifs and objects are often named and owned, sometimes by individuals, but more often by descent groups. Thus, the art is an expression of the history and identity of groups and persons.
Mask worn for ceremony (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, negative no. 33543)
As an expression of the belief, powers, and traditions of a people, the art includes a rich context of costume, dance, and music. Many forms involve perishable decorations of feathers, flowers, and other plant materials. These are added to masks and figures during ritual performances, often increasing the resemblance between the objects and people. Performers also dress in ceremonial decorations and shell wealth, as did mythical ancestors, ancestoresses, warriors, and heroes. When presented in a museum exhibit, the pieces are stripped of their dynamic and animating qualities and appear as basic forms. Throughout the Sepik, a ritual performance usually begins at dusk as slit-gongs announce the event to neighboring communities. Such traditional productions require fasting, chastity, and seclusion from women so that the drums produce good tone. Tobacco is used to gain contact with spiritual powers. The spirits, represented in masked figures and costumes, are meant to be seen in the like of torches and firelight, dancing to the accompaniment of booming slit-gongs and resonant hand-drums. Their voices are heard in the music of flutes and bull roarers, while their escapades and powers are chronicled in song cycles and dramatic dances. Dancing and feasting continues throughout the cool night until dawn. Often the dancers rest for the most of the day and the community resumes its celebrations in the later afternoon. Such an event lasts until the stamina of the performers and the resources of the sponsors are depleted- until everyone has had all he or she desires.
Men drumming the announcement of a ceremony (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, negative no. 33394)
The right to make or sponsor the creation of an object expresses power and prerogatives in social life. Many aspects of artistic production, such as carving and the substances used in painting, put the artist in contact with the spiritual powers of ancestors. Because access to the powers of growth, sustenance, and reproduction are often at stake in the creation of objects for ritual purposes, artists are required to take special precautions with respect to food and sexuality. Carvers, potters, weavers, and painters are often enjoined to avoid certain foods and to remain chaste prior to beginning and during their work.
Dancers at men's initiation ceremony, Karau village (Kathleen Barlow)
Objects made for sale are not meant to communicate such power, and artists are not required to observe traditional taboos. Ritually produced objects are frequently sold to tourists and art dealers, but when removed from their ritual contexts and/or desacralized by transferring their spirit identity or power to another figure, they become simply mundane objects. A further technique for differentiating commercial art from works intended for ritual use is to combine ritual forms in unconventional ways or to “confound” the image by adding non-traditional elements to the design. Buyers often have encouraged the latter tendency by mistaking elaborateness for authentic detail. Since the 1970s, there has been a trend toward commercial production that is characterized by these stylistic changes.
Pottery and domestic equipment Bowls Adornment Woven Animals
Hook Figures Spirit Figures Masks Instruments