This project involves collaborative research involving personnel from the Field museum in Chicago, the Papua New Guinea (PNG) National Museum, the Department of Anthropology at the University of PNG, and the Museum for Volkerkunde in Dresden, Germany. The researchers will study the extent and pattern of exchange relations in the West Sepik district of PNG, which have integrated local communities into larger human associations or "regional systems". The project will build on prior research based on a collection of artifacts at the Field museum. Using photographs of these artifacts, the researchers will describe the manufacture, use, cultural meaning and local socioeconomic significance of the area's material culture, will reconstruct historical patterns of manufacture and trade, and study the current changes in material culture. This project is important because the study of material culture in one small scale, tribal society can reveal general principles of the creation and maintenance of sociality among diverse communities. Although PNG is legendary for innumerable small cultures speaking different languages, they were all connected by trade systems, and this sort of research can reveal the principles which cross ethnic boundaries to relate diverse communities. These principles can then be used to understand cross-ethnic relations in other places in the world.
