scrutiny
p. 48 · Read in the full issue
PNG food crops under scrutiny
Roots of the Earth. Crops in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. By Paul Sillitoe.
When, about 12 years ago, I began collecting information on traditional foods in Papua New Guinea there was little in the way of comprehensive data, the most useful sources being
Clarke’s Place and People, Straatman’s unpublished ethnobotanical checklist, and Massal and Barrau’s Food Plants of the South Sea Islands.
Over recent years a good deal has been written about food plants in Melanesia. Ethnobo tany has attracted the scholar ship of anthropologists, pre historians and geographers; the botanical record has been im proved; agricultural extension workers and nutritionists have paid closer attention to traditio nal food plants, and my own Papua New Guinea cookbook has eventually found a pub lisher.
Sillitoe’s volume is the most recent of several substantial micro-studies of traditional cultivation among Papua New Guinea societies. It documents the case of the Wola people of the Southern Highlands Pro vince, who will be known to many from Sillitoe’s earlier account of exchange in Wola society, Give and Take (1979).
In his latest book Sillitoe’s aim “is to give a Wola-centric account of their crops: to de scribe how they see and classify them, how they cultivate them, how they think they grow, how they use them, and so on” (p. 1). More specifically it “explores the factors that condition and circumscribe the perceptions those socialised in alien and pre-literate cultural traditions have of natural phenomena” (p. xiii).
An introductory chapter in troduces Wola crops, country and culture; six chapters de scribe the various crops culti vated by the Wola (a larger listing of the region’s plant life is
planned), and five chapters dis cuss the crops in relation to concrete classification, their ab stract associations, gender, occurrence, and yields and con sumption. Five appendices list Pidgin and Wola terms and summarise survey data, and there is an abundance of fi gures, tables and plates.
The book, which the author himself describes as “Wola centric”, will appeal to a rather specialised readership, and even specialists are unlikely to regard it as bedtime reading. It does, however, provide a useful (though not exhaustive) guide to the identification of highlands crops and contains interesting comparative material for those concerned with traditional agricultural practices or with systems of classification of natu ral species (which is the au thor’s interest).
The book is published by the recently established UNSWP, “with help of a generous sub vention from the Publications Committee, La Trobe Univer sity”. It is a generally well produced volume, though con sidering the generous subven tion the price seems a little on
the high side.
R. J. May.
Books received
Mau: Samoa’s Struggle Against New Zealand Oppression By Michael J. Field. Published 1984 by A. H. & A. W. Reed Ltd., 68-74 Kingsford Smith Street, Wellington 3, New Zealand. ISBN 0 589 01492 7.
Price 5NZ19.95.
Factors Affecting Standards in Community Schools: A New Ireland Case Study. Educational Research Unit Report No. 46.
By Ephraim T. Apelis. Published 1984 by the Educational Research Unit, Uni versity of PNG, Box 320, University PO, NCD, Papua New Guinea. ISSN 0254 069 X. Price K 2.75.
In the Land of Strangers: A Century of European Contact with Tanna, 1774-1874.
By Ron Adams. Published 1984 by the Development Studies Centre, Australian National University. Distributed by ANU Press, PO Box 4, Canberra, Australia.
ISBN 0 86784 425 6. Price $12.00.
Melanesia: Beyond Diversity.
Volumes 1 & 2.
Edited by R. J. May and Hank Nelson.
Published 1982 by the Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, PO Box 4, Canberra, Austra lia. ISBN 0 86784 045 5. Price $lO per volume.
Timor: A People Betrayed.
By James Dunn. Published 1983 by The Jacaranda Press, 65 Park Road, Milton, Qld., 4064. ISBN 0 7016 1715 2. Price $15.95.