The thrill of the line, the string, and the frond, or why the Abelam are a non-cloth culture.

The thrill of the line, the string, and the frond, or why the Abelam are a non-cloth culture. INTRODUCTIONThis paper is an attempt to demonstrate that in the Pacific regiontwo different cultural traditions exist, each of them based on adistinct system of aesthetic values. Both systems of aesthetic valuesdisplay features that are fundamentally in opposition to each other.These two different cultural traditions are cloth vs. non-clothcultures. Each of them has a more or less clearly defined geographicalexpansion although occasionally they also overlap regionally.Only after having experienced textile producing cultures (inIndonesia) using cloth with its properties as a soft and pliable planein what may be called 'wrap art' (see Hauser-Schaublin1992:171-176) did I realize how different the aesthetic values expressedin specific artistic principles of the Abelam (East Sepik Coordinates: East Sepik (Tok Pisin: Is Sepik) is a province in Papua New Guinea. Its capital is Wewak. Province,Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea(păp`ə, –y ) as well as of many other New Guinea New Guinea(gĭn`ē), island, c.342,000 sq mi (885,780 sq km), SW Pacific, N of Australia; the world's second largest island after Greenland. cultures are.These cultures which prefer open-work composites I shall call non-clothcultures.In the first part of this paper, I shall outline the characteristicsof 'wrap art' and briefly deal with cloth-cultures withinOceania. I am seeking the possible reasons for two basically differentcultural traditions to exist with a specific 'positive' vs.'negative' attitude towards cloth.In the second part, I then turn to New Guinea, specifically to theAbelam and examine the distinguishing features of their aesthetics(1). Ishall describe and discuss Abelam art as a typical non-textile culture.As I hope to be able to demonstrate, their main visual art is based onwhat might be called 'anti-cloth' principles. Strathern hasalready pointed out that among the Hageners in the New Guinea Highlands The New Guinea Highlands, also known as the Central Range or Central Cordillera, are a chain of mountain ranges and intermountain valleys on the island of New Guinea which run generally east-west the length of the island. 'decorations are not costumes, sets of clothing to be donned inentirety, but assemblages painstakingly arranged and rearranged for eachmajor event' (1979: 245). Abelam art consists in many respects of'assemblages' as well; even apparently single pieces of artlike a sago spathe painting or netbags are constructed in a similar wayby using individual elements as constituents to create a complex pieceof art. Therefore, I shall argue that in Abelam art and aesthetics theline, the strip, the string, and fronds are conceived as the basicconstituents of designs. All patterns are perceived from the perspectiveof the line, or 'visual open-work', rather than from that ofthe homogeneous plane so abundantly displayed and represented in cloth.Moreover, I shall demonstrate that the material used for the productionof polychrome pol��y��chrome?adj.1. Having many or various colors; polychromatic.2. Made or decorated in many or various colors: polychrome tiles.n. artefacts in the context of the ceremonial house and itsrituals is chosen according to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. its explicit non-cloth properties: thatof solidity so��lid��i��ty?n.1. The condition or property of being solid.2. Soundness of mind, moral character, or finances.Noun 1. and rigidity, sago spathe (Pidgin pidgin(pĭj`ən), a lingua franca that is not the mother tongue of anyone using it and that has a simplified grammar and a restricted, often polyglot vocabulary. panggal) plaitings andwood being the preferred materials. Additionally, ephemeral elementsoriginating from the Abelam's nearby as well as farther environment(like large varieties of leaves, flowers, fronds, and plumes) constitutea further important characteristic not only of Abelam art but of manyother New Guinean cultures as well. Kocher Schmid has already drawnattention to the Yopno's attitudes towards plant material and theaesthetic qualities attributed to it when used in body ornaments(2) andin other contexts.Based on these 'anti-cloth' principles, the Abelam havedeveloped their specific art. This does not make use of the propertyalmost universally assigned to cloth, its softness, fragility (Schneiderand Weiner 1989: 2) and its ability to be draped and wound aroundbodies, statues, pillars, houses, trees, stones and animals. Thesecharacteristics of a material traditionally unknown to the Abelam haveno place in the repertoire of their aesthetic values. As I shall setforth, this is one of the reasons why textiles have not become fullyintegrated into Abelam art but are disregarded. I would suggest that thefundamental principles briefly outlined so far even determine the waythe Abelam deal with rituals and how they present secrets, mainly thematerial aspects of spirits and ancestors.In many or even in most cloth-producing cultures, textiles are usedin rituals to create ancestors (Feeley-Harnick 1991) or gods (Valeri1985: 300-302; Hauser-Schaublin 1992: 195-198, Hendry 1993) byperforming wrap art, the art of concealing and revealing. Accordingly,the Abelam apply similar ideas of disguising and revealing with theirspecific non-cloth means. However, Abelam women do produce a kind ofcloth: beautiful net bags. But when used in men's ritual contexts,they are stripped of their soft quality and become stiff, assimilated tothe rigid material otherwise given preference.WRAP ART AND THE ART OF CONCEALING AND REVEALINGAlmost without exception, cultures producing woven textiles or othercloth (such as bark cloth bark cloth,primitive fabric made in tropical and subtropical countries from the soft inner bark of certain trees. It has been made and used in parts of Africa and India, the Malay Peninsula, Samoa, the Hawaiian Islands, and the Fiji Islands and perhaps reached its , finely plaited plait?n.1. A braid, especially of hair.2. A pleat.tr.v. plait��ed, plait��ing, plaits1. To braid.2. To pleat.3. To make by braiding. mats) have used the symbolicpotentialities of cloth in its material properties as well as cloth asan essential agent in social and political contexts. Schneider andWeiner (1989: 3) mention four domains in which people use cloth 'toconsolidate social relations and to mobilize political power': 1.cloth manufacture itself and the ritual and discourse that surrounds it,'cloth as a convincing analogy for the regenerative anddegenerative processes of life, and as a great connector of their pastand the progeny PROGENY - 1961. Report generator for UNIVAX SS90. who constitutes their future'. 2. gift-giving andexchange. Cloth used as a binding tie between two kinship groups, ordifferent generations. 3. in ceremonies of investiture investiture,in feudalism, ceremony by which an overlord transferred a fief to a vassal or by which, in ecclesiastical law, an elected cleric received the pastoral ring and staff (the symbols of spiritual office) signifying the transfer of the office. and rulershipcloth may transmit the authority of earlier possessors of the sanctityof past traditions. 4. manipulations of cloth as clothing, the use ofdress and adornment to reveal or conceal identities and values. Thefirst three points can be easily applied to other items or goods besidestextiles and they will be duly discussed in the context of themanufacture and use of net bags and shellrings with which the former arecontrasted not only from the point of view of material properties butalso of meaning. But the last point Schneider and Weiner mention, themanipulations of cloth as clothing as a means of concealing andrevealing refers directly to questions which prompted this article: howdo cultures where textiles are virtually absent deal with these almostuniversal concerns?Textiles are one of the most important means used in the dramaturgy dram��a��tur��gy?n.The art of the theater, especially the writing of plays.drama��tur of rituals, to transform the common into something else, the unknown andunknowable un��know��a��ble?adj.Impossible to know, especially being beyond the range of human experience or understanding: the unknowable mysteries of life. , to make visible spiritual processes and the power conferredonto initiates or ritual specialists (Valeri 1985; Linnekin 1992: 13-14,44-46; Feeley-Harnick 1989). 'Indeed, the act of removing theobject from the sight, of making it invisible' writes Valeri (1985:300) regarding the wrapping of plants and statues in Hawaiian templerituals,favours the implantation of the belief in the god's invisiblepresence because it creates the experience of a passage from theconcrete reality to an invisible one, from a thing of perception to athing of mind, and therefore from an individual object to a generalconcept. In other words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke"put differently , wrapping has become a sign of consecrationbecause it reproduces the process by which the mind reaches the ideas ofthe god.This 'transformative function of the cloth' (Valeri 1985:301) and the process it evokes are not only applied to'objects' but to human beings in general, especially to humanmanifestations of gods and ancestors as well as to ritual specialists.Apart from the question of what becomes transformed by revealing andconcealing there is also the question of when this is enacted, not onlyin the sense of what kind of rituals in general but also what kind ofboundaries are created between different temporalities. As Hendry hassuggested for Japan (1993: 138) 'the temporal wrapping ... is to befound in the way events are separated off from the time surrounding themby quite marked beginnings and endings. This is true of a wide varietyof events, from mundane, everyday occurrences to the grandestceremony.' As the wrapping (including all kinds of materials likepaper, straw etc.) is 'a most pervasive part of Japaneselife', she calls it 'a cultural design' (1993: 171-172).In many Southeast Asian cultures, wrapping with textiles is a'cultural design', too, perhaps not in this elaborate andhighly complex manner which, as Hendry has demonstrated, exists in alldomains of Japanese culture. Rather, in insular insular/in��su��lar/ (-sdbobr-ler) pertaining to the insula or to an island, as the islands of Langerhans. in��su��laradj.Of or being an isolated tissue or island of tissue. Southeast Asia, textilesare the most powerful material used for temporal wrappings for and inrituals (Hauser-Schaublin 1992, Hinzler 1993). At times textiles are thesacred heirlooms themselves and are therefore per se imbued with power.At other times it is the actual act of wrapping which confers power onwhat is wrapped, on the person who performs it as well as on those whowitness it (Weiner 1989: 52-54).WRAPPING IN OCEANIAWithin the Indo-Pacific region, wrapping by means of cloth as a'cultural design' is not restricted to Southeast Asia butextends right into Oceania, in fact throughout Polynesia to EasterIsland Easter Island,Span. Isla de Pascua, Polynesian Rapa Nui, remote island (1992 pop. 2,770), 66 sq mi (171 sq km), in the South Pacific, c.2,200 mi (3,540 km) W of Chile, to which it belongs. but only peripherally into Melanesia. Typically enough, LakeSentani and Humboldt Bay Humboldt Bay:see Jayapura, Indonesia. (Western New Guinea “West Papua” redirects here. For the Indonesian province with the same name, see West Papua (province).Western New Guinea is the Indonesian western half of the island of New Guinea and consists of two provinces, Papua and West Papua. ) where Austronesian as wellas Non-Austronesian groups are living, seem to represent one of only afew exceptions, due to historical conditions: relations with textileproducing cultures of Eastern Indonesia have obviously existed sinceprehistoric times (as Dong Son Dong Son is the name of a number of towns and villages in Vietnam. Tinh Tien Giang > Dong Son Tinh Thanh Hoa > Dong Son Tinh Ha Bac > Dong Son Tinh Quang Nam-Da Nang > Dong Son Tinh An Giang > Ap Dong Son See also finds in Western New Guinea indicate,Bernet Kempers 1988: 291). In the western tip of New Guinea, in theBird's Head peninsula, ikat-cloth from Eastern Indonesia wasimported, already in precolonial pre��co��lo��ni��alor pre-co��lo��ni��al ?adj.Of, relating to, or being the period of time before colonization of a region or territory. times; there they formed what is calledthe kain timur complex (Miedema 1986). According to the same authorthese highly valued textiles constituted locally two different classes1) sacred heirlooms kept individually and displayed in cults only and 2)so-called 'wandering cloth' used in exchange and traderelations. These relations have, as far as we know, never included theLake Sentani and the Humboldt Bay; nevertheless they seem to haveinfluenced indirectly the way these cultures deal with cloth. There, aswell as in the Bird's Head area and in most of Polynesia, no woventextiles as in insular Southeast Asia were manufactured but, instead,bark cloth. This material was not only produced (and decorated) aspieces of cloth for use as clothing in everyday life, but also ashangings and wrappings to mark ritual and sacred places (Hoogerbrugge1993). In Polynesia, the material traditionally used for temporarywrapping changed in the course of colonisation. In former, pre-colonialtimes, bark cloth and finely plaited mats were used. Nowadays,industrially made imported cloth has, at least partially replaced these,especially in Eastern Polynesia, and to a lesser extent in WesternPolynesia (Kooijman 1973: 110, Teilhet-Fisk 1992: 45). There, any numberof different qualities of tapa were manufactured with differenttechniques of ornamentation ornamentationIn music, the addition of notes for expressive and aesthetic purposes. For example, a long note may be ornamented by repetition or by alternation with a neighboring note (“trill”); a skip to a nonadjacent note can be filled in with the intervening thus resulting in different patterns. InHawaii and Tahiti there obviously existed a hierarchically organizedclassification of different types of cloth, colours and patterns(Kooijman 1973: 101-102). In Hawaii, where different categories of clothwere used as badges of social hierarchy Social hierarchyA fundamental aspect of social organization that is established by fighting or display behavior and results in a ranking of the animals in a group. as well, the most highly prizedand the most sacred were the famous feather caps and cloaks, theprivilege of chiefs (Kaeppler 1979 and 1985).(3) In some otherPolynesian cultures, fine mats were used instead of tapa or combinedwith it for similar purposes.'Wrapping' in bark cloth, or in fine mats ... is a basicelement in the ritual system throughout the area which extends from Vitito Samoa-Tonga, and indeed beyond in central and east Polynesia -wherever, one could say, suitable textiles are produced' Gellwrites (1993: 88) in his book on tattooing where he also discusses therelationship between (temporary) wrapping in bark cloth and(permanently) 'wrapping' the skin by tattooing.Unfortunately, on mainland New Guinea no systematic comparative studyon bark cloth has been carried out so far(4). While the art of wrappingand unwrapping by means of a long web of soft, pliant cloth is sometimeseven enacted as a kind of ritual performance m Polynesia, a comparableuse is almost absent in New Guinea societies. Similarly, in Polynesiatattooing and the way it 'clothes' the skin differssignificantly from tattooing on mainland New Guinea. Gell has pointedout that there is a functional equivalence between wrapping the body in'swathes of bark-cloth' and 'protective tattooing':...bark-cloth and tattooing might seem to be functionally equivalent;the Vitian warrior is encased en��case?tr.v. en��cased, en��cas��ing, en��cas��esTo enclose in or as if in a case.en��casement n. in swathes of bark-cloth, his Samoanequivalent is marked by protective tattoing. But tattooing and wrappingare also mutually exclusive Adj. 1. mutually exclusive - unable to be both true at the same timecontradictoryincompatible - not compatible; "incompatible personalities"; "incompatible colors" , to the extent that if the body is wrappedit cannot ... be tattooed (1993:89).Gell's aim is to investigate 'the differences betweenvarious Polynesian societies (plus Fiji) and ... correlate[s] these withdifferences in body art' (1993: 6). In his concluding chapter, herelates this correlation between tattooing and 'the differentregimes of social reproduction' (1993: 289), in its broadest sense,to different types of Polynesian socio-political systems.(5) He explainsthe absence of tattooing in some Polynesian societies mainly in terms of'the disappearance' and 'lost arts' (p. 297). At thesame time, he relates it to sociological factors, mainly 'to thecontraction of social horizons, the diminution of social distances, andin general to the collapse of that degree of difference and anonymitywithout which tattooing cannot display its person-enhancingproperties' (p. 298).A similarity in use and meaning of tapa and tattooing as well as inthe social conditions of their existence, perhaps even an analogybetween both of them, cannot be a priori a prioriIn epistemology, knowledge that is independent of all particular experiences, as opposed to a posteriori (or empirical) knowledge, which derives from experience. denied; both of them areembedded in similar ways in the context and character of Polynesiansocieties. If Gell's arguments are taken beyond Polynesia andapplied for comparative reasons to New Guinea societies, it does notcome as a surprise to find that extensive tattooing is almost absent inthe societies of mainland New Guinea where the social organisation Noun 1. social organisation - the people in a society considered as a system organized by a characteristic pattern of relationships; "the social organization of England and America is very different"; "sociologists have studied the changing structure of the family" significantly differs from that of Polynesia.(6) Instead of tattooing,New Guinea tends to practice scarification scarification/scar��i��fi��ca��tion/ (skar?i-fi-ka��shun) production in the skin of many small superficial scratches or punctures, as for introduction of vaccine. scar��i��fi��ca��tionn. ; this points in a differentdirection and is mostly associated with rituals of the life cycle andmembership of social groups based primarily on gender and age.Regarding bark cloth, a completely different situation from the onein Polynesia (as well as from that in Indonesia) exists in Melanesia butespecially on mainland New Guinea. As far as I can gather from thesparse material published, the production of tapa is known to many NewGuinea cultures but rarely is it made into elaborate pieces of clothcomparable to those produced in Polynesia. Furthermore, rarely is itused as clothing per se(7) with distinguishing characteristics in thecontext of social relations as it is in Polynesia (i.e. specificcategories of tapa according to the wearer's social standing). Ifbark cloth is used as clothing either in everyday life or in rituals,the material is mostly stiff and covers the body rather like a hull or ashell.(8) Thus, the properties and values attributed to tapa seem to becompletely different too.BARK CLOTH IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVEHistorical reasons appear to be behind the regular distribution oftapa in Polynesia. As Kooijman (1972) has demonstrated, there isevidence of homology homology(hōmŏl`əjē), in biology, the correspondence between structures of different species that is attributable to their evolutionary descent from a common ancestor. in the techniques and patterns used in themanufacture of bark-cloth in Eastern Indonesia as well as in those ofPolynesia. This can be explained in terms of a common Austronesianheritage. Moreover, the raw material for the finest and most highlyvalued cloth in Polynesia usually stems from the paper mulberry treewhich was not indigenous to the Pacific. The paper mulberry tree musthave been brought to the Pacific from Southeast Asia by Austronesiansettlers (Kooijman 1972: 1). In New Guinea often other plants such ashibiscus, ficus sp., gnetum gnemon Noun 1. Gnetum gnemon - small tropical tree with tiered branches and divaricate branchlets having broad glossy dark green leaves; exploited for its edible young leaves and seeds that provide a fine flourgnetum , (see Kocher Schmid 1991: 150-151)were used generally resulting in a coarser cloth.From yet another angle there is support for the hypothesis that thebark cloth traditions of the non-Austronesian speaking groups ofmainland New Guinea belong to a different tradition from the ones ofPolynesia. Green (1979) has demonstrated a close relationship betweenLapita pottery, tattooing and bark cloth production as far as technologyand motifs are concerned. He proposes that in the tattoos and bark clothof post-Lapita Polynesia and Island Melanesia a Lapita (i.e.'Austronesian') heritage can be discerned.From the point of view of the social division of labour as well,there exists a significant difference from polynesia: in those NewGuinean cultures where detailed information on the manufacture of tapa(see Blackwood 1950, Lemonnier 1984, Sillitoe 1988, Kocher Schmid 1991)is available, it can be shown that this is often carried out by men oralternately by men and women(9) while in Polynesia it is carried out bywomen.In her outstanding book on string bags (called bilum in MelanesianPidgin) in New Guinea, MacKenzie has published a map with thedistribution of the bilum in Papua New Guinea. The map (1991: 3) revealsthat, with only few exceptions, mainland New Guinea cultures, most ofthem being Non-Austronesian speakers, are what MacKenzie calls'bilum dependent cultures'. In some areas (like the hinterlandof Lae and Port Moresby Port Moresby(môrz`bē), town (1990 pop. 193,242), capital of Papua New Guinea, on New Guinea island and on the Gulf of Papua. Rubber, gold, and copra are exported. Port Moresby was founded by Capt. John Moresby, who landed there in 1873. as well as Milne Bay Milne BayInlet of the southwestern South Pacific Ocean, Papua New Guinea. Located at the southeastern end of the island of New Guinea, the bay is 30 mi (50 km) long and 6–8 mi (10–13 km) wide. , i.e. areas whereAustronesian as well as Non-Austronesian speaking groups are living) thelooping technology has been (recently?) introduced. On the North Coastbetween Vanimo and Aitape, along the Madang Coast, in Southern NewGuinea and the Massim area, there are no 'bilum dependentcultures'. MacKenzie proves that most of these latter areas areinhabited by Austronesian speakers and concludes 'that thedistribution of looping technology is concomitant with the distributionof basic language stocks' (1991: 3). She states that the coastal'Austronesian speaking people do appear to have been fullyconversant CONVERSANT. One who is in the habit of being in a particular place, is said to be conversant there. Barnes, 162. with knotted looping techniques (used for fishing and huntingnets) ...'. She stresses the fact that the quality of this fabricis very different from the interconnected looping used to make bilum. Itwould be interesting to have a similar comparative study of bark clothproducing cultures in New Guinea and their geographical distribution the natural arrangements of animals and plants in particular regions or districts.See under Distribution.See also: Distribution Geographic . Ianticipate that, in contrast to the mostly non-Austronesian languagespeaking bilum producers,(10) bark cloth is manufactured and used assoft and foldable fabric mainly by Austronesian speaking groups andtheir neighbours.THE HANDLING OF BARK CLOTH AND CLOTHING IN NEW GUINEAWhen bark cloth is used in the context of men's ritual life itis not because of its textile-like property of being soft, or because itcan be folded, rolled up or tied and wound around all kinds of objects.Rather, it is spread and tied to frames and fixed so that the softnessof the material is not obvious: sometimes tapa is tied to a frame andcarried like a shield or board, as e.g. in Goroka (Birnbaum andStrathern 1990: 66) and in Collingwood Bay (Tiesler 1993:18 and plate18). By stretching it over differently shaped frames, masks were alsoproduced. The most fascinating and spectacular tapa masks in Melanesiaare those of the Baining with their striking forms (Corbin 1986). On theNew Guinea mainland, tapa masks are also well known, especially thehevehe masks of the Elema (Williams 1940) in the Papuan Gulf. In theHighlands, masks made of bark rather than bark cloth were also used, asamong the Asaro (Birnbaum and Strathern 1990: 96). 'Hats' or'wigs' made of tapa seem to be more common in various parts ofNew Guinea (Birnbaum and Strathern 1990: 16-17, 106-110). Where wigs areconcerned, bark cloth is just one component within an assemblage ofdifferent elements; often it is only used as fabric tied to a frame oras a base into which hair, flowers, feathers, and other ornaments werestuck. I would suggest that the prolific wigs produced in the Highlandscan be regarded as a variation of masks. According to O'Hanlon(1992: 600) a Waghi wig is meant to disguise its wearer. In formertimes(11), the frame was covered with tapa to which clinging burrs wereattached and then, finally, human hair was pressed onto them(O'Hanlon 1992: 599).O'Hanlon concludes that such wigs are 'constructed secondskins' (1992: 603) in the sense that the 'Melanesian body ...is typically signposted as 'under construction': a'portfolio' ... of substances and flows from a number ofsources, momentarily come together.'Of course textiles, and tattooing, serve as 'second skins'as well but, as I shall outline, there exist obviously differentconcepts of the 'first' and the 'second' skin, aswell as a different 'construction' of these 'skins'.Strathern and Strathern (1971), Sillitoe (1988) and O'Hanlon(1992) illustrate how New Guinea cultures have developed totallydifferent means of creating a 'second skin' from those of SEAsia or Polynesia. Kooijman has also pointed out that 'in Papuansocieties, "clothing" usually consisted of bodydecorations' (1973: 12). Body decorations - to sum it up brieflybefore I cite the example of the Abelam - consist of body painting(which I would call the fundamental means used for transformations) and,in addition, of all kinds of ornaments made from shells, teeth,feathers, fur, hair, and many ephemeral elements,(12) such as leaves,fronds, flowers, and fruits or nuts. Necklaces, belts, plaited bands andmeshwork cloth exist in many variations and are often worn in multipleand prolific combinations. Under the technological category of'meshwork' different types of objects are summed up whichought to be separated or rather first considered individually becausesome of them are produced by men and some by women; others are theresults of efforts by women and men alike. String bags are among themost prominent meshwork elements. Generally speaking, they are made bywomen; as body decoration of men they are of minor importance unlessthey become transformed by men into objects of 'multipleauthorship' by subjecting them to special treatment, for example,with the addition of feathers (MacKenzie 1991: 157-189). No doubt bilumare doth doth?v. ArchaicA third person singular present tense of do1. with properties similar to those of woven textiles(13) but withonly few exceptions are they used because of their textile-likequalities. As I shall demonstrate in the next section, in my opinionthis is due to principles of aesthetics typical of non-textile cultures.THE NON-CLOTH CHARACTERISTICS OF ABELAM ART THE LINE, THE STRIP ANDTHE STRING: VISUAL 'OPEN-WORK'In this section I shall outline the characteristics of the materialsand the way the Abelam use them to produce art. In the introduction, Ihave outlined two characteristics on which Abelam art and aesthetic arebased: 1) the line, the strip (of leaves, fronds etc.), the string (theAbelam are 'a bilum dependent culture'!) as the constituent ofornamentation and, from the point of view of aesthetics, theappreciation and the perception of the line rather than the plane. 2)The preference for rather unprocessed plant, solid and rigid materialfor sacred/secret ritual displays. I shall show that the principlesunderlying the different categories of Abelam visual art are basicallythe same and that, from this point of view, no division between cult art(figures, paintings and masks) on the one hand and decorations on theother (Strathern and Strathern 1971: 174-177) can be made. Forge hassuggested 'that polychrome two-dimensional paintings become aclosed system, unrelated to natural objects, or to carvings and otherthree-dimensional art objects, or indeed, to anything outside thepaintings' (1970: 269). In contrast, I shall aim to prove that thesame basic aesthetic principles apply to all arts and therefore form anaesthetic system.In almost every category of Abelam art (except carving which as suchis only an incomplete, interim stage in the creation of an artifact A distortion in an image or sound caused by a limitation or malfunction in the hardware or software. Artifacts may or may not be easily detectable. Under intense inspection, one might find artifacts all the time, but a few pixels out of balance or a few milliseconds of abnormal sound ,unless it is painted) the line, the strip or the string is the crucialelement or constituent. Though it may vary in shade, the colour of themost important line, which is considered to determine the pattern, iswhite. At the same time, this is the most highly valued colour; it isassociated with light, sun, bones and shellrings, and is classified asmale.When starting to paint a panggal either for a headdress headdress,head covering or decoration, protective or ceremonial, which has been an important part of costume since ancient times. Its style is governed in general by climate, available materials, religion or superstition, and the dictates of fashion. , a panel foran initiation room or the facade of a ceremonial house, the head artiststarts by drawing a white line(14) on the sago spathe that has beencovered first with a layer of grey or black mud. He does it by means ofa white feather dipped into white pigment. To use Kaeppler'sterminology (1978), the white line is the 'leading part'within motifs and, from the point of view of the process of painting aswell as from that of the composition, is applied independently of othercolours, each of which is associated with definite values related tocomplex systems of classification (see also Forge 1970: 284-286), themost important being that of gender.Only after the head artist has completed the first horizontal band ofdesigns do his assistants draw red lines along the patternspre-determined by the fine white lines (see also Forge 1967: 76). In afurther step, yellow lines are drawn. Finally, black is added to fill inthe remaining unpainted parts. While the assistants are still busy withthe first set of motifs the head artist continues to outline with whitelines the next band of patterns. A painting being worked on looks verymuch like different coloured strings becoming intertwined with eachother to form a pattern standing out against the dark background. Eachcompleted section is then temporarily decorated with ephemeral elements,red flowers laid down on the painting.Basic differences exist in the way the individual 'strings'of colour are composed. The white line is continuous, from the top tothe bottom of the painting. When, for example, a whole facade ispainted, the artist starts at the top with the first design. As soon ashe has completed it, he leaves a small white line like a string belowit. He takes up this end as soon as he begins with the next horizontallyorganised row of designs, and so on. Consequently this results in acontinuous white line linking each band of ornaments to the next. It isliterally the white string that unites and holds even an extremely largeand complex painting together like a web or a net. All other colours areapplied intermittently in the sense that they merely follow andaccentuate ac��cen��tu��ate?tr.v. ac��cen��tu��at��ed, ac��cen��tu��at��ing, ac��cen��tu��ates1. To stress or emphasize; intensify: the leading white lines. The white continuous line is calledmaindshe.There are many different Abelam carvings used in specific rituals(mainly for the graded initiation system). But as sculptures they areconsidered to be 'only wood'; it is through being painted inthe same way as panggal that they come to life (Forge 1967: 75-76).(15)The same expression, maindshe, applies to differently coloured leavesand flowers cut into narrow strips and used to create elaborateconcentric patterns on a layer of froth floating on the surface of awaterhole waterholeNouna pond or pool in a desert or other dry area, used by animals as a drinking place . It is the ephemeral piece of sacred art Sacred art is imagery intended to uplift the mind to the spiritual. It can be an object to be venerated not for what it is but for what it represents; Roman Catholics are taught that such venerated objects are more properly called sacramentals. that is produced byolder men for the first initiation of small boys. The patterns as suchfollow those of the paintings and the same names are also applied tothem. Instead of drawing lines with brushes and paint, strips of leavesand flowers are laid in a kind of applique technique onto the whitefroth (the latter produced by crushing and kneading certain leaves).There is, however, a significant difference between the painting and thefroth image. Whereas the white lines on the black background are thedominant element in the paintings, in the froth image it is the whitebase on which mainly red, yellow, and dark green strips of leaves areset. The Abelam say that the white 'background' is in fact theforeground, i.e. the most important colour and part of the imagecreated. It is the white froth and the way it links all bands of patternarranged concentrically that is looked at first, and not the colouredmaindshe.Similar ideas are expressed in a further category of material wheremaindshe is the structuring principle as well: net bags. The basiccolour of the undyed twined string produced from the bast of varioustrees and shrubs(16) (depending on the type of bilum and its specificuse) is considered to be white (though I would rather call it beige). Itis the white maindshe that is the leading part, followed partly by redand black dyed strings in the composition of the patterns, though one istempted rather to 'see' red and black lines and triangles(17)first. The patterns used in these specific looping techniques areexclusively applied by women (without a needle or any other device).They are similar to those of the paintings though their number is morelimited, consisting mainly of horizontal and zigzag lines, broaderstripes, triangles and rectangles. The patterns are only applied to thefront side of the string bag, not to the back.(18) Moreover, menattribute the origin of similar patterns painted on the facades of theceremonial houses to women's net bag patterns, and not vice versa VICE VERSA. On the contrary; on opposite sides. .Women manufacture net bags not only for themselves but also, if theyare not yet married, for their brothers and, later, for their husbands.The patterns are related to the initiation grade the brother or husbandhas attained. The bags reflect his status within the men'scommunity with its graded ritual hierarchy.(19) Women as producers ofthe bilum identify themselves with their brothers or husbands by wearingthe same patterns on their net bags. At the same time, by this means ofvisual identification, a woman's integration into clanship (herbrother's or her husband's) is manifested;(20) however, thereare no clan specific patterns. Nevertheless, men prefer kimbi, plaitedbaskets they manufacture themselves as badges for the highest initiationgrades. Maindshe is the string to which women continually add - like thehead artist who draws the white lines on a painting - a further piece bytwining and rolling the raw material, fibres, on their thigh and joiningit with the end of the string of the bilum. Maindshe is a strip fromwhich finally, bit by bit, a whole net bag is produced. Maindsheexpresses the same fundamental ideas in all the contexts described:namely the line, the strip or the string. Maindshe consists first of asingle piece which is made longer by adding to it until a continuouscomposite work is produced.A further type of composite work is the plaited seating mat (producedby men). These are made of a whole coconut palm frond. The individualleaves on both sides of the rib are plaited. In contrast to compositeworks mentioned so far which consist of many different elements, thesemats always consist of two elements, horizontal and vertical whichbecome intertwined, as is typical for plaitings. But again, it is notthe flat surface produced by the process of plaiting which the Abelamstress when talking about them but the lattice-work character.Characteristically, they call the seating mats ara. The same term isused for the two ceremonial 'lines', the moieties (Forge 1967:68), one of the basic elements of Abelam social organisation (Kaberry1941: 239-240; Losche n.d.). Each ara alternately prepares and performsthe (graded) initiation ceremonies for the other. Food and pig exchangebetween the two ara are part of the initiations. The mutual performanceof initiations, the giving and receiving of gifts - mainly the produceof gardens and animal husbandry animal husbandry,aspect of agriculture concerned with the care and breeding of domestic animals such as cattle, goats, sheep, hogs, and horses. Domestication of wild animal species was a crucial achievement in the prehistoric transition of human civilization from - 'knit' the two ara together.Analogously, the two rows of coconut leaves protruding from the same ribare plaited to produce a mat with a definite structure.The emphasis the Abelam put on maintaining the individuality and theseparateness of the materials used to create a pattern or a compositework in the sense of an assemblage (rather than a uniform, homogenous homogenous - homogeneous plane) can be discerned even more clearly in the mats used to cover thelower part of the ceremonial house. Plant material of a completelydifferent quality is used for them (these mats are called kimbi)(21).Leaves of the sago palm sago palmcycasrevoluta. are placed vertically and white strips of theinner side of bamboo are inserted horizontally. When these unusualmaterials are plaited, mainly lines of white and brown zigzag patterns,similar to lattice-work, are created. They look as if one material issuperimposed in applique technique on the other.There are many more categories of artifacts(22) such as polished,engraved en��grave?tr.v. en��graved, en��grav��ing, en��graves1. To carve, cut, or etch into a material: engraved the champion's name on the trophy.2. coconut shell bowls, bone daggers and pottery: in all of themthe predominance of the individual line, strip or string can berecognized in their decoration. Among them are the mannequin-like,knitted kara-ut (literally 'boar-net') decorations men holdbetween their teeth in aggressive situations, formerly in warfareattacks, nowadays mainly in the course of disputes. They are actuallywar ornaments when worn in this way; they symbolize the deadly grip orbite of the warrior (the 'boar'). On ceremonial occasionsdecorated men wear them dangling down their back. Onto this densely knitmeshwork(23), nassa shells are attached one after the other so thatwhite zigzag lines or stripes and triangles in a kind of appliquetechnique are created. In exactly the same way, various types ofmen's headbands are decorated. Other examples illustrating theindividuality and the prevalence of the line over the plane in Abelamart are the yam masks made of wickerwork. These masks consist more orless of stripes or bands of wickerwork, creating a kind of visualopen-work. The main emphasis is on the large eyes which consist ofseveral separate concentric (sometimes elongated) circles almostinvisibly held together. The plaited headdress rising from the faceconsists alternately of zigzag bands and horizontal stripes, open-workagain rather than solid plane plaiting. The effect of individual linesand strips is visually reinforced by the addition of paint.This, what I would call the basic principle of Abelam aesthetics, canin fact be observed in the socialisation of Abelam children. As Forgehas demonstrated, the line is the element of visual art children learnto see first and it is thus the main element they reproduce first whenasked to do drawings (1970: 284-285).In another domain of art, in artistic displays, the same principle ofemphasizing the single line set off in some way against a background andof putting together two or more different elements to create a compositepiece of art also becomes apparent. For the display of traditionalwealth - shellrings - dark green, glossy banana leaves are chosen. Formarriage transactions the leaves are spread on the ground and the brightshell rings are carefully placed on top of them in a single line rangedaccording to their size, with the largest (called 'the head')at the top, the smallest at the bottom. From a distance, they look likea vertical line of white circles displayed on a dark green background.For the opening ceremony of a ceremonial house, the men of the villagebring their most beautiful and highly valued shellrings to theceremonial ground in order to have them displayed on the lower part ofthe newly completed building. The shellrings are laid out in the samemanner on banana leaves first and then sewn onto them. The banana leaveswith the rings are then fastened, one beside the other, to a horizontalpole set up immediately in front of the ceremonial house. The wholelower part of the house is finally covered with these beautiful rows ofwhite shell rings on the dark green leaves.PLANT 'CURTAINS' INSTEAD OF WRAPPINGSI suggested earlier that the Abelam are a non-cloth culture in thesense that they do not appreciate cloth as flowing soft fabric becausein their dominant (male) discourse of aesthetics, preference is given to'open-work', the individual dearly defined line, strip andstring. They disregard the properties of the flat surface as such,especially, as I shall demonstrate below, if it is soft and foldablematerial and tends to roll up.I shall now turn to the question of how Abelam culture deals withconcealing and revealing as a means of actualizing and making powervisible in ritual contexts and of how they define boundaries between thepowerful, those who are able to produce and to handle sacred items, andthe powerless, those who are allowed only to passively participate orwho are excluded completely. This is the context in which many textileproducing cultures make distinctive use of doth either as clothing or aswrapping material (Hendry 1993: 109-113).In most rituals - either initiations in the ceremonial house orrituals on the ground to promote the growth of the yam-tubers displaysof sacred objects Sacred ObjectsArk of the Covenantgilded wooden chest in which God’s presence dwelt when communicating with the people. [O.T. - the temporary abodes of the spirits responsible forfertility and well-being of people and plants are always fenced off. Forthis purpose the carvings displayed in the ceremonial house, the stonesset up nearby to commemorate important men, and the round stone in thecentre of the ceremonial ground (called 'moon' and associatedwith spirits residing in water holes) are fenced off and thereby partlyconcealed by light green, i.e. fresh-cut coconut fronds fixed to asimple frame of sticks. Streamers Streamers is a play by David Rabe.The last in his Vietnam War trilogy that began with The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones of palm fronds are attached to thehorizontal sticks and hang down freely like a curtain; in the slightestbreeze, the fibres or strips move individually. Sometimes red ban fruitsor ovula shells are added, depending on the nature of the display. Bandsof silvery leaves are placed below the crossbeam of a new storehouse orceremonial house. Young light-green coconut fronds are stuck like flagsinto the roof of a newly completed ceremonial house. Many more examplesof such boundary markings by means of streamers of leaves and frondscould be given. The effect achieved is always the demarcation of asacred place (Civil Law) the place where a deceased person is buried.See also: Sacred and at the same time the attraction of theparticipants' attention. Moreover, this is done,characteristically, by means of some kinds of string curtains playingwith the contour and the shapes of the objects behind; it is a playpartly of concealing and also of revealing.A similar principle applies in body decorations. In former times, theAbelam were virtually naked in everyday life (Forge 1970: 275). Forceremonies, different kinds of ornaments are used. Apart from bodypainting and shell valuables, men wear plaited belts and upper armbands, as well as aprons of different vegetable material (depending onthe ceremony): dried bast strips or fresh fronds wound around the waist.Some of these aprons reach down to the calf, others only to the thighs.Smaller bands of bast strips or leaves are tied below the knee andbundles of different fresh leaves are stuck into them. These decorationsare ritual attire aiming - in combination with body painting (blackening black��en?v. black��ened, black��en��ing, black��ensv.tr.1. To make black.2. To sully or defame: a scandal that blackened the mayor's name.3. of the whole body, additional facial painting in bright colours),bunches of fresh leaves stuck into the arm bands, necklaces, shell rings- at making the 'ordinary' body invisible, at estranging es��trange?tr.v. es��tranged, es��trang��ing, es��trang��es1. To make hostile, unsympathetic, or indifferent; alienate.2. To remove from an accustomed place or set of associations. theindividual body with its known shape and contour and transforming itinto something else. The decorations emphasize the fact that it is notbrothers, husbands, fathers or sons who are dancing(24) but spiritsoriginating in the world beyond, a world conceived of as full of beauty,miracles - and power. At the same time, the spectators' attentionis drawn to the arrangement of the decoration as such, the combinationof all these different elements and various materials creating a totalimage.(25)The composition of masks and costumes follows the same principles ofassemblage in which concealing and revealing are by means ofcurtain-like elements. The Abelam have only one type of mask which theycall baba. These masks are associated with mythical clan specific pigsand therefore display not primarily anthropomorphic Having the characteristics of a human being. For example, an anthropomorphic robot has a head, arms and legs. traits (seeHauser-Schaublin 1984).The baba masks (worn like helmets) are made ofwickerwork and are worn by men (in the context of initiations) alongwith a costume which covers the body completely. The costume consists oflong fresh leaves reaching down to the ankles. When ababa appears, itbursts forth with wild jumps around the houses or the ceremonial ground.The whole costume with its dozens or even hundreds of leaves movescontinuously; it is a play with revealing the legs of the dancer in oneinstant and concealing them in the next.All these 'decorations' have some fundamental elements incommon which, as I have suggested, form the principles of Abelamaesthetics. They all consist of individual fringes, strips, and leaves.It is not fabric(26) as a whole with a homogenous texture thatrepresents the ideal material for the Abelam. They show preference forthe individual strips, strings, and lines and their innumerablecombinations, accentuated by decorations with similar properties andqualities.THE USE OF IMPORTED TEXTILES AND COLOUR PRINTSThese basic principles of their art are, I conclude, also the reasonwhy the Abelam have made almost no use of cloth in ritual contexts sinceit became available in the colonial and post-colonial era. I rememberhow shocked I was by the Abelam women who had asked me to bring backplain bright red and plain black cloth from a shopping trip toWewak.(27) had assumed that they would use it as cloth. But instead,they immediately cut it up into strips. Then the women started tounravel the fabric into individual threads. Subsequently they twinedthese and rolled them on their thighs, then joined them to the alreadyproduced yarn on a clew clew?1?n.1. A ball of yarn or thread.2. Greek Mythology The ball of thread used by Theseus to find his way out of the labyrinth.3. clews The cords by which a hammock is suspended. . Finally, they used the yarn to manufacturecolourfully patterned net bags(28) instead of the locally dyed stringswith their rather faint colours. The women did not, as I had assumed,use the fabric for bags which could be produced easily and quickly. Likebark and bast, the traditional raw material for bilum, the textiles weretorn into strips, then separated into fibres and finally twined intostrings.Cloth has never replaced fronds, bands or leaves and the like.(29)The reason is that the requirements for such a replacement, theequivalence of material with a distinct quality, were not met since theydid not exist.(30) There are many further examples which could be citedto demonstrate the anti-cloth nature of Abelam art. The bast and theleaf aprons have never been replaced by trousers or skirts. Modernarticles of clothing are more likely to be worn below the string andbast aprons. However, I once brought back from a shopping trip to Wewakonions packed in a loosely knotted red nylon bag which I carelessly toreapart to open it. My Abelam friends who were with me when I did thiswere shocked; they immediately tried to stop me from ruining the wholestring bag. One of them, thrilled by this nylon string bag, picked it upand took it with him. I rediscovered it much later as part of aman's head decoration.(31) Apparently these bags which I treatedwith indifference, attracted the Abelam more than a piece of cloth ofthe same size.It is important to note, however, that the Abelam did not disapproveof all new or foreign material they came into contact with. For example,they were initially fascinated by the bright shiny colours of the paintthat could be bought in stores. In the 1950s and 1960s, these paintswere used for the facades of ceremonial houses as well as for allartifacts which needed repainting. Thus, industrially produced coloursquickly replaced the traditional ones, though in the late 1970s and1980s, traditional paints made a comeback since they were not justcolours but magical substances, e.g. used in yam growing rituals,initiations and for body paintings, properties which the oil-coloursturned out not to possess.Forge describes how the Abelam men eagerly took some coloured pagesout of magazines he had brought with him. They considered them as sacreditems, as 'European tamberans' (1970:286), as powerful sacra sa��cra?n.Plural of sacrum. .Some of these coloured illustrations (sometimes the wrappers of tins ofmackerel mackerel,common name for members of the family Scombridae, 60 species of open-sea fishes, including the albacore, bonito, and tuna. They are characterized by deeply forked tails that narrow greatly where they join the body; small finlets behind both the dorsal and ) were fixed to the plaited lower part of the facades ofceremonial houses and were integrated into men's headdresses atinitiations up to the late seventies. By then, these scraps were nolonger considered sacred or secret as they were when the Abelam wereconfronted with such glossy material for the first time. But the peopleobviously liked these intensely coloured pieces of paper and, even inthe eighties, the wrapping paper Noun 1. wrapping paper - a tough paper used for wrappingkraft, kraft paper - strong wrapping paper made from pulp processed with a sulfur solutionbutcher paper - a strong wrapping paper that resists penetration by blood or meat fluids of tins was not just torn off andthrown away but was either given to children to play with or was kept asdecorations for purposes not yet determined.The question therefore is: why did the Abelam readily integratecoloured paper in their ritual or ceremonial paraphernalia whereas theyalmost completely disregarded textiles which were at least equallycolourful?The main reason is, I think, that the colour prints of glossymagazines were considered a kind of equivalent to panggal paintings. Itwas not only the colour that attracted them but also the material, therather rigid material with its glossy surface. In view of thisequivalence (which does not exist for textiles and net bags), it isnecessary to elaborate the specific nature of panggal.THE CONTRASTING QUALITIES OF PAINTINGS, STRING BAGS, AND SHELLRINGSApart from the huge facade of the Abelam ceremonial houses, paintingsare important in initiation displays and for head-dresses. Wholeinitiation chambers are constructed with panggal; inside them, thematerial representations of the spirits are prolifically displayed.Already Forge has mentioned that the Abelam use metaphors when speakingabout the material contents of the rituals. One of the metaphors forinitiations is 'the spirits manufacture bilum (wut)', whereasbilum in fact means the painted sage spathe panels (mbai) used for theinitiation chambers (Forge 1967: 70) but also figures with plaitedbodies as well as wooden sculptures. The phrasing, the spiritsmanufacture bilum, is used when men talk publicly about preparationsgoing on in the ceremonial house. Forge argues that wut does not onlymean net bag, i.e. women's product, in this context but alsoalludes to nyan wut, womb, and explains this in terms of the analogy ofthe female womb and the initiation room and the ritual rebirth of theyoung men. MacKenzie (1991: 143) has taken over his argumentation whichculminates in the interpretation that this metaphor refers to 'theprimacy of women's biological procreativity'.Apart from the analogy of meaning, the initiation chamber being akind of metaphorical womb, suggested by Forge, I shall try to analysethe metaphor by focussing on the material used for these artifacts:The material properties of panggal and bilum are, as will beelaborated below, opposed to each other and they are far from beingsimilar or even comparable. Nevertheless, to some extent the lines drawnin the paintings on panggal and on wood as well as the plaitings usedfor the bodies of the secret figures, are identical and are, asmentioned above, called by the same name as the pattern-creating stringsof the net bags: the basic form principle of the line, the strip and thestring integrates them into one single aesthetic canon although thereexist some gender specific differences - not regarding the constitutionof designs but with regard to material properties; to a certain extentone could even speak of a gendered aesthetics.So far I have discussed women's artistic production, themanufacture of strings and bilum, only from a rather formalistic for��mal��ism?n.1. Rigorous or excessive adherence to recognized forms, as in religion or art.2. An instance of rigorous or excessive adherence to recognized forms.3. andmaterialistic point of view. To understand the metaphor of wut for mbai,it is important to understand how far women's products enter thedomain of men, especially that of their ritual power.(32)Net bags as such, in their material property, are cloth and womenroll them up when they are not working on them. The rolling up is alwaysdone slowly and carefully and women seem to enjoy the flexibility oftheir product during the making. They gently stroke it flat before theycontinue to work on it. When a bilum is completed but not yet put intouse it is stored rolled up. As soon as it comes into use, a bilum isfully spread out since it is considered 'not nice' if itscontents are not equally distributed and do not fill it properly. If thecorners of the bilum roll up (which sometimes happens with smallchildren and anthropologists), its owner is rebuked by the others andtold to have the bilum spread properly.As soon as bilum enter the domains of exchange and transaction or thecontext of men's ceremonial life, they become completely deprivedof their natural softness and flexibility. These female goods form animportant part of marriage gifts, especially in the Wosera region.There, net bags with complex designs (worked with up to 48 stringssimultaneously) constitute a significant part of the bridewealthpayments. As MacKenzie has noted (1991: 12), it is the main item of thefemale portion of the bridewealth, in which shellrings are identifiedlargely with men and bilum with women.(33) To display the string bags, acane as long as the lower width of the bilum is inserted which stretchesout the bag from one bottom corner to the other. It then looks almostlike a merely two-dimensional object.(34) Shellrings and net bags areconsidered complementary goods; the former are symbolically male,associated with bones, stones, the light, the sun and the claim toeternity, while bilum are considered female. They are associated withsoftness, transitoriness.The cloth-like quality of the bilum is made use of in the firstmenstruation menstruation,periodic flow of blood and cells from the lining of the uterus in humans and most other primates, occurring about every 28 days in women. Menstruation commences at puberty (usually between age 10 and 17). ritual performed exclusively by women. When the young girlemerges from the menstruation hut, she is decorated with a special bilumfastened around the waist with a string like a pubic pubic/pu��bic/ (pu��bik) pertaining to or situated near the pubes, the pubic bone, or the pubic region. pu��bicadj.1. apron (Forge 1970:275).(35) The girl is decorated and provided with a new bilum filledwith sea snail shells (ovula) and with a shellring on her breast. Inmen's ritual dances on the ceremonial ground, young womenparticipate as sisters. They are presented as marriageable mar��riage��a��ble?adj.Suitable for marriage: of marriageable age.mar women anddisplay some features typical for girls' decorations after themenarche menarche/me��nar��che/ (me-nahr��ke) establishment or beginning of the menstrual function.menar��cheal me��nar��chen.The first menstrual period, usually during puberty. . They all wear a bilum filled with ovula shells on their back.As far as I know, these roundish ovula shells - in contrast especiallyto the almost two-dimensional shellrings - signify womanness, or, morespecifically, are associated with young women(36) and their vulvae. Asthe young women dance with their bilum which are decorated with tinyshellrings (made from the tops of conus shells) otherwise used as wristornaments, the ovula shells in it jingle with each step. In no otherritual context is the three-dimensionality of the net bags, theirability to bulge and to smoothly follow and wrap the uneven roundishform of the dozens of shells, displayed in such a striking way. It isnot the bilum as such but its bulging flexible form, its moving andjingling jin��gle?v. jin��gled, jin��gling, jin��glesv.intr.1. To make a tinkling or ringing metallic sound.2. To have the catchy sound of a simple, repetitious rhyme or doggerel.v. content which represents at the same time wealth and fertility;both of them are associated with femaleness - and wombs.As far as I know, apart from the marriage ceremonies bilum are usedin the contexts of the ceremonial house only on one other occasion. Thisis during the inauguration of a newly constructed building. For theceremony, women hand their newly made bilum (either especially producedfor the purpose or already completed some time ago and stored for somespecial occasion) to the men. The bags are used individually asdecorations on the front of the ceremonial house. They are alwaysdisplayed in combination with shellrings. As described above, theshellrings are fixed in vertical rows to banana leaves which are thentied to a horizontal pole in front of the plaited lower part of thehouse front. Above it, but below the painted facade, the most beautifulnet bags are fixed directly onto the plaited mat. They are completelyflattened, reduced almost to an absolute two-dimensionality. They aredeprived of their cloth-like quality to fold up, to smoothly and softlywrap all kinds of items. They almost look like painted sago spathepanels although their material and the techniques applied easilyidentify them as women's products, as bilum. They are used as oneof the most important components (not to mention further elements likeleaves, flowers and orange coloured fruits) in the creation of a hugetotal image, a composite work, for the opening ceremony in whichhundreds of people, men as well as women, take part.Apart from the softness of the bilum as opposed to the hardness ofthe shellrings, other contrasting properties are represented by thesedifferent categories of objects. Shellrings are appreciated for theirpure shining white colour while bilum used in ritual displays are alsohighly valued because of their brightly coloured patterns. Moreover, thebilum are always brand new when used in ceremonies and men'srituals. In contrast, the value of a shellring depends also on its ageand its renown as an heirloom. Shellrings transmit the authority of theancestors to the present owner who uses it as a testimony of his link tothe realm and the time of the ancestors. Moreover, shellrings'bind' different kin groups together when used as marriagegifts, each important shellring representing 'a bone' of theclan or lineage which is transferred to the wife-givers. As alreadymentioned, brand new brightly coloured bilum are used in marriagetransactions as well but they have no clan specific significance (thepatterns are not owned by individual groups but are common property) andthey do not confer transgenerational authority either.(37) They do notcontain 'history' in the sense that shellrings do. Their powerlies in their qualities of 'freshness' and 'newness'symbolizing female fertility and transience but also the ephemeralaspects of life.This is, I think, the crucial point: women's artistic productsare associated with utmost femaleness (in the sense of fertility andsexuality) when their properties as soft cloth and bulging containersare displayed. They become transformed, 'masculinized', inmen's rituals; they are flattened and therefore endowed withproperties similar to those of panggal. They become stiff, provided witha rigidity favoured as a quality of artifacts in secret/sacred contexts.It is therefore a 'tempered' femaleness, one controlled bymen, which is integrated into men's ritual life. The expression of'multiple authorship' could be applied to bilum transformed byAbelam men as well, but I would insist that it is a 'hierarchicalauthorship' whereby men's authorship is superimposed ontowomen's.The Abelam expression 'the spirits manufacture bilum'therefore does not imply, as Forge's statement suggests, a kind ofimitation of women's generative gen��er��a��tiveadj.1. Having the ability to originate, produce, or procreate.2. Of or relating to the production of offspring.generativepertaining to reproduction. powers but, instead, anappropriation of them. The painted panggal panels of the initiationchamber are not simply 'equivalents' of women's bilum assuch but only of bilum which have become 'stiff','masculinized' by men. In contrast to MacKenzie's viewthat when the string bag is separated from the women and entersmen's domain, it 'is not reified, as in the Marxian notion ofproduction, nor is the woman alienated from the product of herlabour' (1991: 150), I suggest that it nevertheless is reified andalienated, at least to a certain extent. Net bags do not become sacra inthe men's house as among the Kwoma (Kaufmann 1986: 162) and theTelefol (MacKenzie 1991: 122-125, 157-190). Due to their original'soft' material and to the techniques applied by women toproduce them, net bags, though deprived of their softness, ultimately donot meet the Abelam requirement of aesthetics in men's initiationrituals. Rather are plaitings (produced by men) preferred whose materialqualities differ significantly from that of bilum. As pointed outearlier, men use plaited baskets also as emblems for the highestinitiation grades. This is due to the fact that plaitings aremanufactured by men with rigid and stiff materials contrasting to thesoftness of string bags. And this, finally, is the reason why textilesare not suitable in ritual contexts and wrapping is adverse to the aimsof Abelam men's ritual and sacred/secret art as far as it isrepresented by means of a selection of distinct materials.CONCLUSIONFrom this perspective, it becomes evident why Abelam men have adoptedglossy prints but not cloth in their rituals. I have outlined what Ithink forms a substantial feature of Abelam aesthetics and visual art:the line, the strip and the string as the leading parts in the artisticcompositions, and the preference for vegetable matter, more or less'unprocessed', rigid rather than soft, as the raw material. Isuggest that this aesthetic predilection has to do with historicaltraditions or conditions. As mentioned above, the Abelam are - like mostof New Guinea inland groups - a Non-Austronesian speaking group to whomtextile production - comparable to that of the Austronesians whoobviously brought not only the mulberry tree but also refined techniquesof cloth production Historically, cloth production in England, Wales, and much of Europe was often historically organised under the domestic system, prior to (and also in the early stages of) the introduction of the factory system. and, accordingly, a cloth aesthetics with them tothe Pacific - did not belong to their cultural 'inventory'.All Abelam visual art is - and I would consider it typical for manyother New Guinea cultures as well - in one way or another composite workconsisting of the ad hoc For this purpose. Meaning "to this" in Latin, it refers to dealing with special situations as they occur rather than functions that are repeated on a regular basis. See ad hoc query and ad hoc mode. assemblage of qualitatively differing material.And it is not only the final result, the completed homogeneous artifact,which Abelam aesthetics strives for but, I suggest, equally the processof putting together, mosaic-like, individual elements one after theother, whereby a gradual increase in their endowment with power isachieved. Moreover, a kind of dichotomy exists between base and surface.But prevalent is the opposition of the separate elements to each other.Through combination, these elements are integrated into a total image -which can be taken apart, dissolved again into its individual elements.As mentioned earlier, cultural concepts of the 'first' andthe 'second' skin cannot be disregarded in the context ofAbelam decorations, neither the human body nor 'bodies' madefrom other materials. If we return to the basic idea of decoration as ageneral means of concealing and revealing, we also have to take intoaccount the relationship between the two 'skins' (also in afigurative sense) and what they represent.'The act of concealment', writes Strathern onself-decoration in Mount Hagen This article is about the city. For the volcano which the city named is after, see Mount Hagen (volcano). Mount Hagen is third largest city in Papua New Guinea. (1979: 249), 'is related to theconcept of bringing things outside.' The ornaments used fordecorating the body of the dancer, she concludes, should draw thespectators' attention not to the body itself but to the decorationsas a separate entity (1979: 254). If translated into the terms of myrather materialistic analysis of Abelam aesthetics, this would mean theemphasis laid by the Abelam on 'relief' or'open-work' is created through the line, the string and thefrond rather than through a homogenous plane or fabric as a second skin.Strathern explains that the 'outer self, the skin, is ... decoratedwith the inner self, intrinsic attributes. This is done by takingobjects from the outside world - feathers, leaves, shells - andattaching them to the body' (1979: 254). In this way, the elementsand designs used bind the body to the external environment.(38) They'indicate an idea of continuity between the source of potency (theancestors, ...) and its manifestation (in fertility and the maintenanceof life)' (p. 255). This relationship between an individual and theancestors is transactional. Hagen ancestors are present only if thedancers' display is successful and this depends on satisfactorytransaction with the ghosts. Similar ideas apply to the Abelam, theirart and their underlying aesthetic principles as manifested in theirhandling of decorations. Though this perspective is outside the scope ofmy paper, it illuminates its main issues from a different angle byputting them into the cultural context of meaning. At the same time, itbridges the gap between aesthetics and meaning and represents a furtheranswer to the question why things are done the way they are - and whythe Abelam (as well as other New Guinean societies) are a non-clothculture.NOTES1. On the discussion of Abelam aesthetics see Forge 1967, 1970, 1979.Schomburg-Scherff 1986) has tried to outline a comparative holisticapproach holistic approachA term used in alternative health for a philosophical approach to health care, in which the entire Pt is evaluated and treated. See Alternative medicine, Holistic medicine. to aesthetics. One of the examples she draws on is the Abelam.How aesthetics has been used as a notion by art historians recently isdiscussed by Coote and Shelton (1992:7-10).2. Kocher Schmid was able to trace nearly 100 different plants usedfor body decorations (1991:252-255).3. For a critical discussion of the question who the producers andthe users of feather cloth were, see Linnekin 1992:47-55.4. There exist some monographic studies of the production of tapa andits use although they are not very detailed. Among the most thoroughdescriptions are those of Blackwood (1950:27-31) on the Nauti and Ekuti(Morobe Province), by Lemonnier (1984) on the Anga (EasternHighlands/Morobe Province), and by Tiesler (1993) on the Maisin(Collingwood Bay).5. He relates, in his final conclusions, tattooing and its variationsto three different types (and an additional 'mixed' type) ofpolities he characterizes for Polynesia: the conical conical/con��i��cal/ (kon��i-k'l) cone-shaped. con��i��calor con��icadj.Of, relating to, or shaped like a cone. system, the feudalsystem, and the devolved system (Gell 1993:288-315).6. This corresponds to the differences between the political systemsin Melanesia and Polynesia first suggested by Sahlins 1963; for a recentcritical discussion of this distinction see Marcus 1983.7. One of the few exceptions are the bark cloth producingMaisin-speaking groups (the Maisin language Maisin (or Maisan) is a language of Papua New Guinea with both Austronesian and Papuan features. PhonologyVowelsMonophthongsFront BackHigh iis classified as an'Austronesian-Papuan "mixed" language' by Wurm1981): As photographs taken at the beginning of this century document(Tiesler 1993: plates 3-6), people used tapa as clothing in a'textile-like' way. Among the Anga (Eastern Highlands Eastern Highlands,c.2,400 mi (3,860 km) long, general name for the mountains and plateaus roughly paralleling the east and southeast coasts of Australia (including Tasmania) and forming the Continental Divide (see Great Dividing Range); rises to Mt. ) thewomen wear long coarse bark cloth capes (Birnbaum and Strathern 1990:102-105) in almost the same way string bags are used in otherneighbouring groups in the Highlands.8. E.g. among the Anga (Lemonnier 1990: plate 4 and 9; Birnbaum andStrathern 1990: 102-105) or the Baruya (Godelier 1986: plates 8,11,20).9. Tiesler (1993) notes with surprise the fact that tapa productionand the decoration of the cloth with specific clan emblems isexclusively women's work in Collingwood Bay (on the border betweenthe Northern and the Milne Bay Province Coordinates: Milne Bay is a province of Papua New Guinea. Its capital is Alotau. of Papua New Guinea).10. Early anthropologists argued, from an evolutionist ev��o��lu��tion��ism?n.1. A theory of biological evolution, especially that formulated by Charles Darwin.2. Advocacy of or belief in biological evolution. anddiffusionist point of view, that the different 'waves' ofimmigrants into Oceania not only had different art styles, but alsospecialized in the use of different materials (Fraser 1962). Althoughfrom today's perspective Fraser's theory and methodology areuntenable, his conclusions regarding bark cloth and palm spathes as wellas other vegetable material as major working material for art productionwhich he attributed to the 'old-Papuan style' show somesurprising similarities with my own deductions. My approach and mytheoretical conclusions are, however, completely different.11. Nowadays store-bought fabrics are used.12. For an impressive complete inventory of valuables and goodsobtained from the environment or imported through trade also used inMaring body decorations see Healey 1990.13. I therefore hesitate to agree with Weiner (1989:34) thatmaterials with non-cloth properties like 'mats, bundles [of driedbanana leaves] and skirts [women's fibrous fibrous/fi��brous/ (fi��brus) composed of or containing fibers. fi��brousadj.Composed of or characterized by fibroblasts, fibrils, or connective tissue fibers. skirts] ... can andshould be analysed within this category [i.e. cloth].'14. Forge (1967:76) writes that 'the artist outlines the designto be painted in thin white lines.' The white lines, in fact,constitute the basic design among the northern Abelam.15. Forge has pointed out (1967:83-84) that old nggwalndu figureshave a much more sculptural form than recent ones. 'It seemspossible that the very high development of polychrome painting so muchadmired among the Abelam may have resulted in the declining interest insculptural form...'16. According to Lea (1964: 197-192), the bast of Althoffiapleiostigma, Commersonia bartrami, Garcinia sp., Abroma augusta L. isused as the raw material for net bags.17. Triangles are one of the preferred patterns on bilum. For adiscussion of the triangle as form see Hauser-Schaublin 1994.18. Schuster (1989:375) stresses the fact that the Kwoma as well asthe Sawos apply the same principle of decoration, whereas the Iatmulwomen produce net bags patterned on both sides.19. MacKenzie (1991:15) gives some information on bilum patterns inrelation to initiation grades obviously typical for the Wosera.20. However, the way men and women carry the net bags clearly signalsgender difference: women wear the string bag suspended from theirforehead while men carry it hanging from the shoulder.21. Baskets produced and used by fully initiated men instead ofstring bags are also called kimbi.22. For an excellent overview of an almost complete inventory ofpreservable Abelam artifacts, see Koch 1968; representative parts of theBasel Abelam collection are published in Hauser-Schaublin 1989.23. Meshwork of this kind, to which other ornaments such as foreheadbands belong, is made by men using a needle made from a flying fox bone.24. Strathern and Strathern (1971:137-138) suggest that through thedisguise 'the identity of the individual dancer is partly submergedwith that of the rest of his clansmen in the creation of group display.It is the presence of the ghosts that links men together as clansmen andgives them a common identity.' In contrast to the Hageners,clanship is less important among the Abelam and subordinate to theritual moiety moiety:see clan. division (ara) for all men's rituals.25. Strathern noted for the Hageners (1979:246): 'It is not thatidentity should be kept secret that the decorations should first be seenfor themselves.'26. In Abelam/Arapesh border villages, pieces of tapa cloth tapa cloth:see bark cloth. are usedin dances by women as aprons over the buttocks buttocks/but��tocks/ (but��oks) the two fleshy prominences formed by the gluteal muscles on the lower part of the back. .27. Fieldwork in Kalabu village was carried out in 1978-1979, 1980and 1983; it was supported by the Swiss Scientific Foundation Berne.28. O'Hanlon (1973:71) describes for the Waghi the new materialsused as raw materials for the manufacture of net bags: 'extrudednylon or from unravelled and re-spun rice bags, or unpicked un��pick?tr.v. un��picked, un��pick��ing, un��picksTo undo (sewing) by removing stitches: unpick a seam.garments.'29. Strathern and Strathern (1971:129) mention that among theHageners 'girls put on bright red trade-cloth in a variety ofstyles instead of net bags and head-nets - or together with these.'30. In almost all tapa producing cultures, bark cloth was quicklyreplaced by imported cloth.31. For ceremonies, men wear different types of forehead bandsmanufactured in a kind of mesh work technique to which nassa shells arefastened.32. For a discussion of this issue see Strathern 1981:673-674 andWeiner 1989: 61-64.33. Weiner speaks of 'hard wealth' (bones, stones andshells) made by experts, frequently from imported materials whereas'soft wealth' (cloth) is often locally produced by women andis far more widespread (1989:62). Hoskins (1989:166) has noted a similarrelationship between textiles (produced by women) and men's metalobjects (gold valuables) in Sumba.34. Among the Kwoma, women manufacture a special type of string bagused for a similar but still distinct purpose. These are much longerthan they are wide. For a mindja festival, a liana liana(lēä`nə)or liane(lēän`), name for any climbing plant that roots in the ground. is inserted to spreadthem until they become two-dimensional. Women hold them upside downabove their head when dancing in front of the men's house; theylook like dance shields (Kaufmann 1986:134, plate 71, p.161). However,it is important to note that among the Kwoma these bilum displayed bythe women themselves as their products are not alienated from them.These special string bags are ritual objects manufactured, displayed andowned by women.35. It is not surprising to note that cloth did actually replace themenarche bilum-apron. Nowadays a kind of simple mini skirt is usedinstead.36. I am not sure who really owns these ovula shells and how they arehanded down from one generation to the next. Somehow I got theimpression that a mother gives them to her daughter; unfortunately, Ihave no data on this.37. As Strathern has pointed out (1981:674), in Hagen net bags embodywomanness which is not conflated with clan continuity and socialregenesis.'38. 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