Thesis (doctoral)--Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 1970. / Summary in English. Includes bibliographical references (p. 96-114).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of California, San Diego, Department of Anthropology, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-75).

New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse region in the world. There are over 1000 languages found there, reflecting a complex history of migration and interaction. The Upper Sepik is one of New Guinea’s most linguistically heterogeneous areas but because the area has not been marked by the significant population movement and intense and far-reaching exchange systems apparent for some parts of New Guinea, this diversity may be more indicative of processes that maintain rather than lead to linguistic diversity. Accordingly, the region may offer great potential for those investigating population histories. With this potential in mind ethnographers went into the Upper Sepik during the 1960s and 1970s with the intention of making representative material culture collections for the language groups found there. These collections combine to be, arguably, one of the most fine-grained material culture datasets that exist for New Guinea. This thesis describes the manner in which these collections were documented and used to create a dataset to test for relationships between material culture and language. It begins with an overview of the study area including descriptions of the geography, environments, subsistence systems, settlement structures and social patterns, including an appraisal of marriage exchange, ritual, trade and warfare and how these may have facilitated or inhibited the spread of culture. This appraisal leads to an assertion that the sociality and mobility of men and women are affected differentially by such mechanisms, and that material culture belonging to men and women may differentially reflect population histories and the social processes that underpin the evolution of linguistic diversity. The thesis then describes a round of analytical procedures used to test for relationships between language and attributes belonging to string bags and arrows which are respectively and exclusively produced by women and men. Associations between languages, measured in terms of their material culture similarity, are then compared to those determined according to their linguistic family relationship and their relative positions in geographical space. The analysis also tests whether differences in the way that women and men socialise and move through space influence the way in which material culture patterns through space. The thesis concludes that attributes of classes of material culture are distributed differently for objects made by men compared to those made by women, that distance seems to be a stronger factor than language, and that environmental factors are also relevant. This study foreshadows ongoing research involving the dataset. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2009

New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse region in the world. There are over 1000 languages found there, reflecting a complex history of migration and interaction. The Upper Sepik is one of New Guinea’s most linguistically heterogeneous areas but because the area has not been marked by the significant population movement and intense and far-reaching exchange systems apparent for some parts of New Guinea, this diversity may be more indicative of processes that maintain rather than lead to linguistic diversity. Accordingly, the region may offer great potential for those investigating population histories. With this potential in mind ethnographers went into the Upper Sepik during the 1960s and 1970s with the intention of making representative material culture collections for the language groups found there. These collections combine to be, arguably, one of the most fine-grained material culture datasets that exist for New Guinea. This thesis describes the manner in which these collections were documented and used to create a dataset to test for relationships between material culture and language. It begins with an overview of the study area including descriptions of the geography, environments, subsistence systems, settlement structures and social patterns, including an appraisal of marriage exchange, ritual, trade and warfare and how these may have facilitated or inhibited the spread of culture. This appraisal leads to an assertion that the sociality and mobility of men and women are affected differentially by such mechanisms, and that material culture belonging to men and women may differentially reflect population histories and the social processes that underpin the evolution of linguistic diversity. The thesis then describes a round of analytical procedures used to test for relationships between language and attributes belonging to string bags and arrows which are respectively and exclusively produced by women and men. Associations between languages, measured in terms of their material culture similarity, are then compared to those determined according to their linguistic family relationship and their relative positions in geographical space. The analysis also tests whether differences in the way that women and men socialise and move through space influence the way in which material culture patterns through space. The thesis concludes that attributes of classes of material culture are distributed differently for objects made by men compared to those made by women, that distance seems to be a stronger factor than language, and that environmental factors are also relevant. This study foreshadows ongoing research involving the dataset. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2009

Bibliography: leaves 359-381.

Vol. [2] comprises 6 reprints of published monographs in box folder; but numbered within the publications submitted listing (90 items), and within the 3 categories identified; at the beginning of vol. 1. Includes bibliographical references. [1]. Publications: The biology of frogs ; Systematics and nomenclature ; The fossil record of frogs -- [2]. Monographs Comprises 90 contributions to the biology and systematics of frogs, with particular emphasis upon those concerning the fauna of Australia and New Guinea. Provides an understanding of the state of knowledge when the author commenced his studies; permitting the extent of his work, an the nature of its significance, to be evaluated.

The past stability of vegetation patterns in the Markham Valley (6°30’S, 146°30’E), a lowland grassland area of Papua New Guinea, is investigated by pollen analysis of lake deposits and related palaeoecological techniques.¶ The predominantly organic sediments of Lake Wanum (alt. 35 m) span the last 9600 years. A 14C chronology supports the calculation of annual pollen deposition, sediment accumulation, and carbonised particle influx rates. At Yanamugi lake (alt. 170 m), 14C assays of the calcareous muds are influenced by variable ‘hard- water error’. A tentative chronology is based on palaeomagnetic and tephra correlations.¶ Pollen trapping reveals very high contemporary annual deposition rates within forest, but low values over the central lake area. Surface pollen assemblages from different habitats indicate the localised nature of pollen dispersal, although a relatively ‘long-distance component’ from higher altitudes is also recognised.¶ Analysis of floristic data from the herbaceous swamp vegetation of Lake Wanum suggests the existence of two free floating root-mat associations and two or three rooted associations. Water depth appears the primary control on their distribution.¶ Holocene swamp communities analogous with extant associations may be identified in the palynological record of Lake Wanum. Swamp marginal conditions prevail from 9500 BP until 8200 BP when permanent shallow water becomes established. Rooted vegetation associations then predominate until about 5000 BP. Floating vegetation associations first become important at this time, and subsequently (3000 BP to 2000 BP) come to dominate the site. A general trend towards increased water depth is indicated throughout the sequence.¶ Increased representation of dry-land non-forest pollen occurs from 8550 BP, and grassland taxa become more frequent from about 5350 BP. Synchronous trends in carbonised particle influx identify fire as a probable agent of vegetation change.¶ Little change in dry-land vegetation is recorded in the pollen sequence from Yanamugi, although recent encroachment by swamp vegetation occurs. The large proportion of ‘montane’ pollen and spore taxa in the earlier sediments is attributed to variable fluvial influx. ¶ Conditions at Lake Wanum until 8200 BP may reflect the early Holocene aridity widespread in equatorial areas, although the indirect hydrologic effects of rising sea level cannot be discounted. Human impact appears the main determinant of dry-land vegetation change during much of the Holocene.

Vol. [2] comprises 6 reprints of published monographs in box folder; but numbered within the publications submitted listing (90 items), and within the 3 categories identified; at the beginning of vol. 1. / Includes bibliographical references. / 2 v. (various pagings) : / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Comprises 90 contributions to the biology and systematics of frogs, with particular emphasis upon those concerning the fauna of Australia and New Guinea. Provides an understanding of the state of knowledge when the author commenced his studies; permitting the extent of his work, an the nature of its significance, to be evaluated. / Thesis (D.Sc.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Environmental Biology, 2002

This dissertation examines the ways in which a Papua New Guinean people, the Maisin of Collingwood Bay in Oro Province, have over the years responded to and appropriated a version of Christianity brought to them by Anglican missionaries. The Maisin treat Christianity not as a foreign imposition, but as an integral part of their total religious conceptions, activities and experiences. Almost a century of documented Maisin history reveals a consistency related to what is here called a "social ideology": a complex formed by idioms of asymmetry between senior and junior kin and allies, equivalence in exchanges between a range of social categories of persons, and complementarity between the sexes. Extensions of the social ideology to the developments of the post-contact society are explored in the contexts of a growing dependence on money and commodities, unequal access to education and jobs, large-scale out-migration, the material requirements of the local church, and church regulations concerning social behaviour. The social ideology is also extended to sorcerers, ancestral ghosts, bush spirits, and Christian divinities. The analysis shows that Maisin experience indigenous and Christian elements as realities that exist within a single religious field. Working from the premise that religion is an aspect of the people's total experience and not a separate cultural institution or sub-system, the thesis explores the modes by which the Maisin create and discover coherence between the various elements within the religious field. The most important points and occasions of religious coherence are those in which the moral precepts of the social ideology are joined with conceptions of spiritual entities towards the explanation and resolution of problems. Three "religious precipitates", as these moments of coherence are termed, are analysed: the village church, healing practices, and death rites. A major finding of this study is that Maisin articulate their assumptions about local sorcerers, ghosts, and spirits within idioms of conflict between kin and affinal groupings, but speak of God, Christ and the church as symbols of community solidarity. The village church is analysed as a point of convergence of the social ideology, economic aspirations, memories of past interactions with missionaries, and Christian teachings and forms. The primary religious importance of the church is as a condensed symbol of communitas that transcends the inherited divisions of the social order and the contradictions of present political and economic conditions. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

This study used qualitative (interviews) and quantitative methods (questionnaires) to investigate and describe (a) Papua New Guinea (PNG) village elders' traditional ideas and beliefs on natural phenomena, (b) PNG secondary school student's traditional science beliefs, (c) the sources of PNG secondary school students' explanations of natural phenomena, (d) the types of explanations PNG secondary school students provide to describe natural phenomena, and the views of science teachers and curriculum officers on the inclusion of traditional knowledge in the science curriculum.. Analysis of data included interviews with eight village elders and completed questionnaires from approximately 200 secondary school students in one rural provincial high school in the Gulf Province. Village elders' beliefs were analysed and categorised into (a) spirits, magic spells and sorcery, (b) Christianity, (c) personal experience, and (d) modern science. Secondary school students' sources of explanations were based on what they have heard at (a) home, (b) in the family and village, (c) in church and (d) from school. Approximately half of the secondary school students strongly hold on to traditional beliefs while learning formal school science and these were related to spirits, magic spells and sorcery that were similar to those of the village elders. Students also used scientific explanations of natural phenomena based on their learning in school and from their own personal experiences and interactions with the physical world. / Interviews with science teachers and curriculum officers supported the need to include traditional knowledge in the science curricula. The study identified students holding both traditional and scientific explanations of natural phenomena. There is both a need and value for traditional knowledge being incorporated in science education programs that harmonise with school science. The thesis concludes with six recommendations to bring these ideas to fruition.