Ethnographic Presents

Life on the frontier suggests excitement, danger, and backbreaking labour. In this book the frontier is the Highlands region of what is now Papua New Guinea - a part of the world largely unexplored by Westerners as late as 1950. In the next five years a dozen pioneering anthropologists followed closely on the heels of "first contact" patrols. Their innovative fieldwork is well documented, and now, in an autobiographical collection that is intimate and richly detailed, we learn what being on the frontier was like for the ethnographers themselves. Featured are Catherine H. Berndt, Ronald M. Berndt, Reo Fortune (by Ann McLean), Robert M. Glasse, Marie Reay, D'Arcy Ryan, and James B. Watson, and the seven new essays are put in historical contect by Terence Hays. A concluding essay by Andrew Stathem points out that this early work among the peoples of the Central Highlands not only influenced all subsequent understanding of Highland cultures but also had a profound impact on the field of anthropology.