PAGE 1
DISPLAY- EXCHANGE STONES
DANI CULTURE
IRIAN JAYA, INDONESIA
ISLAND OF NEW GUINEA
EUROPEAN CONTACT
PAGE 1 OF 4 PAGES
COPYRIGHT JANUARY 31, 2004 PETER A. BOSTROM
Display-exchange stones from New Guinea
DECORATED DISPLAY-EXCHANGE STONES
PETE BOSTROM COLLECTION

Display-exchange stones abstract.
DISPLAY-EXCHANGE &
SACRED STONES
DANI CULTURE
IRIAN JAYA, INDONESIA

    The artifacts illustrated in this article were manufactured and used by cultures living in the Central Highlands on the island of New Guinea in Irian Jaya, Indonesia. They were collected over a period of 50 years or more. New Guinea has offered Anthropologists a rare opportunity to observe and record stone tools still being manufactured and used both domestically and in various types of ceremonies. Within recent years, during the 20th century, the Dani were living very much the same way a Stone Age Neolithic culture would have been living thousands of years ago.

    "Throughout prehistory, the recorded presence of symbolic stones, when they could be identified, not just stone tools, has intrigued us."---1999, O. W. "Bud" Hampton, "Culture of Stone." p. 99.
    "All sacred stones are called habo. All exchange stones are called je, and there are at least fourteen specific names for different kinds of je."---1970, Karl G. Heider,"The Dugum Dani," p. 288.
    "No phenomenon, either real or imagined, is of greater significance to Dani life than their belief in ghosts".---1968, Robert Gardner & Karl G. Heider, "Gardens of War," p. 87.

Dani tribesmen.
PICTURE CREDIT AND COPYRIGHT, AL KONDER & SANDY DONNELLY
WARRIORS OF THE DANI

   The three men pictured above are Dani tribesmen. The man on the left is Tengari Alat from the village of Meledik. He claims to have killed five men. The man in the center is Yukiur from the village of Ekaba and he claims to have kill one man with this bow. The man on the right is Leber from the village of Meledik. Their claims may or may not be true but they are all armed with the same types of bow and arrow weapons still being carried today.

DISPLAY-EXCHANGE STONES
IRIAN JAYA, INDONESIA

    Archaeologists find stone artifacts on ancient sites all over the world. Most of them were used to process food, carve wood, make cloths or weapons. These artifacts are easy to identify. But some have no obvious use and may even seem mysterious. They are the ones we call  enigmatic, problematic or ceremonial objects. Sometimes there are clues that indicate how they were used. For example, Egyptian hieroglyphics illustrate the ritual feeding of the dead ceremony with a fishtail biface. So we know at least one way that artifact was used. But the best way anthropologists have learned the most about ceremonial objects are from people still using them. New Guinea is a good example of such a place.

Display-exchange stone dressed with skirt.
CLICK ON PICTURE FOR LARGE TRIPLE IMAGE
A DECORATED DISPLAY-EXCHANGE STONE
DANI CULTURE
IRIAN JAYA, INDONESIA
PETE BOSTROM COLLECTION

   This display-exchange stone was collected by a geologist sometime in the late 1960's in western Papua New Guinea. It is decorated with a common female skirt motif. This one has two different styles of skirts. One style is the brief wrap around wedding skirt (jogal) made of orchid fiber cording. The other is a drop skirt (sali) that is usually worn by young girls and is made of flattened reeds. One of the wrap around skirts is hidden under the drop skirt and it is made of bright yellow orchid fiber. Although the picture doesn't show it, the color of the stone is actually dark green. The surface has been well smoothed on both sides and the edges. This display-exchange stone measures 22 9/16 inches (57.3 cm) long, 5 7/7 inches (14.9 cm) wide and 9/16 inch (1.4 cm) thick. It is slightly wider than the widest (5 1/2 inches (14 cm) of the 38 examples measured by Hampton in "Culture of Stone." This display-exchange stone might be estimated to be worth one medium sized pig (1999: Hampton, pp. 113-114)

    New Guinea has contributed a great deal of information to anthropologists who study stone tool making technologies and the use of stone tools. The  extremely isolated interior region can be seen as a virtual time capsule of knowledge. It's believed that the first people arrived on the island as much as 50,000 years ago.  As people moved into the rugged mountainous interior, many different groups developed their own separate languages and tribal cultures. There are over 750 distinct languages spoken in New Guinea which represents about one third of the world's indigenous languages.

CONTINUE ON TO PAGE TWO

"REFERENCES"

1968, Gardner, Robert & Heider, Karl G., "Gardens of War, Life and Death in the New Guinea Stone Age," p. 87.
1970, Heider, Karl G., "The Dugum Dani," p. 288.
1978, Marcus, Rebecca B., "Survivors of The Stone Age," p. 113.
1998, Konder, Albert, Personal Communication, Letter.
1999, Hampton, O. W., "Culture of Stone, Sacred and Profane Uses of Stone Among the Dani,"

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