(Just to be on the safe side: a mild SPOILER ALERT for Game of Thrones series 1-6) Today, the penultimate series of Game of Thrones begins. The thrillingly enjoyable bloodbath is slowly coming to an end, as the White Walkers, with their ever expanding army […]
Imagine being able to talk to your dead loved ones. No, this is not a rhetorical question; try to imagine actually being able to answer your mobile phone and talking to your dead husband, mother, wife, or child at the other end of the line. […]
Size matters… at least when it comes to yams, the edible tubers grown by the Abelam people in Paupa New Guinea, where they can grow to be several meters long. Among the Abelam, the cultivating and displaying of yams is of great importance to a […]
Reite people on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea describe a large ceremonial drum (a garamut) as a man. In its construction, a garamut is the focus of a process which brings forth a form of social relations, as well as the object […]
Fancy going spearfishing in the Solomon Islands? YES PLEASE! Let’s just admit it right away – one of the absolute coolest things about being an anthropologist, is that you get to go to beautiful places, where you’ll hang out and meet some nice people, and […]
Tetepeku – one of the rare female ancestor figures from Papua New Guinea, of great importance to the Abelam people of Wosera. As a central part of male initiation rites, the novice is to crawl between the legs of Tetepeku, placed inside the ceremonial house, haus tambaran. […]
You might be familiar with the colourful totem poles of Native Americans, with carved out masks and animals – but have you ever seen a Papua New Guinean bisj pole like the ones here? Collected by Aksel Bojsen-Møller in 1955, these poles tell the story of an old […]
Quite frankly, we were a little spooked by this item! Even more so when we discovered that beneath the layers of clay and paint, is the real human skull of a specifically important ancestor of the Sepik province in Papua New Guinea. According to Jens […]
We know, right? The second you realized what is actually emerging from the mouth of this mask, you probably had a small twitch? We certainly did! And so, according to the Iatmul people of Papua New Guinea, do the evil powers of ancestral and natural […]
Think of someone you used to know. Someone not here anymore. What do you see? A mask-like figure with animal features and a mohawk? Probably not. But if you were from the province of New Ireland in Papua New Guinea, it might not be that […]
Almost resembling a funky dancer expressing himself in the light of the disco ball, perplexed and surprised by his own moves, we were amused to learn that this little fella is actually connected to the afterlife of the Enga people of Papua New Guinea in […]
