Landscape, Violence and Social Bodies: Ritualized Architecture in a Solomon Islands Society |
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Authors: | Tim Thomas,Peter Sheppard Walter,& Richard Walter |
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Affiliation: | University of Otago, University of Auckland, University of Otago |
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Abstract: | This article considers the interplay between the bodily experience of landscape and the formation of sociality. We investigate the social experiences of landscape in nineteenth-century Roviana Lagoon in the Solomon Islands, dealing specifically with the ritualized architecture of a fortification on Nusa Roviana Island. Drawing on oral tradition and archaeological and historical data, we argue that the architectural remains reflect a powerful mode of shaping social experience and notions of personhood in the manipulation of ideology. The Roviana landscape creates a world in which genealogical lines are sedimented to place, and practices of ritual violence and head-hunting are made to appear necessary and natural. Paying attention to both oral and material history allows a greater understanding of the ways in which such social structures are reproduced, and adds to the construction of a rich historical anthropology. |
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