Pigs, Sorcery and Cannibalism: a New Guinea Diary - Paperback

by Elizabeth K. Mandeville (Author)

In 1976 social anthropologist Elizabeth Mandeville and her husband Neil, a social psychologist, told friends and relations that they proposed to spend two years in the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea with their two small children. Most thought they were crazy. Mention was made of cannibalism, warfare and dangerous insects. But while most of the adults they went on to live with in New Guinea had eaten human flesh, they had ceased doing so - and had largely stopped fighting.

At 7000ft there were no snakes or biting insects, and nothing much to worry them except the monotonous diet, the difficulty of the language and the mud.

The people of New Guinea proved kind and generous, and were repaid by the prestige of being chosen as hosts - and particularly, by the interesting presence of two foreign children. It seemed that none of them had ever been close to a white child.

The author's contemporaneous diaries and letters home, collected in this volume, present a fascinating insight into their new companions' thoughts, kinship systems, and understanding of the world.