• DOI:10.1086/203670
• Corpus ID: 144046797

Cultural Behavior and Extractive Foraging in Macaca Fascicularis

@article{Wheatley1988CulturalBA,
  title={Cultural Behavior and Extractive Foraging in Macaca Fascicularis},
  author={Bruce P. Wheatley},
  journal={Current Anthropology},
  year={1988},
  volume={29},
  pages={516 - 519}
}

• Bruce P. Wheatley
• Published 1 June 1988
• History
• Current Anthropology

intensity and specialization similar to those witnessed historically, which seems to have led to the demise of the Type X industry. Second, although there is no evidence for deposition in Siassi, increasing amounts of New Britain obsidian began reaching the site. Third, local subsistence activity intensified. Finally, a dramatic increase in the variety and rate of deposition of ornaments and valuables (including pigs and dogs as well as manufactures) intimates that status rivalry may have emerged or intensified. Inline with my proposals above, the latter suggests that the importance of formal lineage structures may have begun to decline at the same time. Despite these developments on the mainland, there is no evidence for occupation in Siassi or a resumption of SioSiassi exchange until approximately 300-350 B.P. In other words, a general intensification factivity, possibly accompanied by other major changes, occurred at Sio about two centuries before the emergence of an exchange system exhibiting a pattern of linkages like that recorded ethnographically. Although no very recent evidence was recovered from the mainland site at Sio, a marked increase over the last 2oo years in the deposition of Sio pottery on Malai clearly indicates that during recent times there was a significant increase in the quantity of pottery transferred across the Strait, which suggests the possibility of further intensification of production on the Huon Peninsula coast. The Malai data also indicate that the bulk of Madang pottery transported across the Vitiaz Strait was moved during historic times. These developments are associated with increased deposition of an expanded range of utilitarian artefacts and faunal remains and the first appearance of ornamental and valuable manufactures in Siassi. As at Sio, it can be tentatively inferred that the appearance of valuables signals the emergence or intensification fbig-man rivalry and perhaps changes in social organization. The relatively late appearance of such items may also mean that more formal sociopolitical structures persisted in Siassi for longer than they did at Sio. In short, while the "ground-plan" of the exchange system documented by contemporary observers may have first emerged some 300-350 years ago, the data suggest hat pottery production at Sio, cross-Strait trading activity, and status competition in Siassi did not reach levels of intensity like those recorded ethnographically until about the time that Tasman, Dampier, and other Europeans began to explore the Bismarck Archipelago. The foregoing sequence is broadly similar to those formulated by researchers working on other western Melanesian exchange systems, such as the hiri (Allen I984, Dutton i982), the kula (Irwin i983), and the Mailu network (Irwin i985). Of particular note is the fact that while networks ancestral to all these systems appeared between i,5oo and 2,ooo years ago, their ethnographically recorded configurations and levels of intensity and specialization developed only within the last few hundred years. As other scholars have suggested (e.g., Aimbrose 1978; cf. Leach I1983:537-38), this point should be borne in mind by researchers interested in Melanesian exchange systems, especially those who would use ethnographic descriptions of the systems to inform archaeological studies in the Pacific and other parts of the world.