Reading :: Pigs for the Ancestors

Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People 2nd Edition

by Roy A. Rappaport

Thanks to John Traphagan, a former professor of religion here at UT, for mentioning this book to me — he brought it up frequently when we cotaught a qualitative methods course for the HDO MA program here at UT. I was finally able to read it late last year, and now that I’ve cleared the decks with some of my current writing projects, I’m finally able to review it.

The book is not always easy to read: Rappaport’s prose is dense and sometimes redundant. But that denseness reflects the denseness of the analysis. 

The back blurb says that this book is “the most important and widely cited book ever published in ecological anthropology.” The book was first published in 1968, based on Rappaport’s dissertation, describing fieldwork in New Guinea between October 1962-December 1963 (p.xiii). Specifically, he examines “the Tsembaga, [who] are a group of about 200 Maring-speaking people” who “occupy an area of slightly more than three square miles” (p.8). These people had only slight contact with Europeans. The Tsembaga describe two broad categories of spirits.

The rawa mai are spirits who occupy the lower part of the territory, associated with the lower part of the body: fecundity, strength (p.39). These are associated with cold and wetness (p.39) as well as the cycle of life and death. They are composed of two subcategories both associated with the upper parts of the territory: the nonhuman koipa mangian and the rawa tukump, who are the “spirits of those Tsembaga who have died of illness or accident” (p.38). They are “spirits of rot” and intermediaries between the living and the koipa mangian (p.39). 

The rawa mugi (red spirits) occupy the upper part of the territory. “They are the spirits of Tsembaga who have been killed in warfare” (p.39). They are concerned with the living and warfare, and they are associated with heat, dryness, hardness, and strength — and the body’s upper part. They are also associated with mammals. 

The Tsembaga conduct subsistence farming in gardens, living in small villages. And they keep pigs — most of the time, as pets who live with people and raid their gardens. But every 12-15 years, Tsembagan villages go to war with their neighbors. And when they do, they sacrifice most of their pigs to the red spirits of their ancestors who have fallen in war — and the living Tsembaga cook and eat the pigs, strengthening themselves for the upcoming war in a ritual that can last up to a year. These wars themselves are brief and do not incur many deaths. Afterwards, they find peace for another 12-15 years.

What is happening here? Rappaport identifies two models of the environment: the operational and the cognized (pp.237-242).

The cognized model guides the Tsembaga’s actions, eliciting appropriate behavior for their material environment. It includes the cosmology described above and the rituals for preparing for war.

The operational model guides the anthropologist’s analysis, highlighting other aspects of the environment. For instance, Rappaport calculates how many calories are being supplied by the Tsembaga gardens, how many are expended in their work, and how many are being consumed by the Tsembaga vs. the pigs. He concludes that the carrying capacity of the territory is reached every 12-15 years, and once it’s reached, different villages have to compete for insufficient resources, leading to war. That war involves killing and eating most of the pigs, resetting the village’s total consumption of calories so that it’s below the carrying capacity of the land.

Importantly, Rappaport provides the two models without elevating one above the other. These are two explanations, but they don’t necessarily need to compete. The Tsembaga have a model that guides and regulates their interaction with the environment in a sustainable way. The functional anthropologist has an alternate model that explains how the first model results in sustainability. The emic and the etic are thrown into sharp relief here, both as methods of meaning-making.

Overall, it’s a fascinating book. It’s worth noting that the main text is only 242 pages, with pp.243-501 devoted to appendices and back matter. I highly recommend it!