2020, 378 pages, Edited by Anita Herle and Jude Philp. In association with the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. Sydney University Press.
Review by Crispin Howarth
Alfred Cort Haddon is something of a founding father for modern anthropology. His fieldwork resulting from scientific expeditions to New Guinea and the Torres Strait Islands in 1888 and 1898 for the Cambridge University influentially laid the groundwork for social anthropologists who came after him such as Bronislaw Malinowski. By travelling on country his interests shifted from marine biology to studying the people, their remarkable customs, and their arts. During those expeditions Haddon wrote numerous letters to his wife, Fanny, many were lavishly illustrated with sketches of what he saw and of the artefacts he collected. Compiled together they form Haddon’s personal journals held at Cambridge University, within those pages is a wealth of information on life in New Guinea and Torres Strait Islands during the colonial period of the late 19th century. Anita Herle and Jude Philp have worked meticulously in deciphering Haddon’s handwriting to elicit information on Torres Strait and New Guinea kastom making for compulsive reading.
Haddon wanted to record pre-colonial beliefs and collect as much material culture as possible ‘before it was too late’, a common refrain in that era. Interestingly, we are told these concerns were also shared by Torres Strait elders which assisted Haddon greatly in his work.
Recording Kastom is full of vignettes of the people he encounters in communities he has come to study and of the other foreigners who have travelled across the world to this far-flung frontier of the British Empire. There is Captain Neil Andersen, a Danish pearl-sheller in the Torres Straits, attempting to develop a business in pearl shell hopefully in London or Denmark. Haddon remarks he would invest in it as Andersen is trustworthy. Apparently, most pearl-shell managers were “either incompetent or heavy drinkers”. There are many missionaries including William G. Lawes, an enigmatic beachcomber ‘German Harry’ and business entrepreneur John Cowling[i] among the wide range of people recorded in Haddon’s journal, the editors’ footnotes provide enriching details about these early colonists and visitors.
While most of Recording Kastom is about the Torres Straits, there are also two substantial chapters on Haddon’s time in and around the Port Moresby region and parts of Gulf Province and Western Province. Haddon’s deep interest in performance is clear, he meticulously details and explains the stages of performances he observes; at Babaka Village in Beagle Bay, the text is accompanied with images of objects he collected, in this instance, a feathered comb and decorated palm fibre skirt. Haddon takes a deep interest in learning as much as possible about the artefacts he collects, his writing is fascinating when it comes to his instances of trade and exchange:
“There is no merit in mere collecting and I have been fortunate enough…to arrive at a time when the old order is changing giving place rather to a negation than to a ‘new’. They know, poor souls, that they have no need of these things and they have a need for baccy! Never again will anyone have the chance I have had. No one knew that such things as the masks I got existed in the islands to that extent – probably in future they will be made to order and not like mine made for their own use – if made at all, as the people are beginning to ‘savvy’ very little about the old customs.”[ii]
Whether it was a case that local people ‘savvied little’ or limited the information to be shared with an outsider such as Haddon we may never know. The nature of trade interactions underline the agency of both parties – Haddon backed by missionary and colonial administrators had at times an unfair level of leverage and at other times the exchange of goods was a way to gain greater positioning and influence for community members. Trade in artefacts was commonplace already in many areas as the desired for foreign goods had been established and Haddon’s journals are fascinating in this respect as a person negotiating his way in building a collection –
“The Kepara natives buzzed around us like flies offering for sale curios of all kinds and sea-shells, often broken and worthless specimens. One did not know which way to turn so persistent were they and the din was deafening. Well they did maintain their reputation for being keen and when possible unprincipled traders, still we did very well and got our things reasonable enough.”
In such exchanges it is unsurprising that the visiting foreigner might be taken advantage of to separate them from their wealth as Haddon wrote of his trading in July 1898 –
“Motu people, especially the women, are such keen traders that they condescended to forge ‘curios’. Some of the coral they brought had never been used as there were no signs of friction on the surface – this I pointed out to them. Later in the morning the same pieces of coral were again offered for sale but in the meantime they had rubbed them on something or other, but it was easy to detect this, and they only smiled when I told them what they had done.”[iv]
Haddon experienced the spectrum of trading situations and, in some instances, he was evidently seen as an appropriate person to take stewardship of significant objects. At Kiwai island across the Papuan Gulf he notes purchasing a spirit board ‘Gope’ and in confidential conversation the following day the real name for the spirit board is told to him away from villagers who did not have the right to know[v]. Here, he acquires objects with caveats not to let women or children view them, nor to show them to other communities. Also through Haddon’s journal are several interesting notes on the largely under-documented Moguru ceremonies of this region.
Haddon was able to observe first-hand numerous cultural practices which are presented in this publication including rain making with the use of Dōiōm, carved stone rain charm figures. He observes the Dōiōm proved effective in bringing and dispelling rain and noted “The more one knows the less of the miracle, but the mystery is only pushed back further”.[vi]
The resulting collection of Haddon’s two scientific expeditions is of major importance and exceptionally comprehensive. He collected everything possible including hair samples for comparative studies[vii]; his request for locks of hair and the cutting of it was a source of amusement among the people he visited.
Recording Kastom is an extraordinary publication that serves well the remarkable collection of arrows, masks, adornments, figures, and rain charms now held at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in the University of Cambridge. The information in Haddon’s journals gives the reader a deeper sense of context for these artefacts and fascinating insights into this region of the Pacific during a time of great change just before the dawn of the 20th century.
[i] Cowling retired to Tasmania and in 1927 the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Launceston received his remarkable collection of Kiwai and Bamu objects.[ii] p.74[iii] p.203-204[iv] p.235[v] p.287-288[vi] p.142[vii] p.204-205