David Gidmark £4.99

978 0 85263 940 5 (Shire Ethnography 4) 64 pp, 50 ills.

The well made birchbark canoe, constructed of materials that by themselves possess no great strength, is an extremely durable water craft. Not only was it the most important conveyance for the northern Indians, serving them in hunting, fishing and travel, but it was adopted with little technical change by the white man for exploration in the northern latitudes. In this service it was the most important vehicle in the opening up of Canada. This book places the Algonquin tribe in its context, showing its importance to the early fur trade and to explorations. The gathering and preparation of materials for the canoe is covered, as is the construction process.

For nine years David Gidmark did field studies among the Rapid Lake Algonquin and the River Desert Algonquin in western Quebec. He made extensive notes on the birchbark canoe building processes of these two Algonquin bands, undertook an apprenticeship in birchbark canoe building and studied the Algonquin language. He has written and lectured on Algonquin birchbark canoe construction in Canada, Europe and the United States of America.

Art and Decoration of Central New Guinea

Barry Craig £4.99

978 0 85263 941 2 (Shire Ethnography 5) 64 pp, 50 ills.

This book is the first publication to cover the full range of decorated material from the Mountain-Ok region of central New Guinea. It provides an historical and ethnographic overview of the area and then relates certain objects and their decorative style to the religious and ritual life of the people, in particular to the male cult of respect for ancestors. Artefacts are discussed include houseboards and decorated house facades, warshields, arrows, tobacco-smoking apparatus, paint containers worn through the earlobe, taro scrapers, palmwood clubs and paintings on bark and rock surfaces.

Barry Craig moved to central New Guinea in 1962 from his native Australia, to become head teacher of a school there. During his spare time he carried out research into the material culture and art style of the area. In 1970 he obtained his MA (Honours) degree at the University of Sydney for a thesis incorporating the results from his field research. In 1972-3 he carried out a year of research in the upper Sepik area and, whilst Curator of Anthropology at the Papua New Guinea National Museum from 1980 to 1983, he made two further visits to central New Guinea.

Arts and Crafts of Torres Strait

David R. Moore £4.99

978 0 7478 0007 1 (Shire Ethnography 10) 64 pp, 50 ills.

Torres Strait lies between Australia and Papua New Guinea, a channel connecting the Indian and Pacific oceans, in which lie over a hundred small islands. In this study of the artefacts of the Torres Strait Islands, David Moore considers the utilitarian, religious, recreational, personal, commercial and military products of the island craftsmen and their applications and usage in the many aspects of island life. The book begins with a history of the people and their first contact with Europeans and ends with an analysis of the post-contact developments up to the present day.

David R. Moore graduated from Christ's College, Cambridge with an honours in the Classical Tripos.He took an anthropology and prehistory course at the University of Sydney, being awarded the Diploma of Anthropology. He became Curator of Anthropology at the Australian Museum in Sydney and this gave him the opportunity to concentrate his research on the Torres Strait, and worked on the establishment of a Torres Strait Museum and Cultural Centre on Thursday Island.

Betel Chewing Equipment of East New Guinea

Harry Beran £4.99

978 0 85263 969 6 (Shire Ethnography 8) 72 pp, 96 ills.

Betel is a mild stimulant chewed by about ten per cent of the world's population in an area stretching from East Africa across India, south-east Asia, Indonesia and the Philippines to New Guinea. The betel chew consists of the seed of the areca palm (the 'betel nut'), the fruit or leaf of the betel pepper vine, and mineral lime. The lime is kept in a container and taken to the mouth with an implement. In New Guinea the people with poor teeth crush the betel nut in a mortar. In East New Guinea the lime containers are made from gourds, carry burnt-in designs and have finely woven stoppers with curved boars' tusks. The mortars and pestles, and the handles of the lime spatulas in particular, are superbly carved with a great variety of human figures, animals, plants and artefacts, portraying much of importance in Massim culture. This book presents a typology of the designs based on the thousands of pieces collected in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with many illustrations of the finest specimens. It also indicates the social context of betel chewing in East New Guinea and the social significance of the implements.

Harry Beran is a senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Wollongong in Australia. His interest in East New Guinea (Massim) tribal art began when he visited the Trobriand Islands in 1969 and since then he has studied public collections, travelled in the area, interviewed people in the Milne Bay Province and assembled his own collection of Massim artefacts.

Cassava and Chicha: Bread and Beer of the Amazonian Indians

Linda Mowat £4.99

978 0 7478 0008 8 (Shire Ethnography 11) 64 pp, 45 ills.

The staple diet of most Amazonian Indians is based on a tuberous plant known as manioc. Bitter manioc, the more nutritious form, requires careful processing to remove the poisonous hydrocyanic acid it contains. In order to render it edible, the Indians have developed an elaborate technology involving a range of highly specialised artefacts. By soaking, grating, squeezing, drying and baking, they convert the tubers either to cassava bread or to a coarse toasted flour, farinha. Nutritious manioc beer known as chicha is also produced and consumed in large quantities at feasts and ceremonies. Manioc is not just a food but a way of life in the Amazon, and the daily routine of women in particular is centred around it.

Linda Mowat graduated from the Institute of Archaeology in London and proceeded to the University of Leicester, where she obtained the Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies. Her archaeological fieldwork included three seasons in Colombia as a surveyor and while there she was able to visit Indian groups in the tropical forests as well as in the Andes.She subsequently worked as Research Assistant at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.

Crafts and Traditions of the Canary Islands

Mike Eddy £4.99

978 0 7478 0011 8 (Shire Ethnography 17) 68 pp, 50 ills.

During the fifteenth century the Spanish Crown wrested control of the Canary Islands from the Berber-speaking natives. Over the succeeding centuries the islands have been Europeanised to such an extent that the average visitor might think that all trace of the pre-Spanish culture had been lost long ago. This is, however, far from being the case, as the Canary Islanders still maintain many aspects of the native culture, particularly in the countryside and in the smaller islands where the effects of the tourist boom have been less marked. This book concentrates on the material aspects of Canary Island traditions, domestic pottery making and rural crafts, and, by the use of archaeological and historical evidence, traces these back to their pre-Hispanic origins.

Mike Eddy moved to the Canary Islands in 1983 to work on his thesis for Manchester University on the pre-Hispanic settlement and economy of the Guayadque area of Gran Canaria. He is a member of the Guayadeque Archaeological and Natural Park planning team, which is developing a programme for the conservation and display of the natural and cultural resources of the area.

Eskimo Carving

Susan M. Pearce £4.99

978 0 85263 770 8 (Shire Ethnography 2) 64 pp, 45 ills.

Eskimo carving is now recognised as one of the great artistic traditions of the world. The unique quality of the sculptures and decorative work in walrus ivory, stone and bone, which remains remarkably consistent through some two hundred centuries and across the great Arctic wastes, reflects the character and strength of the Eskimo hunting bands who inhabit one of the most inhospitable environments in the world. This book aims to relate the life style of the hunters, their vivid mythology, and the crucial role of the shaman in whom the human and spirit worlds meet, to their carving.

Susan Pearce read History at Somerville College, Oxford. She became Curator of Antiquities at Exeter City Museum which possesses important collections of Eskimo material. In 1975 She was awarded a Churchill Travelling Fellowship which enabled her to spend the summer in the Central Arctic carrying out research on the Exeter material which resulted in the exhibition Towards the Pole: the Eskimo and its accompanying publication. Professor Pearce is now Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Leicester University.

Ibo Art

G. I. Jones £4.99

978 0 7478 0012 5 (Shire Ethnography 13) 72 pp, 60 ills.

The sculpture of West and Central Africa has long won the admiration of the modern art world. It is a style of carving in wood confined very largely to masks and figures which in the minds of their creators represented the denizens of the spirit world around them. Different regions had their own particular beliefs and rituals associated with them which found expression in very different art styles. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Eastern Nigeria, where the culture of the western African savannah met and mingled with that of the central African rain forest. This, one of the most densely populated parts of Africa, is the home of ten million Ibo, who, together with the neighbouring Ibibio, supplied the New World with many thousands of slaves, and nineteenth-century Europe with most of its vegetable oil. This book examines the sculpture of the different Ibo tribes, placing it in its cultural and social setting and disentangling and distinguishing its local variations.

After graduating from Oxford G. I. Jones entered the colonial administrative service and served as District Officer in southern Nigeria until 1946, when he transferred to Cambridge University to become a lecturer in social anthropology and obtained his PhD. While serving in Nigeria he became interested in African art and co-operated with K. C. Murray in a survey of the arts and crafts of the eastern region; they photographed the wealth of masks and figures that still survived and rescued those that now form the basis of the magnificent collection in the National Museum of Nigeria.

Malagasy Textiles

John Mack £4.99

978 0 7478 0015 6 (Shire Ethnography 14) 60 pp, 36 ills.

The large island of Madagascar lies in the Indian Ocean facing the coast of Africa. However, it is not a distinctively African island. Amongst those who originally settled there were peoples from south-east Asia as well as from the nearby continent, and the language and culture of Madagascar reflect this diversity of influences. Its textile traditions are particularly complex and interesting. This book surveys the rich variety, discussing the range of materials used in weaving, explaining the technologies involved, and examining the often highly elaborate patterning found on many Malagasy textiles. Apart from use as clothing, textiles are also used as shrouds for the dead and are seen most spectacularly during the elaborate second burial ceremonies. These historical and anthropological aspects provide additional themes that run through the book.

John Mack is Keeper of the British Museum's ethnography department where he has held curatorial responsibility for the collections from Central, Eastern and Southern Africa. He has degrees in both history and social anthropology from the universities of Sussex and Oxford, where he received his doctorate in 1975. Dr Mack first undertook research in Madagascar in 1984 and has since completed a number of field trips to the island. He is also the organiser of exhibitions about Madagascar in both London and New York.

Metalcrafts of Central Asia

Ken Teague £4.99

978 0 7478 0062 0 (Shire Ethnography 19) 64 pp, 44 ills.

Across the vast distances of inner Asia, from Mancuria to the Caspian Sea, the nomadic peoples, Scythians, Huns, Turkmen and Mongols among others, have played a major role in the transmission of arts and crafts along the Silk Road and other major trade routes. Although often in conflict with their settled neighbours, the nomads depended on them for, jewellery and agricultural products. The nomadic Animal Style and world religions such as Buddhism and Islam influenced the development of central Asian crafts, as did the tides of conquest. This book describes the manufacturing techniques, styles and symbolism of the metalcrafts of central Asia in their historical and contemporary settings.

Ken Teague took an honours degree in anthropology at University College London and joined the Horniman Museum where he is Deputy Keeper of Anthropology. Dr Teague is a former chairman of the Museum Ethnographers Group and serves as a tutor and examiner for the Museums Association.

Cook Islands Art

Dale Idiens £4.99

978 0 7478 0061 3 (Shire Ethnography 18) 64 pp, 47 ills.

The small, scattered islands of the Cook group, the only islands in the Pacific to bear the name of the famous eighteenth-century navigator, occupy a central position in both Pacific geography and Polynesia art. Unfortunately, little of the material culture which Captain Cook might have seen in these islands survives today. Yet those artefacts which are preserved in museums clearly indicate the existence prior to European contact of a rich artistic tradition and a remarkable level of craftsmanship in a variety of materials: stone, shell, ivory, wood, leaf and feathers. The author describes the range and diversity of Cook Islands art, including both ceremonial and functional objects and outlines the materials employed, the processes of manufacture and the function of the objects within the context of traditional island society.

Dale Idiens became Assistant Keeper in charge of the ethnographic collections of the Royal Scottish Museum (now the National Museums of Scotland) in 1964 after graduating from university. These collections include a large Polynesian section with important Cook Islands material. As part of a project to develop the Cook Islands collection Dale Idiens visited Rarotonga in 1982 in order to commission replicas of traditional artefacts. Since 1983 she has been Keeper of the Department of History and Applied Art in the National Museums of Scotland and is Deputy Director (Collections) there.

Peruvian Pottery

George Bankes £4.99

978 0 7478 0013 2 (Shire Ethnography 15) 72 pp, 68 ills.

Before its conquest by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century Peru had a long tradition of pottery making which has been traced back to about 3000 BC in the Upper Amazon. Some of the decorated styles have become recognised as being among the major artistic achievements of the American Indians. This book traces the development of the main styles of Peruvian pottery from earliest times up to the Spanish conquest and sets these within their cultural context. It looks at the technology employed, using a combination of the examination of finished pieces, modern experiments in manufacturing reproductions of ancient pots, and studies of modern potters working with pre-Hispanic technology. Next the iconography of the principal ancient styles is studied, showing its content and overall themes, with a section on fakes and reproductions. The last section of the book looks at Peruvian pottery today to see how it has been influenced by European technology and artistry, with special attention to areas where ancient technology and artistry have continued or been revived using evidence from field research.

George Banks spent a year doing post-graduate study in the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Berkeley, where he carried out research on Moche pottery. After visiting Peru he went to the Institute of Archaeology, London University, to continue post-graduate study. He was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship which enabled him to spend three months studying modern potters on the north coast of Peru and making a collection of their wares that is now in Manchester Museum, where he is Keeper of Ethnology.

Polynesian Barkcloth

Simon Kooijman £4.99

978 0 85263 943 6 (Shire Ethnography 7) 64 pp, 40 ills.

The Polynesian islands lie in an equilateral triangle in the vast expanse of the Pacific. The inhabitants were famed for their barkcloth, or tapa, which had aroused the admiration of the early European travellers. The main source of material is the paper mulberry tree, which is of Asian origin and was introduced into the Pacific by the ancestors of the Polynesians. Tapa was put to a wide variety of uses, ranging from ordinary daily clothing to elaborately ornamented ceremonial pieces. Although the manufacture and decoration of barkcloth in Polynesia had a number of common elements, there were differences between the work in central and northern Polynesia and that in the islands in the west.

Simon Kooijman was appointed Curator at the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde (National Museum of Ethnology) in Leiden, where he was in charge of the Oceanic Department. He has written books on the barkcloth of Indonesia and Polynesia, the art of Lake Sentani and the Mimika area in Irian Jaya and on the material culture of the Star Mountains in the Central Highlands. He has now retired from the Leiden museum.

Polynesian Sound-producing Instruments

Richard Moyle £4.99

978 0 7478 0095 8 (Shire Ethnography 20) 64 pp, 41 ills.

Despite its vastness, Polynesia, the last major region of the Pacific Ocean to be colonised, contains cultures and languages which are relatively homogenous. Two subgroups, Eastern and Western Polynesia, share not only social structure and beliefs about the supernatural world, but also, in some instances, types of instruments used for musical and signalling purposes. This book introduces the variety of Polynesian instruments, from the familiar slit drums and skin drums to the less common nose-flutes, uniquely constructed mouth flutes and disposable jew's harps. The range of instruments now obsolete is also examined. Whether they are used to accompany dancing, for signalling, to represent divine voices, for private communication or for entertainment, sound-producing instruments are an integral and dynamic part of Polynesian culture.

Richard Moyle has spent a total of four years engaged in ethnomusicological fieldwork in Polynesia and a further four years living with Aboriginal groups in central Australia studying music and ritual; this resulted in two books. He has taught ethnomusicology at the University of Hawaii and is currently lecturer in ethnomusicology at the University of Auckland.

Mexican Textile Techniques

Chloë Sayer £4.99

978 0 85263 970 2 (Shire Ethnography 9) 64 pp, 41 ills.

More than four and a half centuries have passed since the Spanish Conquest, yet Mexico is still inhabited by nearly sixty Indian peoples. Many wear highly distinctive costumes and use textile skills inherited from the ancient civilisations of the Aztec and the Maya. Traditional fibres such as cotton and agave fibre are still spun with a spindle and woven on the backstrap loom. Cloth may be elaborately brocaded, gauze-woven to resemble lace, or intricately warp-patterned. This book considers the principal fibres used in modern Mexico and methods of preparation. There is a section on dyes and dyeing procedures such as ikat. Weaving techniques are described in detail, together with methods for embellishing finished cloth such as embroidery and appliqué. The final chapter concentrates on the wide range of garments which are still worn in contemporary Indian Mexico.

Chloë Sayer has been researching Mexican arts and crafts, especially costume, since 1973, and she has worked as a freelance television researcher in Mexico and Spain for Channel 4 and the BBC. She was awarded a travelling fellowship in 1978 by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and has mounted exhibitions of Mexican ethnography in London at the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Horniman Museum.

Textiles of the Kuna Indians of Panama

Herta Puls £4.99

978 0 85263 942 9 (Shire Ethnography 6) 72 pp, 67 ills.

This book records something of the lifestyle of the Kuna Indians, and concentrates upon the mola, the traditional blouse made and worn by women.