Systems of areal integration: Some considerations based on the admiralty Islands of Northern Melanesia¹

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes This paper is based on work done in collaboration with Dr. Margaret Mead. Specifically, it takes off from a paper we wrote in 1956 on "Political Structures of the Admiralty Islands" (MS.). I draw very much upon her section of this paper. I draw as well on Mead's earlier field work as described in Mead ( 1930b and 1930c and, especially, 1934). This paper might well have been presented under co‐authorship, except that it involves some of my personal responses to current literature and issues on which there has not been time to consult with Dr. Mead, and for which she is not to be held responsible when my speculations go astray. Our knowledge of the Admiralties is based on the work of Mead and Fortune in 1928 and of Mead and Schwartz in 1953–54, the latter being an expedition of the American Museum of Natural History under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. Aside from some of the main publications of Mead, Fortune, and Schwartz Usted in the References Cited, the reader will find in Nevermann (1934) a useful compilation of the older literature. Dr. Mead and I axe now planning an intensive two year survey of the Admiralty Islands to fill in gaps in our knowledge of the many ethnic groups not yet studied. We hope to be able to resolve much that must be presented here only tentatively. This article was written while the author was a National Institutes of Health Special Research Fellow MSP 13, 549, at the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale, Paris.