Place and People by William C. Clarke

Place and People

An Ecology of a New Guinean Community

by William C. Clarke

Australian National University Press, 1971, b/w photographs, maps, hardcover, dustjacket, ISBN 0708101291

Very Good Condition, book in fine condition with very minor shelf and age wear, dustjacket has some edge and shelf wear with insect marks at edge of dustjacket at back (not through to book), price-clipped dustjacket (see photographs)

'The major purpose of this book is to describe the interaction between a place and its people.  The people are a Maring-speaking clan cluster called the Bomagai-Angoiang, who number only 154 persons.  Their place, or territory, is in such a remote part of the Bismarck Mountains of Australian New Guinea that the people's first face-to-face contact with white men was delayed until 1958.
Mr Clarke's focus is on the people's subsistence behavior viewed ecologically.  In what ways are their gardening activities controlled or limited by their physical environment?  How effectively do the Bomagai-Angoiang, who have just emerged from the Stone Age, use the resources available to them?  What are the crucial links between their social lives and beliefs and their relations with their habitat?  In what ways has their completely noncommercial way of life brought about changes in their environment? Now that they have been attached to the western world, what changes will the future bring to the people and their isolated habitat?'