Location update: Jenkins Nanovic Halls, B101
This presentation situates an analysis of the deep cultural history of an island culture in Papua New Guinea’s southeast corner, the region of the Kula Ring, in reference to the 6000 year-old expansion of “Austronesian” people out of what is now southeastern China. The focus is comparative astronomy, the stimulus paradigmatic uses of the Milky Way across this region. The argument is that an analogue of China’s political cosmology, 天下, tianxia, usually translated to “All Under Heaven," operates in the northeast corner of the Kula Ring (and by implication elsewhere). The data derives from long term ethnographic research (the latest December 2023) in Melanesia, upwards of a year in southeastern China, and interaction with anthropologists and scholars of Classical China.
Originally published at reilly.nd.edu.
Frederick H. Damon, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Virginia, specializes in research on the Kula Ring of Papua New Guinea and the historical origins in East Asia.