Tracking the Ancestors

This rich ethnography, a thoroughly revised version of a book published in 1991, presents long-term and new research findings on the Nyaura (or West Iatmul) people, a society on the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea. Nyaura mythology centres around the primeval journeys of their ancestors who - accompanied by powerful, versatile crocodiles - formed the landscape and founded settlements; it is expressed and stored in numerous long song cycles and visualised in unique knotted cords. These songs exp ...