Magazines - Tribal Art Spring 2011

By Raymond Corbey, philosopher and anthropologist, and holds a chair in the epistemology of archeology in the Faculties of Archaeology and Philosophy of Leiden University.

Introduction
In 1905, Dutch Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC) established their first mission post among the Marind Anim people on the swampy south-west coast of what was then Dutch New Guinea (present-day Indonesian Irian Jaya). The Dutch government had just established an outpost there, not far from the border with British New Guinea to the east, prompted by complaints from the British about the intensive head-hunting activities by the neighboring Marind Anim. The missionaries were to witness the swift and dramatic demise of this ancient traditional culture, whose intricate cosmology, complex initiation ceremonies, spectacular art, and intensive headhunting they recorded in writing and in hundreds of remarkable photographs.