講題：TIAN XIA IN THE KULA RING? An historical hypothesis about the structuring of one system into new circumstances

講者：Fred Damon (Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of Virginia)

時間：2024/5/15（三）15：00-17：00，會後有happy hour（限人類所師生參與）

地點：清華大學人社院C304教室

主辦單位：清華大學人類學研究所

合辦單位：清大世界南島暨原住民族中心

摘要：This paper synthesizes on-going research on structures that organized productive relationships in the northeast corner of the Kula Ring in Papua New Guinea. Although based on local ethnographic and archaeological research, the data argues for contexts stemming from the Austronesian expansion out of East Asia some 6000 years ago. This interpretation follows from an understanding of Chinese ethnography and history concerning tian xia (天下). Although this comparative perspective begins to take shape in my 2017 book TREES, KNOTS, AND OUTRIGERS, a 2017 return to the island consolidated the attempt when a long-time island friend and instructor informed me that the Milky Way, not the opposition sunrise/sunset, organizes fundamental spatial and temporal orientations and that the Big Dipper and Southern Cross were “the same:” What could that mean? The presentation will conclude by showing how these ideas seem embedded in the remains of public works stemming from more than a 1000 years ago. They probably anticipate relationships found in the Kula over the last 400-700 years.