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The Abelam are a people who live in
Anthony Forge Films and Recordings
From the Anthony Forge Papers. MSS 411. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego. Indigenous peoples of Melanesia Ethnic groups in Papua New Guinea {{PapuaNewGuinea-stub
The Abelam are a people who live in East Sepik Province
East Sepik is a province in Papua New Guinea. Its capital is Wewak. East Sepik has an estimated population of 450,530 people (2011 census) and is 43,426 km square in size. Its density is 10.4 people per square kilometer.
History
Cherubim D ...
of Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...
. They are a farming society in which giant yams play a significant role. They live in the Prince Alexander Mountains near the north coast of the island. Their language belongs to the Sepik language family.
Farming and hunting
The Abelam live in the tropical rain forest and clear ground by burning. Their main food crops are yams,taro
Taro (; ''Colocasia esculenta'') is a root vegetable. It is the most widely cultivated species of several plants in the family Araceae that are used as vegetables for their corms, leaves, stems and Petiole (botany), petioles. Taro corms are a ...
, bananas, and sweet potatoes. They supplement this with food gathered from the rain forest as well as pigs and chickens raised domestically. They also hunt small marsupial
Marsupials are a diverse group of mammals belonging to the infraclass Marsupialia. They are natively found in Australasia, Wallacea, and the Americas. One of marsupials' unique features is their reproductive strategy: the young are born in a r ...
s and cassowaries.
Yams
Yam growing forms a large part of Abelam society. The growing of large yams (they can be as large as 80- long) determines the status of individuals as well as the whole village. At yam festivals an individual would give his largest yam to his worst enemy who would then be obligated to grow an even larger yam or have his status fall each year in which he was unable to do so. Separate villages would gather at yam festivals where the hosting village's status would be determined by the size of their yams as well as their ability to provide more food than could be eaten and carried away by the rival village. During the yam growing season, strong emotions were kept to a minimum as they were thought to impede the growth of the yams. Fighting was taboo as was sexual activity. It was thought that the yams had a spirit and could sense any of these strong emotions.Scaglion, Richard (2007). Abelam: giant yams and cycles of sex, warfare and ritual. In ''Discovering Anthropology: Researchers at Work - Cultural Anthropology'', edited by C.R. Ember and M. Ember. Pearson Prentice Hall, pp. 21-31.References
External links
Anthony Forge Films and Recordings
From the Anthony Forge Papers. MSS 411. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego. Indigenous peoples of Melanesia Ethnic groups in Papua New Guinea {{PapuaNewGuinea-stub