Pourquoi les maisons ? Parce que les barrières, tiens !

Abstract

Starting from some archaeologists’ pungent critique of his previous interpretation of the variability of Anga techniques (in Papua New Guinea), the author returns to the distribution maps he published long ago. He puts forward some arguments showing that the approaches in terms of style, identity, or power cannot cope with the lack of historical background in the Anga case and just hide what has to be understood, namely the specific role of artefacts in social relations. The example of what is at stake in the making of a Baruya garden fence – that is, the non-verbal communication of key features and tensions of the local culture – illustrates an important turn in the theory of material culture. Anthropologists are no more looking for vague principles that might “structure” a series of functionally unrelated techniques, but it is now possible explore the ways in which a technique, in its very materiality, shows and reproduces social relations. With this respect, the Anga houses studied by A. Coudart probably have a similar function.

Keywords

• Anga
• New Guinea
• non-verbal communication
• operational sequence
• technical choices