520 
Goran Aijmer 
Anthropos 99.2004 
The warawara malanggan 
as an Imaginary Object 
In the Lesu area, particular carved objects known 
as malanggan were displayed on certain ritual 
occasions. Powdermaker reports on these objects 
in a general way, from which we learn that 
Malanggans are the elaborate carvings connected with 
mortuary rites, and are the most important ritual objects 
in the society (Powdermaker 1933: 102). 3 
The objects are wooden and intricately carved and they 
are covered with several coats of paint (124). 
The malanggans vary in appearance; some are the figure 
of one man, while others are intricate carvings contain 
ing the figures of several people, each one representing 
a dead clan relative. Still others have various birds, 
fish, and snakes on them. The animals used seem to be 
merely familiar ones of the environment, and without 
any totemic significance ... Each malanggan will also 
be known as a male or a female one. They are usually 
brightly painted, red and yellow being the dominant 
colours (317). 
Powdermaker notes that in her day the malanggan 
rituals seemed to have lost much of their original 
meaning, but she does not say explicitly why she 
thinks this was the case. Having exhausted the 
material in the area where she worked, she presents 
us with the facts as she found them at that time. 
She adds that undoubtedly much more could be 
said about them and, while writing, anticipates that 
a visit to the Tabar group of islands near by - 
from which the carvings seemed to have come 
- might reveal more information. Powdermaker 
takes the view that there is always the possibil 
ity of eventually obtaining some historical clue 
as to their original meaning - but at that time 
the historical approach, which could have been 
useful in throwing light on the malanggan of the 
present, could unfortunately not be matched by any 
history (21 f.). 
These well-known carved figures have attract 
ed a great deal of attention from ethnographers 
and anthropologists alike through the history of 
the anthropological discipline. They were man 
ufactured in most areas of central and northern 
New Ireland and the Tabar Islands and, through 
the diligence of eager collectors, have found their 
ways into many museums around the world, where 
they are rightly admired for their intricate “gothic” 
craftsmanship, their fantastic “surrealist” shapes 
3 Henceforth the main source (Powdermaker 1933) will be 
referred to only by reference to page number. 
and intense colouring. The oldest pieces known 
date from the final decades of the 19th century. 
No malanggans, survive in their own environment, 
simply because after being displayed at rituals, 
they are left to decay in the forest. Sadly these 
early collections are badly documented and there is 
generally little or nothing to indicate in which part 
of New Ireland they were once carved. Styles and 
designs seem to have been spread widely through 
the drifting of patterns and were not necessarily 
associated with one particular linguistic area or set 
of villages. Of course, this extensive distribution 
of conventional forms does not mean that the same 
shape inevitably expressed the same iconic motifs 
or discursive messages all over the island. There 
may well have been significant shifts in their ritual 
use and their accompanying imaginary meanings. 
About this practically nothing is known. 
The output of learned works concerned with 
this genre of Melanesian art is thus considerable 
and has formed a classical field of anthropological 
enquiry. The present contribution to the still ongo 
ing discussion is but a more modest one and will 
concern only one particular brand of malanggan, 
which, unusually, was not carved and is in a totally 
different style. My discussion of this sort of sym 
bolic object will take as its starting point a part 
of Powdermaker’s early ethnography, but I shall 
also look at some other, earlier and later accounts 
of the Notsi-speaking area - and make some ex 
cursions beyond - to make the picture as rich as 
possible. My aim is always to apply contemporary 
anthropological and symbological thinking to early 
ethnography in an attempt to reconstruct premod- 
ern processes of ritual and aesthetic life in this 
small segment of Melanesia. 
Powdermaker tells us only a few things about 
this quite different type of malanggan object used 
in Lesu, which she describes as follows; 
Here ... was ... the warawara malanggan ... In the 
centre was the large breast ornament, kepkep, and around 
it was an intricate weaving of different-coloured leaves 
(311; cf. 317). 
The context for this brief description is one pat' 
ticular funeral: 
About the middle of the morning a group of twenty 
women of the Hawk moiety, their hair decorated with 
leaves, entered the [village] compound singing. Tubung 
was wailing over the body of her dead mother. The 
group of women advanced in block formation to the 
coffin, and lifting it to their shoulders carried it into 
the cemetery. Tubung walked behind wailing. They 
deposited the coffin by the open grave which had