Introduction

Housing and Community Settings

Clothing and Personal Adornment

Food And Food Customs

Travel and Transportation

Tools and Weapons

Ceramics, Weaving, Metallurgy

Introduction

In The Church and Cultures, Louis J. Luzbetak points out that culture is so interrelated that we can never fully understand it by looking at its individual parts. Culture is actually the product of the various parts interacting with one another. For example, we can only understand the political organization of the Yanomamo as it is relates to all other parts of that culture. Yet because we encounter such diverse ways of living in tribal groups, we Westerners need an organized method of dissecting a culture to better understand how the whole works. In an attempt to provide a resource for the tribal culture learner, we have compiled the following notes on the universals of culture. A brief description of each of the eight universal parts of culture is followed by illustrations from other cultures of each universal. These illustrations will broaden the perspective of the missionary as to the wide variety that God built into cultures, allowing them to survive and propagate over the years. We encourage further study of these eight universals through reading, watching video tapes and any other means of expanding our understanding of how people live.

Several books are excellent and would be useful tools... Cultural Anthropology: a Christian Perspective by Grunlan and Mayers; The Church and Cultures, by Louis J. Luzbetak; Notes and Queries on Anthropology by A Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institution of Great Britain and Ireland, (no longer in print, but should be in the field library or available for use through a consultant); Culture and Human Values by Jacob Loewen; and especially monographs (books written about one culture).

Since Adam and Eve first fashioned fig leaves into clothing, man has taken materials from his environment and made for himself a secondary environment. Material culture has the special distinction of linking the behavior of the individual with external man made things... artifacts. These artifacts are created from raw materials by means of some system of production significant to the culture and have both function and form. The economy of the culture may exchange them along social and political lines, or they may remain solely in the possession of the one who made them.

Form refers to the real material object and its utilitarian use. An arrow from the plains Indians of the United States could be recognized by the way it was made and used, yet no two were very much alike. The more valued an item was, the more likely it was to include refinements of craft and design, expressive of interest and effort beyond its basic use.

These items of material culture or artifacts also have function. Function refers to the actions, ideas, values, significance of anything (living, material or constructed), the use the item serves, and the work it is intended to perform. In material culture function would have to do with the ideas, and values a group has toward the elements of their material culture. Is a watch worn by a tribal man because his culture demands time consciousness, or is it mere decoration? When the Anasasi of the south west United States disappeared, the form of their material culture, (pots, grinding boards, clothing, and houses with all their embellishments) remained to be discovered hundreds of years later. But their function was left to be guessed at by archaeologists. As a matter of fact, one of the problems museums face is to try, through diagrams, dioramas, and other means, to give the spectator an idea of what the artifacts mean in the behavioral setting of the culture concerned.

Material Culture is what we are often busily taking slides of when we first visit a tribe. Unfortunately, we soon grow numb to their significance as the "props" for the "drama" of the culture that we are investigating. An investigation into the process of the creation, use, and disposal of significant items of material culture will often serve a dual purpose. This serves as a springboard into the abstract areas of social and political organization, and world view.

Here are a few significant examples of material culture from various areas in the world. Read through these and through the Expanded Universal Outline to try to expand your understanding of material culture.

The Cubeo live in villages although often the entire village lives under one roof. This big house, a maloca, signifies unity. The village is divided into four zones: the river, the cleared plaza including the maloca, the garden zone, and the outer zone which is the women's private zone - the manioc gardens. Sometimes the manioc gardens are separated from the village by a 10 foot deep moat. The location of the village indicates status. Higher ranking ones are nearer the mouth of the river, and the lower ranking ones are upstream and along small tributaries.

The Cubeo are indoor people and almost everything is done inside the big maloca. The largest one found contained 16 households. The front plaza and reception foyer is the men's end, and the kitchen and rear plaza are the women's territory. The bigger the maloca is, the more prestious it is. A small maloca is an open acknowledgment of social inferiority. Another sign of prestige is the distance the manioc gardens are from the maloca. In low ranking ones they are right near the back of the house. Cleanliness of the front plaza shows it has a good headman. Occasionally families who can't get along break away from the main maloca and go live by themselves. Detached households like this often become beggars and wanderers.

A typical Dusun village house is usually one rectangular room with a small attached structure for storage. Houses are built 3 to 4 feet off the ground on posts with frames of hardwood poles. The floors, roof, and walls are made of split bamboo tied with rattan (reedlike stems of a climbing palm). Inside are some small hardwood seating blocks, and often a raised seating platform runs the length of the house. There is one door opening onto a roofed veranda. Doors and windows are kept shut to keep out spirits.

In the center of the community is a trophy structure, a small square platform raised on wooden posts with roof and sides of bamboo. Heads and hands of victims are kept there as a reminder of the bravery of village warriors.

At the entrance of a Kalinga village is a small shelter which contains guardian stones and a powerful guardian spirit. Proper respect must be paid at this shrine or there will be some sort of calamity.

Each Gururumba village has a house where the adult males live. This house is larger than the other houses and on the opposite side of the path running through the village. The men's house is an information center, a decision-making center, a ritual center and a dwelling. The men gather there to discuss plans for the day, to decide on matters of importance, and perform secret rituals. They also work there preparing costumes and practicing for ceremonial occasions.

The Tarahumara have long used caves as habitations, although they are less elaborate today than they used to be. The opening in the face of the cliff or bluff is walled up almost to the top, where an opening is left for ventilation and the escape of smoke. In a few cases, a crude wooden door frame is inserted into the wall and planks or saplings are leaned against the frame to serve as a door. In most cases, the door is a large stone in summer and a hanging skin in winter. The outer wall is constructed of rocks that are somewhat carefully chosen, so that they will fit tightly one on top of the other, without the use of mortar. Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century tried to compel them to live in villages but they refused to do so, undoubtedly because of spotty distribution of good soil, unhappy experiences that they had when forced to live in villages, and mainly because of the system of inheritance.

A more primitive house type used by Indians in remote areas could be described as a roof-on-the-ground type, hardly high enough for a person to stand in. Stones are piled up to form a triangular end wall and plastered with mud. Another such end wall is constructed parallel to this wall about eight feet away. A ridge pole is laid between the two walls and boards are leaned against the ridge pole. Access to this structure is accomplished by removing several boards.

The Yanomamo permanent house - shabono - is probably the most sophisticated thing produced by these people. All materials for it come from the jungle - poles, vines, and leaves. Much cooperation, planning, labor and patience is required to build it. Unfortunately, the shabono lasts only 1 or 2 years because the leaves begin to leak, or the entire village is burned to the ground to destroy all the bugs. These can become such a nuisance that the roof is literally alive with bugs, loud enough to be heard all the time.

There are no partitions in these apartment-like houses. Family areas are marked off by fires and hammocks. That's all the privacy they have, too, because to move into a corner shows you're immodest, drawing attention to yourself.

A Kalapalo village can be divided into 2 areas: public and private. The public areas can be used by everyone, but individual household groups "own" the private areas. The private areas include the houses, gardens, and a few paths between them, and no one else can approach these without a formal announcement. The public areas can be divided into two areas: one area, where people may move without having people talk to or about them even though they are often visible from the plaza or the houses, and the second area in which a Kalapalo is constantly bombarded with silly questions and greetings which must be answered politely, whether or not he is on good terms with the speaker. Even the most intimate errands must be acknowledged, like this typical one: "Where are you going?" "I am going to defecate." "To defecate?" "Yes." "Do so." So, when they want to avoid such scrutiny, they use the area where they can move about relatively freely.

The Eskimos could be considered nomadic in the sense that they rarely spend more than a few months in a settlement during the winter and even then they may not return to the same house. The rest of the time is spent going to different areas on hunting trips. A trip for musk ox skins could take a year or more.

They discovered that one way to keep cold air out of their igloos was to trap it in a tunnel leading into the igloo. The tunnel is constructed with a dip, so that the cold air, which is heavier, is caught in a natural trap, thus permitting the interior of the house to be heated much more economically.

The Ayore women with long hair are the married ones. They wear it shoulder length, not tied back in any way. Unmarried women or those that leave their husbands have short hair. If a married woman appears one day with her hair cut off, this would be evidence she had left her husband and was now single. When the women are single again, they act single - like giggly teenagers looking for a husband - even though they did act very much like adults before.

For a Manus wedding, the girl's face is tattooed and her hair dyed red. She is weighed down head to toe with economic wealth and trade goods, gifts to her husband's people. After her marriage, her head is clean shaven and she is forbidden to ornament herself lest her husband's spirits suspect her of flirting.

The Cubeo are proud of their personal appearance and apply pigment with great care. They use dye rollers and applicators to draw designs on themselves. Every person must have their own designs, because during the ceremonies the women can tell who a masked person is only by the design on his thighs. To them, ornamentation is required for human status. They consider the neighboring Macu not human because they have no ornaments. The babies are painted with spots and given a necklace on their first day.

Their fur clothing is ideal to protect them from the harsh climate they live in. They wear boots of sealskin, stockings of rabbit fur, trousers of bearskin, coats of fox fur in winter, and seal fur in summer. They wear an inner coat of birdskin in winter. Their clothing has more to do with warmth than modesty. They wear no clothing in the igloo.

One of the Yapese chiefs forbade any woman to come into the town with a blouse on. But, he insisted that all women would have to wear grass skirts reaching almost to the ankles. To the Yapese, bare legs are a sign of immodesty, while the uncovered breasts are perfectly proper.

Many people in Haiti wear shoes (shoes are required by law in the capital) but many others, especially in the small towns and villages, go barefooted. It's not just personal taste, but a mark of social standing. A Haitian doctor who was enjoying a little recreation was told that there was a patient waiting for him in a nearby building. The doctor's immediate question was, "Does he have shoes on?" If the answer were "Yes", he would be obliged to go immediately but if "No", then the man could be expected to wait.

Gururumba of the same sex may hold hands or lock arms while walking, but not people of opposite sex. A common stance is: arms crossed over the chest, the hands in the arm pits, and one leg wound around the other. Squatting with feet flat on the ground, or sitting with legs extended fully to the front without a back rest is common.

The Dusun husk rice using a long wooden pestle which is pounded into a wooden block with a bowl shaped depression filled with rice. They only prepare enough rice for one day as it is unlucky to have surpluses.

Rice wine and coconut toddy are usual drinks. The rice wine is served by unmarried girls and women who want to be unfaithful at feasts. Touching hands in passing the cup is an invitation.

The Cubeo women form the manioc mash into a cake upon the flat circular oven at the rear of the house, taking turns at the communal oven. Other cooking is done over the hearths in each household area. They attach social meaning to the exchange of food - food doesn't pass casually between people merely to stop hunger. People visiting always carry their own food as they can count on not being fed. Men give game and fish to wives and mothers, and food is also given as a token of ceremonial friendship between two people.

The Klingit fished for salmon in the rivers. The first salmon that was caught in a season was honored as a chief and they had a feast for him. This was so he wouldn't warn his brothers against being caught.

A guest among the Bunyoro is always politely received, and he should be offered something to eat if the hosts are eating. It is bad manners to refuse something to eat, for it suggests that you suspect your host of being a sorcerer who wants to poison you. Eating and drinking together expresses the friendly relations which should exist between neighbors. It is thought to be a bad thing for a man to eat alone; they say that in the old days a man could be 'fined' by an informal court of neighbors if he persisted in eating by himself.

The Semai have 4 major categories of food and eating foods mixed from these classes is sure to bring some disturbance. They should not be mixed, served at the same meal, or use the same dishes. In fact, dishwater should be dumped in different areas according to which kind of food has been served.

The Asmat way of cooking white flourlike sago starch is to roast it over the fire until it becomes crusty on the outside. The family then eats the crust, then roasts the lump until it becomes crusty again, and repeats this until nothing is left.

The Choco man goes out to hunt at daybreak. He comes back at 2:00 p.m. He doesn't eat anything until then, but when he comes home, he eats whatever is in the pot. Meanwhile, his wife puts in green bananas, and when they are done he eats them. By then she's fixed some of the game he brought home and he eats that. He eats from 6 - 8 courses until he goes to bed.

Yanomamo etiquette dictates that meat must be accompanied by vegetable food and vice versa. It is an insult, for example, to offer someone meat without offering a vegetable at the same time.

Strawberries are almost sacred to the Seneca. The juice of them is a drink which is part of ceremonies. They say that strawberries grow along the path to heaven.

Two single lady missionaries were working among them, and their behavior was always `above board', but the Indians weren't impressed. The Indians assumed that, like all other young women, these also had their lovers but that they prevented pregnancy by drinking limeade every morning for breakfast. The missionaries drank it for their general health, but the people thought it was to produce abortion, for lime juice is called in their language "baby killer".

The Gururumba have gardens in many different places scattered up the mountain side, so the people travel quite a bit from garden to garden and stay in the garden while work needs to be done. Casual visiting is unknown and no one would go to another village without a good reason (business or ceremony).

A woman is essential on long trips, to take care of the clothes, water and food. If a wife can't go due to pregnancy, small baby or sickness, she will stay with a neighbor while his wife goes and takes her place.

A Shilluk man would never think of passing a person on a road or path without coughing or in some way making his presence known. Then he would say, "I am here, I beg the road." The polite reply would be, "God send you on."

Trails lead out from the Yanomamo village in several directions. Some of them end in the gardens that surround the village but a few of them continue on into the jungle and lead to other villages. The unexperienced eye would not recognize them as trails as they are hardly more than winding paths through brush, over or around logs, through streams and swamps, and up hills. The Yanomamo take the most direct route to their destination regardless of the terrain. A foreigner learns how to recognize a trail only after considerable experience. The most obvious signs are the many broken twigs at about knee height left by Yanomamo travelers who are always snapping off brush and twigs as they walk. Another sign is the occasional log that is worn smooth from the tread of many travelers who prefer to walk along a log rather than go around it.

Whenever Kalapalo women must go outdoors, they are almost always running or walking clustered together in groups, close enough to be touching one another's bodies. On their way to the lake to bathe or to other houses to visit, women literally run across the public area of the village, where self is displayed openly, to avoid the usual taunts of the men. (See previous example under Housing and Community Setting).

If an Araona man wants to go to a lake for fishing and the trail goes near a man's house, he makes a new one because he doesn't want to go near and be suspected of wife snatching. Because of the danger of wife snatching, there may be quite a few trails running parallel to each other but only 8 or 10 yards apart.

One of the most cherished customs of the Iban is that men, especially young men, should venture out into the world to seek their fortunes. These journeys, or `bejelai', often last for several years and often go to the remotest corner of Borneo, Malaya and Indonesia. The men have 2 main aims: to gain valuable property and social prestige. For most young men these journeys are an overruling passion.

The Trobrianders use much magic and many spells when preparing a canoe. When they find a tree, they have to call the evil spirit in the tree to make it come out. If the spirit doesn't come out, the canoe will be heavy, or the wood would be full of knots and there would be holes in the canoe, or the wood would quickly rot. After the tree is cut down, they trim the branches and make it as light as possible because they have to drag it back to the village. To make it easier to drag, pieces of wood are put on the ground every few yards, so the log can move on them instead of the rocky and uneven soil. It's still quite heavy, though, so they beat it with a bunch of dry grass and mutter spells to take the heaviness out of it. Then they beat it with a different bunch of grass to put lightness into it. Finally when the log is in the village, it is either placed in the center of the village or in front of the builder's house. Many spells are involved to make it easy to chop out, etc. At first, men help the carpenter but towards the end, when it takes very careful work to get the walls thin enough and even all around, the carpenter works by himself, which takes a long time.

The Onas use a bola when hunting wanako, a small deer. There are 2 or more stone or iron balls attached to cords. This is thrown at the legs of animals and entangles them.

The Semai have 16 different kinds of traps. A spring-spear trap has a razor sharp bamboo spear that snaps at prey when the bent sapling it's attached to is bumped. Noose traps can be laid on trails or trees. Basket traps are set up in the water for fish.

Every Cubeo man makes his own fishing equipment - canoe, line, net, basket traps, splint weirs, bow and arrows. They don't consider a person an adult if he hasn't made these for himself. Girls shun boys who haven't made a canoe.

An Ojibway brave used a harmless stick called a coup stick to perform his bravest acts. If he succeeded in touching an enemy with it, he could wear a feather as a medal for his bravery.

Dusun Indians use bamboo for almost everything. They carve it into knife blades, mouth harps, hair pins, clothing clasps, and eating utensils. To make a spear tip with razor sharp edges, they sharpen it and harden it in a fire. They also build bamboo into sections to make it a piston bellows for metal forging.

The Tepehuan use a bone husking peg to pry ears of corn from the stalk. It's made from the ankle bone of a deer, goat or cow and is anchored to the fingers by fiber from an agave plant or leather thongs. The fiber is run through two holes that have been made in the instrument. Both men and women remove the shucks from the ears and then toss the ears into burden baskets strapped to their shoulders.

The higher ranking men wear quartz cylinder pendants. The stone is ground into shape with volcanic ash and the hole is bored with a bamboo drill. A headman would have one with the hole drilled through the length of the quartz pendant. The size indicated the wearer's status in war and hunt.

According to the Kaukas, metals are loaded with "spiritual-stuff" so they have to have special protection when working with it.

The Kalapalo cultivate cotton, which, together with a palm fiber, is used to make hammocks. Only males do the planting and harvesting but women spin it into thread. When not used for hammocks, the thread is wound into large balls and given to husbands, brothers, and lovers who use it for decorative knee and arm bandages and for belts.

They also cultivate gourds to use for containers. They dry them, split them open, and put a black lacquer made from plant juices on the inside. They polish the inside, then rub urucu on the outside. These gourds are very good for dippers, ladles, and water containers, and are greatly valued. Compared to ceramic vessels, they're just as good except for cooking, because they're lightweight and relatively unbreakable.

Compared with the Washo and Mono, the Miwoks twined basketry is coarse. The burden baskets usually don't have any ornamental patterns. To use even the most closely woven baskets for gathering seeds, they have to fill the holes with soaproot juice so the seeds don't work through. The Washo and Mono weave some of their baskets so finely that they didn't have to use any coating to prevent seeds from leaking through.

For feasts, especially those given by chiefs on special occasions, large "gift" baskets are usually used for serving food, and sometimes for cooking it, but are never used at feasts connected with the dead. Sometimes he gives it to a young man as a wedding present. When full, the basket is very heavy and several men carry it to the center of the assembly house using straps tied around it. Then two women dip the food out into smaller baskets and serve it. A basket like this is always owned by the chief and is never communal property. He might present or trade it to another chief, or he might burn it in honor of some departed relative or friend. When he dies, the basket must be burned. Sometimes these baskets hold water for the ceremonial washing of mourners.

They also weave trinket baskets, baskets to hang their tools in, seed sifters, cradles, winnowing baskets, cooking baskets, basket rackets used in ballgames, etc.