Some comparative remarks about the Dani of the Baliem valley and the Dani at Bokondini

Abstract

T he name "Dani" refers to about 150,000 to 200,000 people (Bromley; 1960, 235) living in the Central Highlands of West New Guinea.To a certain extent they form a cultural unit and in this paper I would like to discuss some identical and diverse elements in the cultures of two Dani groupings.The groupings are Dani living in the upper catchment area of the Hablifoeri and Dani living in the Grand Baliem Valley.For brevity I will refer to the Grand Baliem Valley as the "Baliem Valley" or as the "Valley".The Central Highlands of New Guinea form a very rugged, mountainous area extending for over 600 miles.Here and there they are over 75 miles wide.The highest peaks exceed 16,000 f eet, while some of the valley floors are over 6500 feet.The Dani live in the western, Indonesian, half of the Highlands.The exploration of this area has not yet been completed and a large part of its population has not yet been brought under control.The development of the eastern, Australian, half proceeded more quickly.Only a few remote spots are not yet under control.The economie development has progressed further than in the western part and anthropological investigations took place on a larger scale.From the data which have become known so far about the inhabitants of both the eastern and the western parts of the Highlands it is clear that great cultural resemblance exists between both areas (see e.g.Watson; 1964, 11).This will be touched upon in the course of this 1 This paper is a slightly expanded and translated version of a paper read in Dutch during the "Ethnologendag 1965", held in Amsterdam on 25 April 1965.lts content is partly based on data gathered during field work I carried out as a Ph.D. Scholar of the Australian National University.I would like to thank the University and especially the members of the department of anthropology for the many-sided support they gave me.At least some of the geographical names used in this paper are obsolete.After the Indonesian government took over the administration of West New Guinea, a number of geographical names were altered.At the time of writing however, the new names were not available to me.

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