Sexuality and Garden Ritual in the Trobriands and Tikopia: Tudava meets the Atua I Kafika

Abstract

There are remarkable parallels between the rituals performed over the yam gardens by the Trobriand Islanders and those performed by the Tikopia. The strikingly similar garden rituals appear to be dramatizations, not simply of the mythic origin and structure of the gardens, but of the mythic origin and structure of society itself. The metaphor used in both cases is that of human reproduotion. Many of the differences between the two ritual systems appear to relate, in the first place, to differing theories of human reproduction and, behind them, to differing rules of descent.

Contesting Marshall Sahlins on Kinship

“…Trobrianders refer to this process by an expression which Austen (:103) translates as ‘hammering,’ which corresponds fairly closely to our mildly obscene use of ‘banging’ and ‘pounding’ to refer to male thrusting in intercourse. A comparable sort of ‘hammering’ occurs in Trobriand garden magic, wherein a man repeatedly strikes with a pole or stick the soil of his wife's garden, expressly likened to her body (Brindley :17–40; Eyde :70–71). One of Mosko's informants ‘likened the soil to a womb and the stick to an erect penis’ (Mosko :686).…”

“…Here, I think, we need to recall that the Trobriand subclan is construed to be a part of one of the four clans that, in native theory, have always existed, that emerged from the Underworld at the Beginning (Eyde :67–68; Hutchins :21; Malinowski :165, 342). Despite its ‘matrilineal’ character, it is thus much like Aboriginal Australian patri‐clans, which Stanner (:253) aptly called ‘sacramental corporations of a perennial order.’ Malinowski (:179) himself noted that the ‘ignorance’ theory ‘gives a good theoretical foundation for matriliny: for the whole process of introducing new life into a community lies between the spirit world and the female … ‘This ‘new life,’ he further tells us, is held to be a re‐incarnation of an old one, which merely housed its spirit, and that this spirit has always existed and will continue to do so, going to yet another individual after the demise of its present host.…”