I am an anthropologist
specializing
in the study of religion, dreaming, and cultural change. One of my
enduring interests is people's evidential motives for
supernatural beliefs, including how dreaming and the
imagination interact with sensory perception in systems of knowledge. I have conducted ethnographic and
linguistic
fieldwork
among
the Asabano people of Duranmin, Sandaun Province,
Papua New Guinea in 1991, 1994–95, 2005, and 2007 (at the right, I'm
sitting with
Sablaio in
2005).
THE ASABANO
The Asabano live in the
interior of New Guinea, which lies in the South Pacific to the north of
Australia (to the left, Belok is dressed in traditional finery, ready
to
perform at a drum dance in 2005). New
Guinea is a vast equatorial
land
of contrasts. Sandy beaches, mangrove inlets, and grassy fields
rise
from the sparkling turquoise ocean. In parts of the interior,
giant
rivers meander through huge steaming swamps, while farther inland
majestic
mountains are carpeted with rainforests, grasslands, and in a few
places
even snow. Papua New Guinea, comprising the eastern half of New
Guinea
and surrounding islands, is home to hundreds of small societies and a
remarkable
diversity of cultures and languages.
The Asabano are a
thoroughly
land-based people. Living in their remote rainforests, tucked
amid
rugged mountains and stony, rushing rivers, before their first contact
with an Australian goverment
patrol in 1963, they did not know of the
ocean's
existence. Nevertheless, seashells were the preferred male dress
and a valuable exchange item. The Asabano and their trading
partners
believed that a tree spirit had created shells for people to use.
Cutting temporary gardens from
the
forest, the Asabano plant sweet potatoes, taro, sugar cane, greens,
and
other crops, supplementing this diet by raising pigs and
hunting
wild animals such as cassowaries and marsupials. Their traditional life
was punctuated by frequent
warfare
with other groups. Traditional religious practices and complex
food
taboos were designed to ensure a steady supply of nourishment and
success
in war. But Asabano culture has undergone
dramatic
change since government, commercial, and missionary contacts
accelerated after the 1960s.
While
living in Yakob Village in 1994–95 (the photo to the left was taken in
1995), I
collected
elders' memories of their traditional beliefs and practices, such as
the
keeping of ancestors' bones in sacred houses. Only men were
allowed
inside these structures, where boys underwent ordeals of initiation and
learned secret religious knowledge. I also researched the
mass
conversion of the Asabano to Christianity during a charismatic
"revival"
movement, when the sacred houses were burned to the ground and the
men's
secrets were revealed to the women. Interestingly, dreams played
a strong role in Asabano religious life before contact with the
globalized culture of the West,
during
their conversion, and up to the time of my fieldwork. Many Asabano
consider dreams to be a source of useful information and a powerful
form
of evidence that the forest is full of spirits, as their ancestors
said,
and that Jesus exists, as the missionaries later told them. In light of
these findings, I have suggested that we can better understand
religious beliefs and what makes them convincing by taking into account
how dream, trance, and
alert experiences interact, and by documenting how people distinguish
imaginary from real.
Much of my
time in the
field
was spent sitting and talking with people, often with laptop computer
in
hand (as pictured with Muluasi to the right in 1995) to write down
their tales of
cannibal witches, burnt offerings
presented
to ancestral skulls, and sightings of the Holy Spirit in the form of a
cassowary. My
presence
resulted in a new word being coined in the local Asaba language: kombiudabu
(computer). One day, when I asked a man whether he believed in
the
spirits of Asabano traditional religion, he asked me, "Does your kombiudabu
know if they exist?" My computer and other electric research
tools,
such as a video camera, sound recorder, and lights were all powered by
small solar (photovoltaic) panels. They produced plentiful
energy--enough to spare
for
my short-wave radio, which provided welcome news in my own
language. There are neither electric power lines nor vehicle roads
leading to
Duranmin. Their small airstrip is visited by small missionary
planes.
I flew in for the first time on such a plane,
the only passenger,
sitting
beside the pilot as we swooped between the mountains to make a landing
on the grass covered airstrip. The only other way out is to
walk several days through rugged mountain rainforests to the nearest
government
post at Telefomin.
The Asabano have enthusiastically
accepted Western technologies, including everything from matches and
manufactured
salt to woven cloth, canned foods, radios, airplanes, and of course
Christian prayer. They were
very pleased to have steel knives and axes to replace stone
adzes,
with which they cleared forest for their swidden gardens; however, they
continue to use bamboo knives for butchering meat because they are very
sharp and readily available. Traditional dress was already
out of fashion by 1995 (pictured to the left), except for celebrations,
when they sing, drum, and
dance
from sunset to sunrise.
Introduction:
Objects,
Gender,
and
Religion. Special issue, "Gendering Religious Objects,"
Material
Religion 3(1):4–13. [co-authored by Roger Ivar
Lohmann and Susan Starr Sered]
Ground
Stone
Adze
Production
in
Central
New
Guinea [interview with Salowa
Hetalele]. In Archaeological
Approaches to Technology, by Heather Margaret-Louise Miller. Pp. 62–64.
Amsterdam: Academic Press.
Articles Reprinted in Readers / Textbooks
2009
The Supernatural Is
Everywhere: Defining Qualities of Religion in Melanesia and Beyond. InTaking
Sides:
Clashing
Views
in
Anthropology. 4th edition. Kirk M.
Endicott and Robert Welsch, eds. Dubuque: McGraw Hill, pp. 229–236.
[The "Yes" side
of Issue 13:
"Does the
Natural-Supernatural Distinction Exist in All Cultures?" Orig. 2003.
Abridged and reprinted from Anthropological Forum 13(2):175–185]
2006
The Supernatural Is
Everywhere: Defining Qualities of Religion in Melanesia and Beyond. In Taking
Sides:
Clashing
Views in
Cultural Anthropology. 2nd edition. Kirk M. Endicott and Robert
Welsch,
eds. Dubuque: McGraw Hill, pp. 131–138 [The "Yes" side of Issue 7:
"Does the
Natural-Supernatural Distinction Exist in All Cultures?" Orig. 2003.
Abridged and reprinted from Anthropological Forum 13(2):175–185]
Dr.
Roger Ivar Lohmann
RESEARCH
The Asabano are a
thoroughly
land-based people. Living in their remote rainforests, tucked
amid
rugged mountains and stony, rushing rivers, before their first contact
with an Australian goverment
patrol in 1963, they did not know of the
ocean's
existence. Nevertheless, seashells were the preferred male dress
and a valuable exchange item. The Asabano and their trading
partners
believed that a tree spirit had created shells for people to use.
While
living in Yakob Village in 1994–95 (the photo to the left was taken in
1995), I
collected
elders' memories of their traditional beliefs and practices, such as
the
keeping of ancestors' bones in sacred houses. Only men were
allowed
inside these structures, where boys underwent ordeals of initiation and
learned secret religious knowledge. I also researched the
mass
conversion of the Asabano to Christianity during a charismatic
"revival"
movement, when the sacred houses were burned to the ground and the
men's
secrets were revealed to the women. Interestingly, dreams played
a strong role in Asabano religious life before contact with the
globalized culture of the West,
during
their conversion, and up to the time of my fieldwork. Many Asabano
consider dreams to be a source of useful information and a powerful
form
of evidence that the forest is full of spirits, as their ancestors
said,
and that Jesus exists, as the missionaries later told them. In light of
these findings, I have suggested that we can better understand
religious beliefs and what makes them convincing by taking into account
how dream, trance, and
alert experiences interact, and by documenting how people distinguish
imaginary from real. 
Much of my
time in the
field
was spent sitting and talking with people, often with laptop computer
in
hand (as pictured with Muluasi to the right in 1995) to write down
their tales of
cannibal witches, burnt offerings
presented
to ancestral skulls, and sightings of the Holy Spirit in the form of a
cassowary. My
presence
resulted in a new word being coined in the local Asaba language: kombiudabu
(computer). One day, when I asked a man whether he believed in
the
spirits of Asabano traditional religion, he asked me, "Does your kombiudabu
know if they exist?" My computer and other electric research
tools,
such as a video camera, sound recorder, and lights were all powered by
small solar (photovoltaic) panels. They produced plentiful
energy--enough to spare
for
my short-wave radio, which provided welcome news in my own
language. There are neither electric power lines nor vehicle roads
leading to
Duranmin. Their small airstrip is visited by small missionary
planes.
I flew
in for the first time on such a plane,
the only passenger,
sitting
beside the pilot as we swooped between the mountains to make a landing
on the grass covered airstrip. The only other way out is to
walk several days through rugged mountain rainforests to the nearest
government
post at Telefomin. 
PUBLICATIONS