Funeral Feast 2 of 2

Re-photographed image from a villager's scrapbook taken in 1981 (Original photograph date unknown). This photo is from a ritual feast, perhaps a funeral. Mewun said that a feast wasn't really a success unless every person, every dog, every chicken, was too full to eat anymore. Careful count of donated meat and bags of rice was kept. At some feasts, every guest put a pebble into a box so a count could also be kept of people fed.

Reciprocity was involved; for example, the same number of chickens and bags of rice donated for a marriage or a funeral were given back to the donors when they next held a feast, no matter how many years later.

• Land and Custom Sustained and Revived
• Mewun Scrapbooks

• Melanesia
• Oceania
• Pacific Islands
• South West Bay (Malakula, Vanuatu)
• Wintua (Malekula, Vanuatu)

• Funeral rites and ceremonies
• Scrapbooks

• image

• No linguistic content; Not applicable

• Unknown

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2021-11-16