ABSTRACT
I once wrote a book about the pervasive social significance that the decorated skin traditionally has among a people of Highland New Guinea called the Wahgi (O’Hanlon 1989). It is now sufficiently long ago that when I occasionally consult the book today, I do so with a sense of faint surprise at its contents. But the question I want to work towards now is: what is the significance of the more enveloping non-indigenous clothing mainly worn today in a society, like Wahgi, which is preoccupied by ‘skin’? Do the same concerns translate across from one to the other integument? If not, why not? If so, do they do so directly, or are they transformed? While the answers I have to these questions are only provisional, the attempt to find them may reveal a little of the ethnography of introduced clothing and its significance in Highland New Guinea.
