ABSTRACT
The question of how to define the category of “shaman”, and “shamanism”, has exercised many scholars. Either a broad or a narrow approach can be taken to this problem. The Maring people of the Jimi Valley in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea were studied by Roy Rappaport and numbers of other from the 1960s onward. Rappaport’s principal study was conducted in 1962–3 with the Tsembaga, a small group with some 200 members living in the Madang District of what was then Australian New Guinea. The Baruya are an Anga-speaking population in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. They were studied by Maurice Godelier in 1979, when they numbered just over 2,000 people. The Paiwan are among the major indigenous Austronesian groups in southern Taiwan, numbering c. 70,000, and their customs have been studied extensively by a series of researchers, including early work by Japanese scholars.
