ABSTRACT
The LoWiili have no nucleated villages in the western European sense. In populous districts homesteads stretch continuously over the farmland, fifty, a hundred, two hundred yards apart. A cartographer can select no convenient land-mark to pin-point a settlement on his map. There are no public buildings such as men's meeting houses and the only distinctive feature to catch the eye is the closely packed strangers' quarter in the villages along the trade route. But behind this apparent lack of differentiation there is an intricate system of territorial organization. The LoWiili perform analagous rites during the opening stages of the Boore initiation; the "places of the tutelary" of the various clans sectors are all situated within the parish itself and they have no knowledge of any such shrine at their ancestral home, Sier. The three main causes of armed conflict are said to be women, the theft of pots left in the bush for white ants and the stealing of livestock.
