DR. PAUL ("JIM") ROSCOE

Ph.D., University of Rochester, 1983

My particular research interests are the anthropology of war, cultural ecology, and political evolution, though I confess to being a closet generalist. My area interests are contact-era Polynesia and Melanesia; I have conducted over two years fieldwork amongst the Yangoru Boiken of the East Sepik, Papua New Guinea and have made a brief research trip to the Mountain Arapesh.

My current research projects are: The hunters and gatherers of New Guinea; The anthropology of war in Sepik and Highland New Guinea; and The emergence of political complexity in New Guinea.

Representative Publications:

1992. "Warfare, Terrain, and Political Expansion." Human Ecology 20(1):1-20.

1993. "Practice and Political Centralisation: A New Approach to Political Evolution." Current Anthropology 34(2):111-124, 133-140.

1994. "Amity and Aggression: A Symbolic Theory of Incest." (Curl Essay Prize for 1992, Royal Anthropological Institute). Man (N.S.) 28:49-76.

1995. "Of Power and Menace: Sepik Art as an Affecting Prescence." The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1:1-20.

1995 Gender Rituals: Female Initiation in Melanesia. Edited by N.C. Lutkehaus and P.B. Roscoe. Routledge, London and New York.

1995 "The Perils of 'Positivism' in Cultural Anthropology." American Anthropologist 97:492-504.

1995 "Familiar Partners? The Mountain Arapesh and the Westermarck Effect." The Journal of Anthropological Research 51:347-362.

1996 "War and Society in Sepik New Guinea." The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2:645-666.

2000 "Costs, Benefits, Typologies, and Power: The Evolution of Political Hierarchy." In Michael Diehl (ed.), Hierarchies in Action: Cui Bono?. Pp.113-133. Center for Archaeological Research, University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale.

2000 "New Guinea Leadership as Ethnographic Analogy." Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 7(2):79-126.

Telephone: (207) 581-1896
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