Anthropology
228B South Stevens Hall
University of Maine
Orono, ME 04469-5790
207-581-1896 Ph/Voicemail
Paul.Roscoe@umit.maine.edu
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
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.
2004 "Latitudinal Trends in Hunter-Gatherer Diets and the ‘Tropical Exception’." Before Farming. Online Journal . Issue 3; Article 4.
2005 "Foraging, Ethnographic Analogy, and Papuan Pasts. In Papuan Pasts: Cultural, Linguistic, and Biological Histories of Papuan-speaking Peoples." Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Jack Golson, and Robin Hide, eds. Pp.555-584. Pacific Linguistics,Vol. 572. Canberra, Australia: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University.
2006 "Fish, Game, and the Foundations of Complexity in Forager Society: The Evidence from New Guinea." Cross-Cultural Research: The Journal of Comparative Social Science. 40:29-46.