General works
Comprehensive treatments of Melanesia are given in Brij V. Lal and Kate Fortune (eds.), The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia (2000); and Paul Sillitoe, An Introduction to the Anthropology of Melanesia: Culture and Tradition (1998). Steven Roger Fischer, A History of the Pacific Islands (2002), includes discussions of Micronesia and Polynesia as well as Melanesia; as does Donald Denoon et al. (eds.), Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders (1997). Douglas L. Oliver, The Pacific Islands, 3rd ed. (1989), gives an overview of the indigenous cultures. Some aspects of Melanesian linguistics are considered in William Foley, The Papuan Languages of New Guinea (1986).
Melanesian prehistory is the subject of Geoffrey Irwin, The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific (1992). Matthew Spriggs, The Island Melanesians (1997), focuses on the cultural evolution of the region.
Contemporary Melanesia
A general historical overview of contemporary life is provided in K.R. Howe, Robert C. Kiste, and Brij V. Lal (eds.), Tides of History: The Pacific Islands in the Twentieth Century (1994). Three autobiographical accounts of 20th-century Melanesian life are Albert Maori Kiki, Kiki: Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime, a New Guinea Autobiography (1968); Ongka, Ongka: A Self-Account by a New Guinea Big-Man, trans. by Andrew Strathern (1979); and Michael Thomas Somare, Sana: An Autobiography of Michael Somare (1975).
The processes and effects of the European colonization of Melanesia are the topic of several books, including Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson, First Contact: New Guinea Highlanders Encounter the Outside World (1987); Bruce Knauft, Exchanging the Past: A Rainforest World of Before and After (2002); Paul Sillitoe, Social Change in Melanesia: Development and History (2000); Michael French Smith, Village on the Edge: Changing Times in Papua New Guinea (2002); Nancy Lutkehaus, et al. (eds.), Sepik Heritage: Tradition and Change in Papua New Guinea (1990); and John Dademo Waiko, A Short History of Papua New Guinea (1993). Missionization as a specific instrument of change is considered in David Hilliard, God’s Gentlemen: A History of the Melanesian Mission, 1849–1942 (1978); and David Wetherell, Reluctant Mission: The Anglican Church in Papua New Guinea, 1891–1942 (1977).
Traditional Melanesia
Classic ethnographic overviews of Melanesian cultural traditions include W.H.R. Rivers, The History of Melanesian Society (1914, reissued 1968); and C.G. Seligman, The Melanesians of British New Guinea (1910, reprinted 1976).
Gender relations in Melanesia are the topic of the classic, if sometimes contested, anthropological work Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935, reissued 2001). Additional studies of Melanesian gender relations include Paula Brown and Georgeda Buchbinder (eds.), Man and Woman in the New Guinea Highlands (1976); Gilbert H. Herdt, Guardians of the Flutes: Idioms of Masculinity (1981, reissued 1994); Gilbert H. Herdt (ed.), Rituals of Manhood: Male Initiation in Papua New Guinea (1982, reissued 1998); Marilyn Strathern (ed.), Women in Between: Female Roles in a Male World (1972, reissued 1995); and Holly Wardlow, Wayward Women: Sexuality and Agency in a New Guinea Society (2006).
The role of warfare is treated in Mervyn Meggitt, Blood Is Their Argument: Warfare Among the Mae Enga Tribesmen of the New Guinea Highlands (1977).
The subject of agriculture is treated in Donald Denoon and Catherine Snowden (eds.), A Time to Plant and a Time to Uproot: A History of Agriculture in Papua New Guinea (1980). Emile Massal and Jacques Barrau, Food Plants of the South Sea Islands (1956), is a classic study.
The complexities of Melanesian exchange systems have been the topic of extensive study, including Bronisław Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922, reissued 2002), the original description of the kula; Roy A. Rappaport, Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People, new ed. (1984); Andrew Strathern, The Rope of Moka: Big-Men and Ceremonial Exchange in Mount Hagen, New Guinea (1971); Annette B. Weiner, Women of Value, Men of Renown: New Perspectives in Trobriand Exchange (1976, reissued 1996); and Polly Wiessner and Akii Tumu, Historical Vines: Enga Networks of Exchange, Ritual, and Warfare in Papua New Guinea, trans. by Nitze Pupu (1998).
Feasting and prestige are the subjects of Miriam Kahn, Always Hungry, Never Greedy: Food and the Expression of Gender in a Melanesian Society (1986, reissued 1994); and Michael W. Young, Fighting with Food: Leadership, Values, and Social Control in a Massim Society (1971).
The causes and effects of cargo cults are considered in Peter Lawrence, Road Belong Cargo: A Study of the Cargo Movement in the Southern Madang District, New Guinea (1964, reprinted 1979); Lamont Lindstrom, Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond (1993); and Peter Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of “Cargo” Cults in Melanesia, 2nd ed. (1968, reissued 1986).
Various forms of Melanesian art are considered in Andrew Strathern and Marilyn Strathern, Self-Decoration in Mount Hagen (1971); Michael O’Hanlon, Reading the Skin: Adornment, Display, and Society Among the Wahgi (1989); Nicholas Thomas, Oceanic Art (1995); Susan Cochrane, Contemporary Art in Papua New Guinea (1997); and Anne Becker, Body, Self, and Society: The View from Fiji (1995).