The Palm and the Pleiades
Initiation and Cosmology in Northwest Amazonia

The book is an extended study in English of Amazonian ritual.

Stephen Hugh-Jones (Author)

9780521358903, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 31 March 1988

356 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.44 kg

When it was first published in 1979, this book, together with its companion volume, From the Milk River, by Christine Hugh-Jones, was hailed as setting 'a new standard for South American ethnographers, one to be emulated' (Third World Quarterly). Both are now available for the first time in paperback. The book is an extended study in English of Amazonian ritual. Through an analysis of a secret men's cult widespread throughout Northwest Amazonia, Hugh-Jones builds up a general picture of a South American Indian society, and of a religious and cosmological system that is common to a large area of Northwest Amazonia. The book is also an exercise in the anthropological interpretation of ritual, myth and religious symbolism from a structuralist point of view.

List of tables and figures
List of maps and plates
Preface
Orthography
Part I. The Rites in Context: 1. Introduction
2. The Barasana: land and people
Part II. The Rites Described: 3. Fruit House
4. He House: the main initiation rite
Part III. Explanation and Analysis: 5. The participants
6. The flutes and trumpets
7. The gourd of beeswax
8. Open and closed: the howler monkey and the sloth
9. Death and rebirth
10. The Sun and the Moon
Part IV. Conclusion: 11. Conclusion
Part V. The Myths
Appendixes
Bibliography
Index
Index of names.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC]