article
Baloma: the spirits of the dead in the Trobriand Islands
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britian and Ireland • 46 • Published In 1916 • Pages: 353-430
By: Malinowski, Bronislaw.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
This article deals with the spirits of the dead, the BALOMA, in Kiriwina Island and covers the following subjects: mortuary practices, witches, beliefs regarding life after death and reincarnation, relations between BALOMA and the living, return of the spirits to their villages during the annual feast (MILAMALA), the part played by the spirits in magic, ignorance of the physiology of reproduction, and a theoretical section regarding the sociology of belief.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Sorcery
- Death
- Eschatology
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Trobriands
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 1995
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Oceania
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Melanesia
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- article
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- Eugene Lerner
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1915-1916
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1915-1916
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Omarakana, Kiriwina Island, Papua New Guinea
- NotesAdditional notes
- [by] Bronislaw Malinowski
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Trobriand Islanders