 from the Sepik, Gulf, Massim, and Huon Peninsula regions are world famous. The best-known wood carvings come from the Sepik region, notably masks and crocodile figures that have religious connotations. Many sacred carvings from the giant men’s houses known as tambaran on the Sepik River have been sold and not replaced amid the decline of tourist traffic in the 21st century. In most areas only the older generations possess the skills for making traditional clay cooking pots, which are being replaced by metal pots and pans.
Across the country, wooden hourglass-shaped drums known as kundu remain essential for song and dance, especially during major national celebrations such as the anniversary of independence. Self-decoration, particularly for dance and rituals, remains important everywhere. Traditional musical expression is an essential indicator of local identity, and contemporary shows offer new opportunities for presentation to diverse audiences. The annual shows at Goroka and Mount Hagen involve thousands of dance group participants, and they attract many thousands of spectators from across the country and overseas.
In urban areas painting on canvas has become a vibrant cottage industry for local artists that is patronized by tourists, resident expatriates, and the local middle class. A wave of nationalist creative writing was produced during the transition to independence and continues despite occasional periods of diminished activity, but formal theatre declined in the decades after independence. Street theatre sponsored by aid donors is often used in awareness campaigns ranging from electoral training to HIV/AIDS education. The cities, especially, support a vibrant youth music culture; many local bands support a thriving commercial recording industry, and their songs are played on radio and television.
Daily life and social customs
People’s daily lives vary enormously in Papua New Guinea, with the great majority of the population living across the diverse rural landscape in villages or hamlets. Daily life usually centres on the extended family, whose primary responsibilities are producing food for subsistence and rearing children. Most people have rights to use portions of land for the growing of food and some cash crops as well as the rights to fish, hunt, and gather timber from local forests. Many of those activities are accompanied by rituals to ensure success and prosperity. Other major rituals, such as menarche ceremonies for girls and initiations for boys, are declining. The Highlands social system previously involved the strict separation of men and women, with men sleeping in men’s houses somewhat akin to military barracks and women sleeping in separate garden houses with the small children. With the incursion of newer cultural influences, that system has been modified in much of the region. Wealthy and prominent men with multiple wives retain separate households for each.
The clan forms the major unit of social organization. Almost all Melanesian societies are patrilineal, tracing descent through the male line, and even matrilineal societies, where descent is traced through the female line, remain patriarchal—i.e., male-dominated. In some areas descent and land rights can be claimed through either parent, so people can belong to both their parents’ clans. Marriage within a clan would be perceived as incest, and so marriage is only possible across clan lines and sometimes across the boundaries of a tribe. Large tribes are not the norm, but where they do exist they have a degree of political unity and can be viewed as federations of clans. They may share origin myths, and in such cases clans can be seen as being like “brothers,” sons of a founding father. These social structures form the lines of conflict expressed in the interclan warfare that persists in the Highland provinces, and in those areas they often form the lines of political competition in contemporary elections.
When people migrate from rural villages to urban areas or rural resettlement areas, they carry their languages and customs with them an