III

We must now follow the later stages of the kaloma industry. The technology of the proceedings is so mixed up with remarkable sociological and economic arrangements that it will be better to indicate it first in its main outlines. The spondylus consists of a shell, the size and shape of a hollowed out half of a pear, and of a flat, small lid. It is only the first part which is worked. First it has to be broken into pieces with a binabina or an utukema (green stone imported from Woodlark Island) as shown on Plate L (A). On each piece, then, can be seen the stratification of the shell: the outside layer of soft, chalky substance; under this, the layer of red, hard, calcareous material, and then the inmost, white, crystalline stratum. Both the outside and inside have to be rubbed off, but first each piece has to be roughly rounded up, so as to form a thick circular lump. Such a lump (see foregrounds of Plates L (A), L (B)) is then put in the hole of a cylindrical piece of wood. This latter serves as a handle with which the lumps are rubbed on a piece of flat sandstone (see Plate L (B)). The rubbing is carried on so far till the outside and inside layers are gone, and there remains only a red, flat tablet, polished on both sides. In the middle of it, a hole is drilled through by means of a pump drill—gigi’u—(see Plate LI), and a number of such perforated discs are then threaded on a thin, but tough stick (see Plate LII), with which we have already met in the myth. Then the cylindrical roll is rubbed round and round on the flat sandstone, until its form becomes perfectly symmetrical (see Plate LII). Thus a number of flat, circular discs, polished all round and perforated in the middle, are produced. The breaking and the drilling, like the diving are done exclusively by men. The polishing is as a rule woman’s work.

Plate LI  

Working the Kaloma Shell (III.)

By means of a pump drill, a hole is bored in each disc. (See Div. III.)

Plate LII 

Working the Kaloma Shell (IV.)

The shell discs, flat and perforated, but of irregular contour still, are now threaded on to a thin, tough stick, and in this form they are ground on a flat sandstone till the roll is cylindrical, that is, each disc is a perfect circle. (See Div. III.)

This technology is associated with an interesting sociological relation between the maker and the man for whom the article is made. As has been stated in Chapter II, one of the main features of the Trobriand organisation consists of the mutual duties between a man and his wife’s maternal kinsmen. They have to supply him regularly with yams at harvest time, while he gives them the present of a valuable now and then. The manufacture of kaloma valuables in Sinaketa is very often associated with this relationship. The Sinaketan manufacturer makes his kutadababile (necklace of large beads) for one of his relatives-in-law, while this latter pays him in food. In accordance with this custom, it happens very frequently that a Sinaketan man marries a woman from one of the agricultural inland villages, or even a woman of Kiriwina. Of course, if he has no relatives-in-law in one of these villages, he will have friends or distant relatives, and he will make the string for one or the other of them. Or else he will produce one for himself, and launch it into the Kula. But the most typical and interesting case is, when the necklace is produced to order for a man who repays it according to a remarkable economic system, a system similar to the payments in instalments, which I have mentioned with regard to canoe making. I shall give here, following closely the native text, a translation of an account of the payments for kaloma making.