Dead Birds: The Theater of War among the Dugum Dani

Thanks in part to the film Dead Birds, the theatrical and largely innocuous battles fought by the Dugum Dani of New Guinea are regarded as a classic instance of restrained or ritualized combat. This impression is misplaced. Participants were trying to kill one another, but the waterlogged terrain of the mid-Baliem Valley blunted their ability to do so. If they were to engage on a large scale, Dani armies had to prearrange confrontations on one of two narrow ribbons of raised land; the tight confines of these strips lent their fighting its nonserious or sporting air; and the surrounding, waterlogged terrain made it hazardous to chase after and massacre a defeated side. The case highlights the importance to an anthropology of war in small-scale societies of attending not just to cultural or symbolic landscapes and rules of war but also to military scale and terrain.