"Melanesia" is the geographical designation for an island region in the western Pacific that reaches from eastern New Guinea, in a southeasterly direction, all the way to the Fiji Islands. Along this stretch the area includes the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu (New Hebrides). Customarily one distinguishes among inhabitants, on larger islands, the inland Papuans from the coastal Melanesians. However, at the present level of ethnographical imprecision, this distinction is not very helpful for surveying regional religious differences. Approximately 700 languages are spoken in the region, a fact that suggests that the number of tribal units, or of tribal religions, is at least as varied and complex. Once upon a time I wrote a dissertation on "Mythical Geographies of the Dead in Melanesia." In the near future I plan to make some of the results of that survey available at this web site, linked to Luckert, Karl W. in the Personal Bibliographies section.

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