The Bones of Relation: Materialising Personhood Through Secondary Burial in Papua New Guinea

Abstract The concept of relational personhood is well-developed in Melanesian ethnography and often cited by archaeologists globally, yet it has rarely been applied archaeologically in this region. Drawing on anthropological theory, local oral traditions, and recent archaeological fieldwork on two islands in the southern Massim region of Papua New Guinea, this paper examines secondary cave burials and the objects they were interred with as material expressions of relational personhood. Human skeletal remains were deliberately fragmented, selected, modified, and arranged alongside culturally significant objects such as pottery, which were also often intentionally fragmented. Secondary burials containing individuals of different ages, combined with emphasis on anatomical elements, particularly the skull, indicate that relational personhood was materially enacted through the intentional commingling of bones and artefacts. Objects such as complete pots and pot sherds, shell ornaments, and stone axes acted as synecdochic and metonymic agents of identity, provision, and ancestral continuity. Rather than being merely symbolic, these secondary burial assemblages instantiate enduring networks of kinship and exchange, integrating the dead into ongoing social processes of the living. This study offers a contextual model for Melanesian mortuary practices and contributes to broader debates on the material patterning of personhood and ethnographic analogy in archaeological interpretation in the Pacific region and globally.