New Guinea leadership as ethnographic analogy: A critical review

Increasingly, archaeologists are recognizing cultural anthropological work in New Guinea as an important source of ethnographic analogy for understand ing the initial stages of cultural evolution. This article critically revie ws the literature on leadership in contact-era New Guinea. It is intended a s an introduction both to different theoretical interpretations of leadersh ip, as these have developed from Marshal Sahlins's Big-man archetype to the present, and to the primary literature on the topic. It points to several implications for archaeological theory, identifies a number of problems in the ethnography and theory of contact-era New Guinea leadership, and conclu des with a brief guide to deploying the ethnographic and theoretical litera ture.