ABSTRACT
One clue to the social upheaval is the lengthening Fore catalogue of sorcery methods since 1951. The Berndts' stay in North Fore between 1951 and 1953 produced a list of seven types.1 In 1957, when Charles Julius visited the South Fore, an area that had only recently come under Australian government surveillance, he noted no more than six kinds, many fewer than the twenty he had recorded for the sophisticated and wealthy Tolai of the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain.2 My own records from the South Fore in the following decade show sixteen kinds of sorcery. This increase cannot, I think, be attributed to differences in fieldworkers, but represents a real shift in experience and belief. Fore are themselves aware of the trend. Many discussions of kuru elicit the same historical sequence. "Kuru is a recent form of sorcery," people say. "In the past we had only a few ways to exact vengeance. First there was tokabu, then fighting with arrows, then yanda, then karena, and after that kuru." Sometimes a further detail is added, such as "Kai is more recent again. This began after the arrival of white men."
