One Step Behind

In the Baliem Valley in central New Guinea lived a Stone Age tribe which survived into the 20th century - the Kurelu. Matthiessen joined the Harvard-Peabody Expedition of 1961 which set out to study the tribe as unobtrusively as possible, living among the Kurelu for two seasons. The result was this account, not of the expedition but of a lost culture: the Kurelu's timeless rhythms of work and play, or warriorship, feasting and funerals.