Of Winds, Worms and Mana: The Traditional Calendar of the Torres Islands, Vanuatu‪.‬

APPROACHING THE MELANESIAN ENVIRONMENT THROUGH TIME Across Island Melanesia, people experience meteorological, celestial, oceanic and terrestrial phenomena as interlinked processes whose combined effects impinge in significant ways upon basic forms of production, such as subsistence horticulture and maritime tenure, by establishing various 'parameters on what human-beings can achieve, while not determining what they do within these constraints' (Sillitoe 1994:268). Not surprisingly, local groups often create associations between the patterns and perturbations of the environment and cycles of human production which constitute organizing frameworks evocative of what Western observers label 'calendars'.