Visiting Yap in the western Caroline Islands, the American anthropologist William Furness describes its houses, bachelors’ clubhouses, dress and ornament, songs, dances and incantations, and above all the huge stone discs quarried far away and used as money. He writes with warmth and humour, though his praise of German colonial rule is very much of 1910.
A lively early ethnography of a Micronesian society, and a classic case study for anyone interested in the nature of money. Download the free EPUB.