In New Guinea, artistic creativity has long been focused around complex and elaborate ceremonial activity. The styles and materials used varied widely over the region – a reflection of the cultural richness of New Guinea.

In much of Melanesia gender divisions were ritually marked, with women being considered polluting of masculine power. Ritual and revered objects such as spirit masks (some of which were destroyed after a single use) and sacred flutes were kept in separate men’s houses where the initiated men slept and worked. Cult houses themselves were often intricately decorated with carving and paintings.

Other sacred objects found in the region included slit gongs (hollow resonant logs which are beaten like drums), ceremonial stools, ancestral figures and dance costumes. Everyday objects were also decorated in order to enhance their efficacy.

Ceremonies would have involved various elements, including body decoration, dancing and singing (much of which involved the impersonation of spirits), consumption of specially prepared foods and often body mutilation or ritual violence. Ceremonies concerned such things as the initiation of boys into men’s houses and the birth-life-death cycle.