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Ecological anthropology deals with the human-environmental (nature-culture) relationships over time and space. It investigates the ways that a population shapes its environment and the subsequent manners in which these relations form the population’s social, economic, and political life (Salzman and Attwood 1996:169). In a general sense, ecological anthropology attempts to provide a materialist explanation of human society and culture as products of adaptation to given environmental conditions (Seymour-Smith 1986:62).

One of the leading practicioners within this sub-field of anthropology was Roy Rappaport. He delivered many outstanding works on the relationship between culture and the natural environment in which it grows, especially concerning the role of ritual in the processual relationship between the two. He conducted the majority, if not all of his fieldwork amongst a group known as the Maring, who inhabit an area in the highlands of Papua New Guinea I believe. Before his death he published his magnum opus, Ritual and Religion in the making of humanity (1999). Rich in content and rigourous in analysis, this is one that cannot be fully comprehended upon first blush but needs to be absorbed slowly over time.

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