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Australasia
Australasia , islands of the South Pacific, including Australia , New Zealand , New Guinea , and adjacent islands. The term is sometimes used to include all of Oceania.
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Oceania
Oceania or Oceanica , collective name for the approximately 25,000 islands of the Pacific, usually excluding such nontropical areas as the Ryukyu and Aleutian islands and Japan, as well as Taiwan, Indonesia, and the Philippines, whose populations are more closely related to mainland Asia. Oceani...
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Micronesia
Micronesia , one of the three main divisions of Oceania , in W Pacific Ocean, north of the equator. Micronesia includes the Caroline Islands , Marshall Islands , Mariana Islands (see Northern Mariana Islands and Guam , Gilbert Islands , and Nauru . The inhabitants are of Australoid and Polyn...
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South Seas
South Seas name given by early explorers to the whole of the Pacific Ocean. In recent times the name has been used to mean only the central Pacific, the S Pacific, and the SW Pacific. More particularly it is applied to the South Sea Islands (see Oceania ) and the waters about them.
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Melanesia
Melanesia , one of the three main divisions of Oceania , in the SW Pacific Ocean, NE of Australia and S of the equator. Melanesia includes the Solomon Islands , Vanuatu , New Caledonia , Tuvalu , the Bismarck Archipelago , the Admiralty Islands , and Fiji . New Guinea is sometimes included...
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Polynesia
Polynesia [Gr.,=many islands], one of the three main divisions of Oceania , in the central and S Pacific Ocean. The larger islands are volcanic; the smaller ones are generally coral formations. The principal groups are the Hawaiian Islands (see Hawaii ), Samoa , Tonga , and the islands of Fren...
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suttee
suttee [Skt. sati =faithful wife], former Indian funeral practice in which the widow immolated herself on her husband's funeral pyre. The practice of killing a favorite wife on her husband's grave has been found in many parts of the world; it was followed by such peoples as the Thracians, the Scyt...
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commerce
commerce traffic in goods, usually thought of as trade between states or nations. Engaged in by all peoples from the earliest times, it has been carried on in some areas and by some peoples more than others, because of special geographical, technological, or economic advantages. The Egyptians, the ...
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Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead 1901-78, American anthropologist, b. Philadelphia, grad. Barnard, 1923, Ph.D. Columbia, 1929. In 1926 she became assistant curator, in 1942 associate curator, and from 1964 to 1969 she was curator of ethnology of the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. After 1954 she se...
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Oceanic art
Oceanic art works produced by the island peoples of the S and NW Pacific, including Melanesia (New Guinea and the islands to its north and east), Micronesia (Mariana, Caroline, Marshall, and Gilbert islands), and Polynesia (which includes the Hawaiian Islands, the Samoas, Tonga, New Zealand, and Ea...
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