When it was first published in 1979, this book, together with its companion volume, From the Milk River, by Christine Hugh-Jones, was hailed as setting 'a new standard for South American ethnographers, one to be emulated' (Third World Quarterly). Both are now available for the first time in paperback. The book is an extended study in English of Amazonian ritual. Through an analysis of a secret men's cult widespread throughout Northwest Amazonia, Hugh-Jones builds up a general picture of a South American Indian society, and of a religious and cosmological system that is common to a large area of Northwest Amazonia. The book is also an exercise in the anthropological interpretation of ritual, myth and religious symbolism from a structuralist point of view.

The domestic unit is inseparable from its homestead, and the "house," at once a physical place and a social unit, is often also a unit of production and consumption, a cult group, and even a political faction. Inspired by Lévi-Strauss' suggestion that the multi-functional noble houses of Medieval Europe were simply the best-known examples of a widespread social institution, the contributors to this collection analyze "house" systems in Southeast Asia and South America, exploring the interrelationships among buildings, people, and ideas. They reveal some of the ways in which houses can stand for social groups and serve as images of process and order.

Economists treat barter as an inefficient alternative to market exchange, assuming that it is normal only in primitive economies. For their part, anthropologists are more concerned with the social and moral complexities of the "gift," and treat barter as mere haggling. The authors in this collection do not accept that barter occupies a residual space between monetary and gift economies. Using accounts from different parts of the world, they demonstrate that it is more than a simple and self-evident economic institution. Barter may constitute a mode of exchange with its own social characteristics, occupying its own moral space. This novel treatment of barter represents an original and topical addition to the literature on economic anthropology.