In their localised aspect, bulufatao somewhat resemble conical clans, with agnatic segments ranked in relation to their proximity to the apical or founding ancestor, but I did not find that any but the senior segments were differentiated, and then only by placename from the rest. Members of the senior segment keep the knowledge of the links to the founder and the narratives that link female descendants to other places. Old ceremonial grounds, where powerful rituals were performed in the past, are referred to as ot hanglam or ‘tabu’ grounds and every domain has at least one such dangerous site. Five of them are known to be so powerful that simply burying or even placing something that was in close association with someone in one of these will cause the person to die. Four of these domains, namely Hawor, Halhal, Fonteng and Metamli, feature in the narrative of Batgolgol’s creative journey as origin sites of autocthonous beings, while the last, called Bulum’no (meaning the ‘hole of sores’), is in an area now uninhabited in the vicinity of sulphurous springs.

In the Ambrymese landscape, every element is replete with signification; flora and fauna might be either or both sacred and utilitarian. Distinguished and identified in a hierarchy of inherited intellectual property rights, they are simultaneously pharmacopeia, and the means of daily sustenance. Senior members of a domain hold the knowledge of its sacred and dangerous places, and it is they who control access to its products. Edible or not, sequestered or free, the cosmoscape is created from the bodies of humans and is the very source of their being. The ground itself, that is, the ‘tan’, is constitutive of the descendants of those who originated from it, absorbing the power of the ancestors who dwell in and around it, protecting its own and tormenting interlopers. In Fona, the domain of the demiurge Bungyam, where his descendants nurture the planting and harvesting of yams in an annual cycle, the spirit or tegar that inheres in this powerful place can afflict any non-descendants of the founder should they witness the planting of first yams by any of the founder’s agnatic descendants, if they trip and fall into the hole of a harvested yam, or break a new yam from the Fona crop. Only recourse to exorcism performed by the yam master will prevent the interloper’s death.

Another indication of the power of Bungyam’s domain is the ritual divination of death performed by the yam master on the morning when the first yams are to be removed from the ground at Fona, inaugurating the northern harvest in a carefully timed sequence of domains that proceeds from west to east, in the direction opposite to that of the creator deity’s journey. Taking the sacred sign of the yams (muyune rem) in his hand, the yam master sits in the mel (men’s house) and sweeps it first to the right and then, changing hands, to the left. ^[8] He continues until he feels a sensation of cold on one side or the other, indicative of the location of the domain in which there will be a death. Although not caused by the yam master’s action, the death is intimately connected to the power of the Fona domain tegar at this time of the removal of the iconic crop. While northern domains have clearly risen and fallen as sites of political eminence, or more recently been obliterated by depopulation, the precedence of the yam cycle remains embedded in the mythopoesis of contemporary life transforming the planting and harvesting sequence into a series of Christian first-fruits ceremonies where the crops are blessed in the sacred spaces of the church. Nonetheless, they must begin, as always, with Fona.