cover image Ants for Breakfast

Ants for Breakfast

James M. Skibo. University of Utah Press, $16.95 (179pp) ISBN 978-0-87480-620-5

The Kalinga people inhabit a remote mountainous part of the Philippines, where they grow rice and use ceramics just as their neolithic forebears did. Skibo (Pottery Function), who teaches at Illinois State University, lived with the Kalinga for four months in 1988, hoping to understand their pots and bowls. Among the Kalinga, Skibo became a de facto emergency-room doctor, funerary assistant, basketball competitor, drinking companion, gong player and dispute-resolution specialist. Kalinga life in the '80s also featured elaborate oratory, drinking contests, occasional visits from gun-happy guerrillas, oversweet coffee and dishes made from ant eggs (""rather tasty"") and boiled fruit bat. Relating his experience in the Philippines, Skibo writes a pleasantly laid-back prose, easy to understand if sometimes rambling. His frequent digressions fill readers in on local history and on archeological finds in the U.S. from the glacial period to the Spanish-American War and the career of ethnoarcheologist Billy Longacre, Skibo's friend and collaborator. Skibo's four months in the Philippines gave him plenty of anecdotes, but few real adventures. The people he studied are friendly, surprisingly accommodating and, fortunately, skillful at preserving their way of life. Skibo's account ends up neither eloquent nor detailed enough to enter the top rank of fieldwork memoirs. His anthropological stories will, however, charm readers who care about the Kalinga or about similar groups--or about their cookware. (Dec.)