They live on the Yuat River in East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, and speak the Mundugumor language.
[1] She and her husband, Reo Fortune spent two years in the Sepik River region studying the Aarapesh, the Mundugumor, and the Tchambuli peoples.
Their second field site was inhabited by the Mundugumor who, until three years previous, were without governmental control and thrived in a society centered around war, cannibalism, and headhunting.
[2] Based on this background filled with traditions and customs of aggression, Mead noted the Mundugumor as being actively masculine, positively sexed, virile, jealous, violent, hard, and arrogant.
Mundugumor women were strongly affected by the marriage customs and large responsibilities that come with being a mother.
Polygyny was widely practiced among Mundugumor men, the social ideal being to have as many as eight to ten wives.
Among the Mundugumor, arranged marriages were the most common and widely accepted way of creating a husband and wife bond.
This exchange caused brothers to have pre-emptive rights over their sisters as they acted as their personal passage into marriage.
The flute demonstrated purity and virginity and held great value in the eyes of the Mundugumor.
As the girl developed in this household, she may catch the eye of the father or an elder brother of her boy husband.
If she failed to catch the eye of another male family member, the household focused on chaperoning the girl.
This chaperoning involved the forceful compliance of her boy husband to engage in sexual relations with his official wife.
Sexual affairs involved rough foreplay that began with violent scratching and biting matches to create the maximum amount of excitement.
Physical violence was often accompanied by the breaking of the arrows or baskets and ornaments of the beloved to demonstrate the passion that was consumed.
[2] Members of both sexes are known and expected to be aggressive in their sexual encounter, but also equally jealous of one another and vengeful of other affairs.
Because of her vulnerability in the situation, the girl often attempted to persuade the married man to elope with her and take her as his wife.
After eloping, the man had to defend his women against the enraged relatives and/or husband that would come to fight for her labor and fertility.
Her son was expected to defend his mother and act violent towards the father, creating more tension in the home.
When a woman gave her husband the news of her pregnancy he immediately became unhappy and is considered a marked man.
Though mothers many times wanted male children, the decision was weighted against her because the father and brothers preferred girls.
Despite the load this responsibility may bring, Mundugumor mothers took it in stride and expected their children to mature extremely quickly.
[7] Women comforted their children with food as an attempt to stop their wailing and only tended to the needs of the child during feeding.
The child was forbidden from prolonging his meal in any way, including playful fondling of his mother's body or his own.
This hurried sense of what seems to be the only form of comfort provided by mothers was what caused the first signs of violence and competition in a Mundugumor individual.
Because there was always a risk of being refused feeding, babies developed a fighting attitude while being nursed, holding on firmly to the mother's nipple and sucking milk as fast as possible.
[8] Before the Mundugumor village was placed under Australian governmental control, they even had the custom of giving their own children as hostages to temporary trade allies.