goes to make salt with other women of the community. The small boy Pua tends pigs, explores nature, and plays with his friends. Enemy announce their intentions and the men come to the fighting ground, while the women continue to the salt grounds and Pua plays and tends his pigs. One fighter is wounded, it begins to rain, and the battle ends. Dead Birds now focuses on the relationship of the living to the ghosts and the rituals that placate them and keep them away from the village. As a pig ritual is planned and pigs are slaughtered, news comes that Pua's little friend Weyakhe has been killed. The next sequence details Weyakhe's funeral ceremony. Laca receives the funeral strap: Weyak does not want to touch it. He heads to his guard tower. In the distance, the enemy dance to celebrate this victory over Weyak's group. The victory does not last long, for Weyak's people kill a man who tried to steal a pig. Now the victors celebrate with their own dance. Scenes of the celebration are intercut with those of Weyak completing his weaving. As dusk closes in the camera and voiceover lingers on the celebration, on birds, and death. Production Robert Gardner sought to film the last days of indigenous warfare in western New Guinea and accordingly organized the Harvard-Peabody Expedition (1961–65) which brought together a multidisciplinary team to collect data on various aspects of war and culture in the Baliem Valley of western New Guinea. In addition to filmmaker Gardner, team members included Jan Broekhuijse (anthropologist), Karl Heider (anthropologist), Peter Matthiesson (naturalist), and Michael Rockefeller (sound). Gardner carried out the filming from the team's arrival in early 1961 while Rockefeller captured samples of wild sound for later use, as the filming did not use the then-new synchronous sound technology. Gardner composed the film narrative and edited the raw footage into the film after his return to the United States in August, 1961. The sound used in the film was post-synchronized from Rockefeller's samples along with the added voiceover and composed narrative of the film. In line with similar works of ethnographic film at this time, some of the scenes in the film were composed out of shots filmed at different times. Companion works Research conducted for the film and in conjunction with it resulted in several companion works and related publications by Gardner and members of the