The first major publication on the art of the New Guinea Highlands, this extraordinary volume is destined to become the definitive resource on this little-known region. The Jolika Collection of New Guinea Art of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco consists of thousands of objects and represents hundreds of clans and villages throughout New Guinea. The first book in a projected ten-volume series, this lavishly illustrated volume focuses on the Highlands-a region of rugged mountains, fertile valleys, and a civilization that dates back more than forty thousand years. Here, in more than six hundred pages of rich color, are beautifully crafted masks, shields, headdresses, and ceremonial and personal objects, the majority of which have never before been published or exhibited. Archival and reference photographs, maps of key locations, and authoritative essays by more than a dozen preeminent scholars covering a wide range of subjects, from prehistoric agriculture to body art, make this book a collector's dream.