"Head Shaving and Chiropody. Both operations are performed with
flakes of obsidian." [Caption from In Unknown New Guinea] Mailu,
Eastern Papua.; Will Saville served the London Missionary
Society in the Mailu district of Papua for thirty-five years
following his appointment in 1900. In 1903 he married Frances
Lawes, also the child of an LMS missionary, Rev Francis Edwin
Lawes, and the niece of the pioneer missionary photographer,
William George Lawes. Saville's knowledge of the Mailu area, its
society and language was significant in increasing
anthropological knowledge in this field. He published a grammar
and dictionary, as well as translating the New Testament and
producing a number of religious books in the Mailu language, as
well as an anthropological study, "In Unknown New Guinea" in
1926. "In Unknown New Guinea" featured over sixty photographs
and represent examples of Saville's photographs taken and
presented as anthropological evidence. Missionaries regarded
many of the customs they encountered as bein