Mortuary archaeology in New Zealand is a tapu 'sacred, prohibited' subject due to the special place that koiwi tangata 'human skeletal remains' hold in Maori culture. Recognition of Maori rights over ancestral remains led to a near cessation of published studies in recent decades. But koiwi tangata are frequently uncovered accidentally by development or erosion and, in collaboration with Maori, recorded

This article examines deep and contemporary history through analysis of the Tongan kava origin story, a kava chant, the rise of the kalapu 'kava club' in the twentieth century and the growing expansion of contemporary kava. It is argued that a key function of past and present kava practices is a ritual liminality of noa 'neutralisation of protective restrictions' that results from mediating mana 'potency

William Hodges, James Cook's artist on his second voyage, produced notably popular and influential drawings and paintings. These included several illustrations of Tanna Islanders (Vanuatu) that shaped European visions of the island from the 1770s through the 1830s, after which they were supplanted by Christian missionary depictions. Influenced by neoclassicist artistic convention, Hodges's engravings

This paper describes previously unreported archaeological work on Ponui Island, New Zealand. Coastal sites date from the end of the fourteenth century AD, and one, S11/20, has evidence for surface structures, cooking, and tool manufacture and use. The harvesting of marine resources and horticulture were involved from the beginning. Earthwork defenses were built at 23 sites between AD 1500 and 1800

Speaking to debates about the management of difference in and between towns and villages as well as secondary conversions and breakaway movements in Melanesia, this article examines the efforts of an Anglican village church to maintain social cohesion through politico-religious unity in Gwou’ulu, a multi-clan village in North Malaita, Solomon Islands, and its urban enclaves in Honiara. It focuses on

In the history of Pacific Christianity, the explosion of revival activity within Melanesia during the 1970s remains an untold story. Within this regional spiritual upheaval, ecstatic Pentecostalist phenomena spread with unprecedented rapidity, intensity and geographical scope. As a result of these movements, Christianity assumed an importance in Melanesia in a way it never had before, as local congregations

Early western appreciations of the Hawaiian way of life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries suggested the pre-contact presence of highly structured regional chiefdoms and well-developed political economies founded upon elaborate knowledge of maritime and terrestrial environments. These first brief reports were substantiated and amplified in the mid- and late nineteenth-century published

In this paper we present two petroglyphs of western sailing ships that were recently discovered on Rapa Nui (Easter Island). The far-reaching social ramifications of the arrival of the first Europeans have been discussed in a number of papers, but these newly found images allow for further insight into the effect their arrival had on the Rapanui population. Using structure-from-motion (SfM) macro photogrammetry

Gift exchange within Maori society, underpinned by the notion of hau, is a favoured topic for anthropological research. Hau has become an international phenomenon due to its potential relevance to understanding gift economies in many non-monetary societies worldwide. However, the desire in anthropological and socioeconomic analyses to constantly redefine the concept of hau within the narrow context

This essay is an ethnohistorical reconstruction of Tuhoe Maori cognatic descent groups ('hapu') in their struggle to maintain control over ancestral lands centred around the community of Ohaua te Rangi deep in the Urewera mountains of New Zealand. The famous social anthropologist Raymond Firth happened to visit this community when it was in the middle of these struggles in 1924, documenting one hapu

During recent field survey work in Aleipata on the southeast coast of the Independent State of Samoa several new archaeological features have been discovered by a LiDAR-guided ground survey. The survey confirmed evidence from LiDAR images of a dense habitation zone from the coast to several kilometres inland with an extensive drainage system. We suggest that prior to the nineteenth century, when Samoan

Sources of drinking water on islands often present critical constraints to human habitation. On Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile), there is remarkably little surface fresh water due to the nature of the island's volcanic geology. While several lakes exist in volcanic craters, most rainwater quickly passes into the subsurface and emerges at coastal springs. Nevertheless, the island sustained a relatively

In the late 1920s and early 1930s Apirana Ngata wrote several texts based on his long-standing and extensive research into tribal genealogies or Maori whakapapa which, with the encouragement of Te Rangihiroa, were intended for a doctoral thesis on Maori social organisation. Although the doctorate was never completed, the fascinating fragments exploring the terminology of whakapapa brought together

The papers in this issue trace a particular set of Māori interventions in anthropology, arts, museums and heritage in the early twentieth century and consider their implications for iwi ‘tribal communities’, development and environmental management today. They follow Apirana Ngata, Te Rangihīroa (Peter Buck) and some of their Māori and Pākehā (European New Zealander) allies at the Polynesian Society

Although chiefs are frequently associated with Polynesia and big-men with Melanesia, ascription and achievement are relevant to leadership in both regions. Hierarchical societies with ascribed leaders occur throughout Melanesia and, based on archaeological and ethnographic evidence, were more common in the past. In recent centuries, external influences have provided opportunities for achieved leadership

During the 1940s and 1950s koiwi tangata (human remains) were excavated at the Wairau Bar and taken to the Canterbury Museum. The excavations provided the scientific community with an abundance of data about the Polynesian settlement of New Zealand. For the Rangitane community of the Wairau the excavations have been a cause of distress. At the time of the excavations, tribal elder Peter MacDonald protested

Polynesian societies have long been noted for encoding their histories in the form of oral narratives. While some narratives are clearly cosmogonic or mythological in nature, others purportedly recount the affairs of real persons, chronologically indexed to chiefly and family genealogies. Late 19th- and early 20th-century scholars such as Abraham Fornander and Te Rangi Hiroa relied upon such oral narratives

A cultural landscape is pregnant with memories of the past that are remembered and retold through oral traditions. These memories include the movements of the ancestors through their natural world: how they orientated themselves within their landscape, the paths they took to travel from one place to another and the many kinds of journeys they embarked upon, such as ritual and mourning processions,

The article examines how Takū position the canoe in their understanding of the past and exploit it to achieve temporary individual prominence within an otherwise egalitarian society. The canoe on Takū exists in two spheres of reference: in the collective memory of two bygone eras preserved largely in fragmented mythology and ancient song lyrics, and as the item of contemporary material culture crucially

In the 19th century Melanesians were pejoratively labelled black by European maritime explorers (mela = black; nesia = islands). Emerging scholarship on the Black Pacific focuses on historical and contemporary identifications and articulations between Oceanian and African diasporic peoples, cultures and politics based upon shared Otherness to colonial occupiers. This essay contributes to such scholarship

The racing of 'fautasi' (30-metre, 45-seater, oared Samoan longboats) remains a central cultural competition that unifies contemporary American Samoa and the two Samoan states more generally. However, the 'fautasi's' emergence and transition into this role has been dismissed as a vestige of colonialism and has been understudied by scholars. This paper examines the origin, development and use of the

The small island of Manono, positioned between 'Upolu and Savai'i in the Samoan Archipelago, is known in oral traditions of West Polynesia as having had an important political role during the immediate pre-Christian period. An archaeological programme carried out between 2012 and 2015 has mainly concentrated on the mapping of parts of the northern half of the island, around Salua Village. This has

Aerial LiDAR data offers a valuable tool in locating ancient anthropogenic landscapes around the world. This technology is particularly ideal in places where thick vegetation obscures the ground surface, reducing the utility of satellite imagery. On the islands of American Samoa, many interior anthropogenic landscapes remain unsurveyed, largely because the terrain makes it difficult and there is only

This communication presents results from LiDAR-guided field research in 2017 which revealed the existence of continuous indigenous population zones stretching from the coast to three or more kilometres inland across the district of Palauli East, Savai'i. The findings amplify archaeological evidence of a small number of inland settlements (recorded in the 1970s and earlier) on the main islands of 'Upolu

The archaeology of Sāmoa has been structured around the investigation of settlement patterns and systems since the 1960s, and such investigations have been variously used to explore questions of temporal change relating to, among other things, political structure and subsistence. This same intellectual structure is applied here to the evaluation of variation between the geographically close islands

Voyaging canoes were the vehicles of ancient Pacific exploration, settlement and interactions. However, we know little about the ocean-going performance of those vessels. This account of Taumako (Duff Islands) voyaging technology draws on 20 years of collaborative research initiated by Koloso Kaveia, the late paramount chief of Taumako, during which a new generation learned to build and sail voyaging

This paper is a study in the productivity of working across the disciplinary boundaries of material culture studies, historical linguistics and museology to restore the significance of historic names and terminological classifications for prestigious Tongan objects within the wider context of Western Polynesia. The authors trace the nomenclature of radial feather headdresses (palā tavake) both within

When Tasman and Cook arrived in New Zealand in 1642 and 1769 respectively they both sighted double-hulled canoes ('waka') on New Zealand's coast. However, over the next 100 or so years these canoes disappeared. Fortuitously the recent rescue and conservation of a waterlogged 'waka' and fibrework assemblage on the shores of Papanui Inlet has allowed rare insight into the lives of its inhabitants nearly

The cultural revitalisation of voyaging in the Marshall Islands is gaining momentum under extraordinary social conditions involving shifting protocols in the use of navigational knowledge. The first phase of the project (2005-2009) facilitated an elder from Rongelap in achieving the social status of a titled navigator, a process that involved delicate negotiation between chiefly permission to share

This paper examines the value of kula objects by focusing on the perspectives of islanders from the southern kula region. By linking kula practice to death and life, I argue that the objects’ value is complex: material, sentimental and personal, created by partnerships in time and space. Kula valuables are valuable because they are managed by the most respected elders, occupy the minds of the those

The large Urewera National Park of New Zealand, recently returned to control of the Tuhoe (and other Urewera) Māori, was originally established (1896-1907) as the Urewera District Native Reserve under their virtual home-rule. Discovery of extensive marriage alliances between clusters of Tuhoe hapu 'ancestral descent groups' involved in the 1899-1903 investigation raises the relationship between kinship

Maori construction and structural principles have received limited detailed attention since Reverend Herbert W. Williams published 'The Maori Whare: Notes on the Construction of a Maori House' in this journal in 1896. Since then, publications that have considered Maori construction have relied heavily on this text. Subsequent discussion of Maori construction has examined 19th-century practices largely

Tuai of Ngare Raumati was probably the most written-about Māori in the first quarter of the 19th century. He was a man who lived in unstable times, who moved flexibly within European and Māori society, and who engaged with almost everyone he met, according to a French observer, with “the tact and shrewdness which enabled [him] to realise with whom he had to deal and by what means he could commend himself

Drawing upon multiple lines of research in and about Tokelau - ethnography as participant-observation and conversation/discussion, documentary research in all available published sources (few) and unpublished materials in offices and archives, Tokelau narratives and texts, conversations with other scholars of Tokelau, and relevant anthropological literature - the late Antony Hooper and I have aimed

This article explores musical instruments in colonial Micronesia in their sonic, material and historical contexts. Using archival and oral sources and museum artefacts this study investigates the movements of instruments, including the abandonment of some and the acceptance of other types within Micronesian communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The study argues for critical attention

Latitude and azimuth determination were crucial for Polynesian navigators, supplemented by techniques such as observations of swells, birds and expanded landfalls. Longitude could only be determined by dead reckoning. Both latitude and azimuth made extensive use of stars, which alter gradually over the centuries due to precession, the movement in the Earth's axis of spin. Knowledge about the effects

Conflicting reports of surfing’s near-demise in 19th-century Hawai‘i compel us to re-evaluate historical sources of information and look to recently-available newspaper databases to understand how surfing fared during a century of monumental change. I argue that while surfing remained suppressed by influential haole (non-Hawaiians, especially those of European origin) around the capital of Honolulu

A cautionary narrative taken from a 20th-century collection of Cook Islands oral traditions recounts the mistreatment of a daughter, Pataariri, by her chiefly father, Kōtuku, and his consequential death caused by a spirit power putting matters to rights. This paper highlights narrative features such as repetition, expansion, images and gestures, as well as the cultural valuing of the protection of

Much of the research into East Polynesian ceremonial sites focuses on temple-altar ( marae-ahu ) complexes as sacred sites where varied religious rituals and rites of passage were performed. Yet ethnohistoric documents and the Tahitian lexicon suggest a broader role for Ma‘ohi (indigenous Tahitian) ceremonial architecture as the foci of individual and corporate ceremonies of a religious, economic and

Archaeology of traditional religious sites in Polynesia tends to focus on the “pre-contact” era, before religions were transformed by European influence. An historical archaeology of traditional religious sites is essential, however, for understanding the relationship between 21st-century traditional or indigenous religious beliefs and practices, and the transformations wrought during the colonial

Recent work in the district of Kaupō, Maui, has demonstrated the presence of a highly intensified dryland agricultural system, extensive residential sites and a range of ceremonial structures that include some of the largest temples ( heiau ) in the Hawaiian Islands. In this paper I discuss the ritual sites of Kaupō and how their placement on the landscape demonstrates a unique expression of elite

The archaeology of the Tuamotu Islands in central East Polynesia mainly derives from studies of ritual architecture. Since the pioneering works of Kenneth P. Emory in the 1930s, around 650 'marae' have been recorded in the archipelago. Surface inventories show that the basic architectural features of 'marae' were organised in a diversity of patterns, which reflect the complex histories of local communities

This article compares the geographic and organisational patterns of four major chiefly ceremonial places in the Society Islands. On the island of Tahiti, archaeological data relating to monumental temple ( marae ari‘i ) architecture is integrated with ethnohistoric records and toponymic analysis to reconstruct local ethnohistories of the Tahitian chiefdoms of Vaiari, Papara and Manotahi (Puna‘auia)

The idea for this collection of articles on burial practices in Pacific Island cultures first came to us in 2013 when we were invited to Sweden to give a lecture on “an aspect of materiality in Samoa” to the Archaeology Department of the University of Gotland (now the Gotland Campus of Uppsala University). The invitation came from Helene Martinsson-Wallin, Associate Professor of Archaeology there,

Of the most important ritual events among Samoans, referred to as fa‘alavelave , funerals are often the most elaborate. In this article, I examine the factors that influence decisions about graves and the location of grave sites, and the most recent option of cremation, rather than burial, in the context of migration and social change. I also argue that place as identity is intimately bound up with

In Samoa the selection of burial sites and the type of monuments chosen to mark them not only signify affection and memorialisation, but also make visible statements about traditional rank, and nowadays about family status and claims to property. We examine what is known about burial practices and locations in pre-colonial Samoa and trace the changes that have occurred as a result of 19th-century power

In Central Enga burial of the dead used to be a means of protecting the living from ghostly malice, however, now burial is becoming an expensive business, and grave styles a new form of status symbol. This paper traces significant aspects of the change from pre-contact burial practices to those of today. Introduced beliefs and new ways of establishing social standing are contributing to the development

In this article we look at graves on Rotuma, a volcanic island in the South Pacific, from a cultural and historical perspective. We argue that graves reflect attitudes towards death and ancestors, towards hierarchy and social position; that the location of graves involves spatial conceptions; that grave goods reflect notions of material value; and that grave visitations are indicative of the nature

Ethnographers in Oceania and elsewhere often hear talk about ghosts and mythical little people who have great strength and magical qualities. Two analytical temptations are to dismiss talk about such figures as delusional or to see them as tokens of an expansively defined “hauntology”. This article, however, attempts to bring together ghosts and little people in a more analytically productive way,

This article considers reproduction of “Sāmoanness” through the process by which Lā‘ei Sāmoa , a simple dress code for public servants, came to be viewed as the national attire. The initial objections at the inauguration of Lā‘ei Sāmoa did not persist, because of the impossibility of establishing an acceptable historical and cultural authenticity of Sāmoan national attire. Over a three-year period