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Hawaiki, Ancestral Polynesia
An Essay in Historical Anthropology
The power of an anthropological approach to long-term history lies
in its unique ability to combine diverse evidence, from archaeological
artifacts to ethnographic texts and comparative word lists. In this
innovative book, Kirch and Green explicitly develop the theoretical
underpinnings, as well as the particular methods, for such a historical
anthropology. Drawing upon and integrating the approaches of
archaeology, comparative ethnography, and historical linguistics, they
advance a phylogenetic model for cultural diversi®cation, and apply a
triangulation method for historical reconstruction. They illustrate
their approach through meticulous application to the history of the
Polynesian cultures, and for the ®rst time reconstruct in extensive
detail the Ancestral Polynesian culture that ¯ourished in the
Polynesian homeland ± Hawaiki ± some 2,500 years ago. Of great
signi®cance for Oceanic studies, Kirch and Green's book will be
essential reading for any anthropologist, prehistorian, linguist, or
cultural historian concerned with the theory and method of longterm history.
patrick vinton kirch is Professor of Anthropology, and Director
of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum, at the University of California at
Berkeley. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, he has
authored some ten previous books on Paci®c archaeology and
prehistory, including Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom
of Hawaii (1992) (co-authored with Marshall Sahlins), which won the
J. I. Staley Prize in Anthropology.
roger c. green is Emeritus Professor of Prehistory at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. A member of the National Academy
of Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, he is
the author of several important monographs on Paci®c Islands
archaeology and prehistory.
Frontispiece: Mata o Tangaloa (``Face of Tangaloa''), by Fatu Feu'u
Hawaiki, Ancestral Polynesia
An Essay in Historical Anthropology
PAT R I C K V I N TO N K I RC H
University of California, Berkeley
and
RO G ER C . G R E EN
University of Auckland, New Zealand
  
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo
Cambridge University Press
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
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First published in print format 2001
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s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
To TheÂreÁse and Valerie, for their love and support;
and
to the late Bruce Biggs, preeminent Polynesian linguist
Contents
List of ®gures page viii
List of tables x
Preface xiii
List of language abbreviations
xvi
Prologue: on historical anthropology
1
Part I The phylogenetic model: theory and method
1
2
3
The phylogenetic model in historical anthropology 13
Methodologies: implementing the phylogenetic model 32
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit 53
Part II Rediscovering Hawaiki
4
5
6
7
8
9
Introductory remarks 95
The Ancestral Polynesian world 99
Subsistence 120
Food preparation and cuisine 143
Material culture 163
Social and political organization 201
Gods, ancestors, seasons and rituals 237
Epilogue: on history, phylogeny, and evolution
Notes 285
Glossary of terms 313
References 317
Subject Index 357
Index of Proto Polynesian Reconstructions
vii
369
277
Figures
Frontispiece Mata o Tangaloa (``Face of Tangaloa''),
page ii
by Fatu Feu`u
1.1 Map of the Polynesian triangle and the Polynesian Outliers
17
1.2 Kirch's 1984 model of phylogenetic differentiation in Polynesia
20
2.1 The higher-level subgrouping of the Austronesian languages,
down to the Oceanic level
39
2.2 The geographic distribution of higher-level subgroups in the
Austronesian phylum
40
3.1 The major subgroups of Oceanic form a ``rake-like''
tree structure
56
3.2 The geographic distribution of major subgroups within the
Oceanic branch of Austronesian languages
57
3.3 The Proto Central Paci®c dialect chain
58
3.4 North±south dialect differentiation within Proto Polynesian
59
3.5 A ``family-tree'' type classi®cation of the Polynesian languages
61
3.6 Islands in the Fiji±Western Polynesian region linked by
voyaging circles of 24 hours or less
62
3.7 The Paci®c region with Near Oceania, Remote Oceania, and
the Andesite Line and ``continental'' type islands indicated
64
3.8 Canoe regions of the Paci®c
67
3.9 The geographic distribution of sibling classi®cation types
in Oceania
68
3.10 Relationships among Polynesian biological populations as
indicated by distance analysis of thirty-eight non-metric
cranial traits
75
3.11 A graphic representation of the ``density'' of available
archaeological information for major Polynesian cultural
sequences
76
3.12 Locations of key archaeological sites dating to the Ancestral
Polynesian phase
84
4.1 The central Paci®c region, showing the location of the Andesite
Line
108
4.2 The hierarchical structure typical of folk biological classi®cations 110
viii
List of ®gures
5.1
5.2
6.1
6.2
6.3
7.1
7.2
7.3
7.4
7.5
7.6
8.1
9.1
9.2
9.3
9.4
9.5
Cobbles with ®nger-grips from site FU-11, Futuna, interpreted
as hammers for opening hard-shelled nuts, such as Canarium
Turbo shell ®shhooks from the To`aga site
The earth oven, a central feature of Ancestral Polynesian
cooking, attested by an example at the Lolokoka site (NT-90)
on Niuatoputapu
Ethnographic examples of coconut graters, made up of a stool
or other wooden base to which a shell grater is lashed
Straight-sided pits, lacking evidence of burning, may have been
used as silos for the fermentation and storage of breadfruit paste
Pottery vessel shapes in Ancestral Polynesia
Conceptual terms for Proto Polynesian containers, and their
realization in plainware pottery vessels of the Ancestral
Polynesian culture
Industrial tools: adzes in Ancestral Polynesian culture
Industrial tools: Saw, ®les, whetstones, grinding stones, stone
and coral abraders, drill points and bow drill
Ornaments from archaeological sites of the Ancestral
Polynesian phase
Excavation plan of the Sasoa`a site in the Falefa Valley, Samoa
Social groups and leadership roles in Ancestral Polynesian
societies
Plan of a Tikopia fare house with attached marae
Annual tributary presentation of the ®rst yams on the
ceremonial plaza (malae) at Mu`a, Tongatapu
Perspective renderings of three variants of Tuamotuan marae
The southern sky as it would have appeared an hour before
sunrise on May 16, 500 BC, from an island in Western Polynesia,
showing the heliacal rising of the Pleiades (*Mataliki)
Diagrammatic summary of the reconstructed Ancestral
Polynesian ritual cycle and calendar
ix
124
133
148
153
161
169
174
179
181
188
195
236
250
252
253
266
274
Tables
2.1
3.1
3.2
4.1
4.2
4.3
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
7.1
7.2
7.3
7.4
7.5
7.6
7.7
7.8
8.1
POLLEX database entry for PPN *waka, `canoe'
page 47
Cultural traits distinguishing Western and Eastern
Polynesian regions
72
Selected archaeological sites and assemblages associated with
the Ancestral Polynesian period
82
Selected Proto Polynesian terms for the physical world
103
Proto Polynesian life-form terms
111
Proto Polynesian terms for reef and shoreline invertebrates
112
Proto Polynesian crops
123
Proto Polynesian terms associated with horticulture
127
Distribution of ®shing methods in tropical Polynesia
136
Proto Polynesian terms associated with marine exploitation
138
Proto Polynesian terms for raw, cooked, and taste
145
Proto Polynesian terms associated with the cookhouse, earth
oven, and cooking equipment
150
Proto Polynesian terms for food preparation and cooking
methods
155
Proto Polynesian terms associated with the pudding complex
158
Perishable and durable components of Polynesian material
culture inventories
165
Proto Polynesian terms for things
166
Proto Polynesian terms for containers
167
Proto Polynesian terms for industrial tools
176
The Proto Polynesian bark cloth complex, clothing, ornaments,
and tattooing
186
Proto Polynesian terms for warfare, sports and games, and
musical instruments
191
Proto Polynesian terms relating to household units and their
architectural features
194
The Proto Polynesian canoe complex and cordage
198
Proto Austronesian (PAN), Proto Malayo-Polynesian (PMP),
and Proto Oceanic (POC) words for settlements and
architecture
206
x
List of tables
8.2
Linguistically indicated changes in architectural forms from
Proto Oceanic to Proto Polynesian interstages
8.3 Re¯exes of Proto Polynesian *kainanga, including extra-Polynesian
witnesses
8.4 Re¯exes of Proto Polynesian *kaainga
8.5 Re¯exes of Proto Polynesian *saqa, `social group'
8.6 Proto Polynesian terms relating to exchange or trade
8.7 Proto Polynesian terms for persons
8.8 Proto Polynesian kinship terms
8.9 Re¯exes of Proto Polynesian *qariki
8.10 Re¯exes of Proto Polynesian *fatu, leader of the *kaainga
9.1 Proto Polynesian terms relating to gods, spirits, and ancestors
9.2 Proto Polynesian terms relating to ritual practitioners and spaces
9.3 Proto Polynesian terms associated with ritual
9.4 Key aspects of Polynesian calendrical systems
9.5 Selected Fijian and Polynesian lunar calendrical lists
9.6 Reconstructed lunar month names for various Polynesian
proto-languages
9.7 Probable reconstruction of the Proto Polynesian lunar calendar,
and its transformations in subsequent Polynesian proto-languages
9.8 Some post-Proto Polynesian lexical and semantic innovations
in ritual terminology
xi
207
212
216
219
221
222
223
229
233
240
246
258
262
268
270
271
275
Preface
Enchanted by the seductively salubrious atmosphere of California's Napa
Valley, we gazed over sun-drenched vineyards with the 1993 harvest ripening
on the vine, sipping the last of a lush Cabernet while intently arguing the
intricacies of some Proto Polynesian term. Perhaps ± given the blissful
feeling this setting inspired ± we might have been excused our conceit that
we would conspire to write ``a little essay between covers.'' The notion,
naive in retrospect, was to expand slightly on our 1987 article on ``History,
phylogeny, and evolution in Polynesia'' (Kirch and Green 1987), so as to
address certain critiques of the phylogenetic approach to historical anthropology, and to elaborate what we call a ``triangulation method'' for historical
reconstruction. The proposition seemed straightforward enough. Yes, a
``little essay,'' perhaps a hundred pages or so. Over plates of roast Petaluma
duck and grilled sword®sh, our wives had seconded the idea, insisting that
we should keep the essay lean and trim.
Nearly a decade later, our ``essay'' has taken shape as a book, a more
ponderous volume than we at ®rst envisioned. Its writing has occupied far
longer than anticipated, requiring several international trips and much longdistance collaboration. Yet we do not regret the transformation that our
project has undergone, because out of it we have gained a deeper respect for
the possibilities of a truly integrative historical anthropology.
We were trained (at Penn and Yale, New Mexico and Harvard, respectively) in the classic holistic perspective of Americanist anthropology, and
although we are both primarily archaeologists of the Paci®c, each of us in
our respective careers has endeavored to bring a full spectrum of anthropological evidence and approaches to bear in our research programs. Green
early on incorporated historical linguistics into his models of Polynesian
settlement (e.g., Green 1966), while Kirch integrated ®eld ethnography into
his work on prehistoric ecology and economy (e.g., Kirch 1994a). This book
re¯ects the maturing of those long-standing interests, a statement of our
conviction that anthropology at its best is always holistic and integrating. At a time
when at least one prominent biologist is crying out for ``consilience''
between the social and biological sciences (Wilson 1998), we would point out
that anthropology has always heeded that call.
xiii
xiv
Preface
While engaged in drafting several chapters during June of 1997, in
Berkeley, we became overtly conscious of how our respective ethnographic
and linguistic experiences in a diversity of Polynesian venues critically aided
the construction of the arguments we were striving to advance. Comparative
ethnography can, in theory, be carried out by the proverbial ``armchair''
scholar, but there can be no doubting the value of personal ethnographic
experience over a range of Polynesian cultures and societies. The most astute
comparativists in the Oceanic ®eld themselves had the advantage of original
®eldwork in at least two or more locales: Handy, Hiroa, Burrows, Emory,
Oliver, and Sahlins, among them.
As with our predecessors, we likewise have spent much time residing and
working in many Polynesian societies, including: Anuta, Tikopia, Taumako,
Tonga, Futuna, Samoa, `Uvea, Mangaia, Mo`orea, Mangareva, Aotearoa,
Rapa Nui, and Hawai`i. Between us we speak or have made signi®cant
efforts assembling vocabularies of the following Polynesian languages:
Anutan, Tikopian, Taumako, Futunan, Tongan, Samoan, Tahitian, Mangarevan, and Hawaiian. This ethnographic and linguistic background, acquired
through a combined total of seven decades of continuous effort in the
Polynesian ®eld, has proved invaluable for the task we set ourselves. All this,
need we say, has been in addition to our primary efforts as archaeologists in
the same islands, where we have endeavored to generate materially documented historical sequences of cultural change. We underscore this point
here not to assert our authority, but rather to stress the necessity in historical
anthropology of erudition based on broad comparative knowledge. Quite
possibly, the kind of work we would wish to see undertaken and extended is,
in fact, only possible through collaboration, for it is doubtful that any one
individual can command either the necessary depth of methodological and
theoretical expertise, or the range of speci®c knowledge acquired through
®eld or library research.
Writing this book has been a true collaboration. But one of us writes
books, having honed the necessary skills, while the other does not; the order
of authors recognizes that reality. Of course, each of us read, emended,
edited, and critiqued the drafts of the other, so the ®nal book truly re¯ects a
joint effort.
Acknowledgments
Green thanks the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, University
of California at Berkeley, for a Visiting Miller Professorship which brought
him to Berkeley in the fall of 1994, and allowed us to begin our collaboration. Kirch gratefully acknowledges the support of the Center for Advanced
Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California, which provided him
Preface
xv
with ideal working conditions during the ®nal stages of writing and editing.
Kirch also thanks the National Science Foundation, which partially funded
his 1997±98 CASBS Fellowship (Grant No. SBR-9601236).
We owe a great debt to our colleagues in Paci®c historical linguistics,
without whose decades of careful work in lexical reconstruction we would
not have been able to undertake this book. In particular, the late Emeritus
Professor Bruce Biggs of the University of Auckland provided a major
underpinning for our research through his POLLEX database of Proto
Polynesian reconstructions which he has tirelessly compiled since 1965.
Professor Biggs gave us free access to his computerized database, for which
we are immensely grateful. It was with great sadness, as this book was in
®nal proof, that we learned of his passing. Other linguists, especially Andrew
Pawley, Malcolm Ross, Ross Clark, and Bob Blust, have provided us with
information, insights, and helpful critiques over the years.
We are especially grateful to the following colleagues who took the time to
read and critique draft versions of various chapters: Peter Bellwood, Bob
Blust, Janet Davidson, Ward Goodenough, Steve Hooper, John Moore,
Frank Lichtenberk, Andrew Pawley, and Marshall Sahlins. David Tuggle
kindly provided simulated southern hemisphere sky charts for the mid-®rst
millennium BC, including that reproduced as Figure 9.4. Hans Schmidt
kindly provided us with his transcriptions, in English and Rotuman, of
selected excerpts from the manuscript notes of A. M. Hocart, housed in the
Alexander Turnbull Library. Serge TcherkeÂzoff shared with us a copy of his
manuscript paper on Samoan matai. In the ®nal stages of manuscript
preparation, Sara Diamond (Berkeley) and Dorothy Brown (Auckland)
provided invaluable assistance with word processing and bibliography. Joan
Lawrence prepared the illustrations from our rough copy.
It gives us great pleasure to dedicate this book to our wives, TheÂreÁse
Babineau and Valerie Green. They shared our early enthusiasm, encouraged
us through the rough spots, and reminded us of the larger signi®cance of our
project.
Patrick Vinton Kirch
Roger C. Green
Abbreviations
Language abbreviations
Proto-language abbreviations
PAN
Proto Austronesian
PCE
Proto Central Eastern Polynesian
PCEMP
Proto Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian
PCP
Proto Central Paci®c
PEC
Proto Ellicean
PEP
Proto Eastern Polynesian
PMP
Proto Malayo-Polynesian
PMQ
Proto Marquesic
PNP
Proto Nuclear Polynesian
POC
Proto Oceanic
PPN
Proto Polynesian
PTA
Proto Tahitic
PTO
Proto Tongic
Modern language abbreviations, and geographic af®nity
AIT
ANU
AUS
EAS
ECE
EFU
EUV
FIJ
HAW
KAP
MAE
MAO
MFA
MIA
Aitutaki (Cook Is.), Central Eastern Polynesia
Anuta (Cherry Is.), Outlier
Austral Is. (French Polynesia), Central Eastern Polynesia
Easter Is., Marginal Eastern Polynesia
Tuvalu (Ellice Is.), Western Polynesia
East Futuna (Horne Is.), Western Polynesia
East Uvea (Wallis Is.), Western Polynesia
Fiji
Hawai`i, Marginal Eastern Polynesia
Kapingamarangi, Outlier
Emae (Vanuatu), Outlier
New Zealand Maori, Marginal Eastern Polynesia
Mele-Fila (Vanuatu), Outlier
Mangaia (Cook Is.), Central Eastern Polynesia
xvi
List of language abbreviations
MKI
MOR
MQA
MQN
MQS
MRA
MVA
NIU
NKO
NKR
OJA
PEN
PIL
PUK
RAR
REN
ROT
RUR
SAM
SIK
TAH
TAK
TIK
TOK
TON
TUA
WFU
WUV or
WEV
WYA
xvii
Manihiki (Cook Is.), Central Eastern Polynesia
Mooriori (Chatham Is.), Marginal Eastern Polynesia
Marquesas (French Polynesia), Marginal Eastern Polynesia
Northern Marquesan dialect (French Polynesia), Marginal
Eastern Polynesia
Southern Marquesan dialect (French Polynesia), Marginal
Eastern Polynesia
Manihiki/Rakahanga (Cook Is.), Central Eastern Polynesia
Mangareva (French Polynesia), Central Eastern Polynesia
Niue Is., Western Polynesia
Nukuoro, Outlier
Nukuria (Solomons), Outlier
Luangiua (Ontong-Java, Solomons), Outlier
Penrhyn (Cook Is.), Central Eastern Polynesia
Pileni (Solomons), Outlier
Pukapuka (Northern Cook Is.), Central Eastern Polynesia
Rarotonga (Cook Is.), Central Eastern Polynesia
Rennell and Bellona Is. (Solomons), Outlier
Rotuma (Fiji)
Rurutu (French Polynesia), Central Eastern Polynesia
Samoa, Western Polynesia
Sikaiana (Solomons), Outlier
Tahitian (French Polynesia), Central Eastern Polynesia
Takuu (Solomons), Outlier
Tikopia (Solomons), Outlier
Tokelau Is., Western Polynesia
Tonga, Western Polynesia
Tuamotu (French Polynesia), Central Eastern Polynesia
West Futuna (Vanuatu), Outlier
West Uvea (Ouvea, New Caledonia), Outlier
Waya, Western Fiji
Prologue: on historical
anthropology
Our problem may be metaphorically de®ned as the translation of a
two-dimensional photographic picture of reality into the threedimensional picture which lies back of it . . . The gaining of an
historical perspective will mean the arrangement in as orderly
temporal sequence as possible, within as de®nitely circumscribed
absolute time limits as circumstances will allow, of the processes
studied by our science, the carriers of these processes being generally
de®ned more inclusively than in documentary history.
sapir 1916:2
Polynesians called it Hawaiki (or sometimes, Kahiki, or Pulotu), the distantly
remembered homeland, source of their ancestors, mythical site of the
creation of culture, and spirit realm to which their own souls would voyage
after death.1 They honored this ancestral homeland in chant and song, and
named newly found islands after it: Savai`i in Samoa, and the large island of
Hawai`i, among them. But was there ever in reality such a ``Hawaiki,'' or
does it exist only in the shadowy realms of cosmogonic myth? Archaeologists,
after a half-century of intensive pursuit of the question of Polynesian origins,
would answer af®rmatively. More precisely, they would ®x the coordinates of
this ancestral homeland in time and space: the archipelagos of Tonga and
Samoa (with their immediate smaller neighbors), in the ®rst millennium BC.
Through an unbroken sequence of cultural change that begins with the
arrival of small groups of Early Eastern Lapita peoples around 1100±1000
BC, a distinctive Ancestral Polynesian culture had developed four to ®ve
centuries later.
While archaeologists con®dently point to various settlements and sites of
this period and to their characteristic material assemblages of Polynesian
Plainware pottery and plano-convex adzes, securely ®xed in time by
numerous radiocarbon dates ± what do we really know about this Ancestral
Polynesian world, this Hawaiki? Is it possible to move beyond the strictly
material evidence of potsherds, adzes, and shell ®shhooks, postmolds and
earth ovens? Simply stated, this is the problem that has energized us to write
this book, for we would maintain that twentieth-century anthropology has
1
2
Hawaiki, ancestral Polynesia
indeed developed powerful tools and methods for recovering and writing the
deep history of ``peoples without history.'' Yet we are perturbed that as the
twenty-®rst century dawns, the academic and scholarly rush toward specialization and even sub-specialization (not to mention the current postmodern
conceit that ``culture'' or ``history'' are anything other than academic
constructions) threatens to erode the essential strength of a holistic vision of
anthropology as an integrated set of perspectives and methods trained upon
a diversity of evidence.
The founders of the unique Americanist tradition in anthropology ± Boas,
Kroeber, Sapir, and others ± reacted in part to the theoretical excesses of a
generalizing ``evolutionary'' approach, and advocated a more rigorous
``historical particularism.'' They saw the advantage to be gained from
multiple lines of investigation and evidence, and thus bundled ethnography,
archaeology, linguistics, and physical anthropology together in a way that
the European academic world never fully embraced. Eighty years ago
Edward Sapir advanced a charter for historical anthropology in his short
monograph on Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Culture: A Study in Method
(Sapir 1916). This paper ± once famous but now seldom cited ± laid out the
potential contributions to historical reconstruction to be made by combining
the direct evidence of documentary writings, native testimony, and archaeological ®nds, with the inferential evidence provided by physical anthropology,
ethnology, and linguistics.2 Sapir envisioned a historical anthropology that ±
as a joint intellectual enterprise ± required contributions from all of these
®elds, each with its own unique evidential sources. The historical goals that
motivated Sapir have waxed and waned in anthropology over the intervening decades, and the paradigms and methods of the ``sub®elds'' (archaeology, ethnology, biological anthropology, and linguistics) have also changed
dramatically.3
Despite some interesting proposals in the interim (e.g., Romney 1957;
Vogt 1964, 1994a), few integrated data-rich explorations along the lines
conceived by Sapir have evolved. Nonetheless, in the ®rst decade of the
twenty-®rst century a renewed interest in matters historical may be
discerned in the several sub®elds into which anthropology has been partitioned. These trends lend cautious optimism that our present endeavor ±
fundamentally similar to Sapir's, but here applied to Polynesia ± may be of
more than strictly regional interest.4 Like Sapir, we aim to advance a
historical anthropology, but one that brings to bear the myriad advances in
data, methods, and theory developed throughout the twentieth century.
Sapir devoted most of his attention to linguistics and ethnology; he only
brie¯y mentioned documentary sources, oral history, and physical anthropology, and relegated archaeology to a single page of his monograph. Sapir's
ethnolinguistic bias is understandable, given the embryonic state of New
Prologue: on historical anthropology
3
World prehistory in 1916. Even for the Old World, where archaeology had
an earlier start, existing knowledge was then encompassed within the boldest
of schemes: Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. But a
growing subdiscipline of anthropological archaeology, especially in North
America, increasingly became the main player in historical anthropology,
where during the ®rst half of the twentieth century it struggled to develop
methods for establishing relative or absolute chronology (Taylor 1948;
Trigger 1989a). At the same time that archaeology concentrated on cultural
homologies (similarities due to common ancestry) and synologies (similarities
produced by diffusion or borrowing), within what became known in North
America as ``culture history,''5 ethnology increasingly rejected historical
reconstruction. Following Radcliffe-Brown's pejorative characterization of
ethnology's earlier efforts in this direction as ``conjectural'' or ``pseudohistory'' (1941:1, 1950:1±2), developments in social and cultural anthropology moved steadily toward synchronic orientations.6 In the Paci®c, the
ethnographies of Raymond Firth, Gregory Bateson, and Margaret Mead
provide examples. Interest in historical sources and problems was largely
relegated to the temporally restricted topic of ``ethnohistory'' (Dening 1966).
Attempts to weld the shorter-term perspective of ethnohistory to the longerterm trajectories revealed by archaeology, proposed by some North American scholars, came to be known as the ``direct historical approach'' (Wedel
1938; Steward 1942; Strong 1953). Although the direct historical approach
fell out of favor in the post-World War II era, it now shows signs of renewed
application (Lightfoot 1995).
Archaeology too, at least in North America, went through its own phase
in which the particular contingencies of history were devalued in favor of a
more ``scienti®c'' orientation that sought universal ``laws'' of cultural
process. The New Archaeology of the 1960s and 1970s replaced the earlier
emphasis on homologous change with a concern for analogous change, driven
in part by a paradigm of archaeology as an experimental and even predictive
social science (e.g., Watson et al. 1971). Anthropological linguistics, in
contrast, has always retained to varying degrees its historical component
(Hock 1986:v±vi), even while it underwent a range of transformations in its
more mainstream descriptive, theoretical, and sociological varieties (Hymes
1964). These continuing historical linguistic enterprises ± largely independent of archaeology ± have culminated in a series of language-family
histories based on genetic subgroupings, for many of the world's languages
(Blench 1997: table 2). Finally, like linguistics, biological anthropology has
long maintained its evolutionary interests in the genetic history of human
populations.7
In spite of these varied efforts in anthropological history over the course of
the twentieth century ± or perhaps just because they remained largely
4
Hawaiki, ancestral Polynesia
uncoordinated as the subdisciplines burgeoned and specialized ± a genuinely
systematic, methodologically rigorous, and theoretically sophisticated historical anthropology of the kind that Sapir envisioned eighty years ago failed to
materialize. However, that situation has begun to change, and especially in
the Paci®c.
The varied strands of a new historical orientation are contained within
what Trigger (1989a, 1989b, 1991) calls ``holistic archaeology,'' an approach
he sees as forming ``a new synthesis for archaeological explanation.''
Echoing Sapir, Trigger proposes to combine archaeological data with the
®ndings of historical linguistics, oral traditions, historical ethnography, and
historical records so as to produce a more rounded view of prehistory, as well
as of ethnohistory and historical archaeology. Trigger (1991:562) argues that
such interdisciplinary approaches ®rst developed as early as the 1950s, citing
examples from Africa (e.g., Murdock 1959; McCall 1964; Trigger 1968).
Early efforts were, however, largely rejected by the emerging and rapidly
dominant ``processual'' archaeologists. Renewed efforts at tackling sequences
of homologous change are noted by Trigger as recurring in the late 1970s
and early 1980s in North America, the Mayan region, and Polynesia, as well
as in Africa.8 They are one basis for Trigger's claim that ``the direct
historical approach is perhaps the most challenging and potentially important task confronting archaeology today,'' requiring archaeologists to
become ``still more open to using non-archaeological forms of data to study
the past'' (Trigger 1991:563). Other recent examples include the collaborative works of Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus (1983; Marcus and Flannery
1996) on the long-term historical evolution of the Zapotec and Mixtec
peoples of Mesoamerica, and Kirch and Sahlins' collaborative work on the
Hawaiian Kingdom (1992).9
Calls for a renewed historical orientation within anthropology are not
limited to archaeology. Throughout the 1980s some sociocultural anthropologists became increasingly historicized (Ohnuki-Tierney 1990:1±6), taking
their lead in part from the well-developed Annales tradition of encompassing
social history as practiced by Marc Bloch, Fernand Braudel, Georges Duby,
and others. Marshall Sahlins incorporated and modi®ed aspects of Braudel's
(1980) famous ``wavelength'' scheme of history in his brilliant work on
Captain Cook and the con¯uence of Hawaiian and British cultures in
1778±79 (Sahlins 1981, 1985, 1995). At the same time, Greg Dening ± a
historian with anthropological training ± was moving in his studies of
Marquesan ethnohistory and early European contacts in the Paci®c toward
what he calls ``history's anthropology'' (1980, 1988, 1992). The pioneering
efforts of Sahlins and Dening have been extended by others (e.g., Linnekin
1990; Thomas 1991, 1997). Such historicization of social anthropology was,
moreover, by no means con®ned to the Paci®c arena (see Cohn 1980, 1981;
Prologue: on historical anthropology
5
Ohnuki-Tierney 1990). Biersack, in her introduction to Clio in Oceania, a
book with the notable subtitle ``Toward a Historical Anthropology,'' writes:
In varying degrees, the issues of history and theory rehearsed herein bear on other
branches of anthropology [in addition to archaeology] and serve as core issues
around which the sub®elds of anthropology may coalesce and enter into collaboration . . . Positioned among historical and cultural studies and at a powerful
con¯uence of subdisciplines within anthropology, historical anthropology provides a
forum within which to perpetuate the debates of the last two decades but on new
and less parochial terrain. To historical anthropology is thus transferred the
theoretical commissions of the discipline: past, present, and future. (1991:25)
A concrete expression of these merging historical interests within social
anthropology and archaeology is the collaborative work of Kirch and
Sahlins, Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii (1992).
This project ± combining the data and perspectives of a historical
ethnologist and an archaeologist, focused on a particular geographic and
historic space, the Anahulu Valley ± is a book-length example of research
that purposively merges subdisciplinary approaches. That more collaboration between archaeologists and historical ethnographers has not been
undertaken may re¯ect a long-standing ± and in most cases implicit rather
than explicit ± bias toward those last few hundred years of global European
expansion, and an implicit privileging of textual records (Wolf 1982).10
Thus Sahlins, while discovering that the ``peoples of the Paci®c I had
studied indeed had a history,'' could still remark that ``these exotic histories
. . . as recorded do not go very far back'' (1985:xviii). And Dening can
claim that ``the history of Polynesian cultures could only be written out of
sources that were European'' (1991:372, emphasis added). These comments
for the Paci®c are echoed in Ohnuki-Tierney's more general remark that
``the longue dureÂe is not easily accessible for histories of nonliterate peoples''
(1990:3, fn. 2).
Thus turning their backs to archaeological colleagues often housed in the
very same academic departments of anthropology, historical ethnographers
have often haughtily disdained anything except the documentary form of the
literate world's historical texts, usually European-authored. In such agendas,
the archaeological record is assumed to be either irrelevant to history, or
relevant only to a short segment of it.11 But the historical ``texts'' of the
longue dureÂe are encoded not just in the ciphers of Western scribes; they exist
equally as material traces dispersed over landscapes and sedimented in their
depths, no less as patterns of cognate words in the linguists' comparative
lexicons, or as indigenous traditions transmitted orally over long generations.
Only when archaeologists, as valued interpreters of their unique historical
``texts,'' are accorded seats in the same seminar room will historical
6
Hawaiki, ancestral Polynesia
anthropology truly be able to encompass the longue dureÂe of nonliterate
societies.
Also damaging to the effort to develop a historical ethnography has been
the postmodernist critique in anthropology (e.g., Clifford and Marcus 1986),
which among other things has eschewed or rejected regional and comparative perspectives.12 For a Paci®c example, in his book on South Coast New
Guinea Cultures, Knauft struggles with the problem of describing and comparing ethnographic regions in the face of the postmodernist stance that such
regions in and of themselves are no more than ``the result of a Western
academic discourse that projects its own cultural biases and assumes
incorrectly that these characterizations re¯ect other people's reality''
(1993:3; see also Knauft 1999). Signi®cantly, Knauft ®nds a key to the
reinvigoration of ethnographic comparison in the analysis of ``historical
context.'' While we do not dispute the potential validity of the critique that
concepts such as ``cultural regions'' are anthropological constructions, we do
®nd disturbing the postmodernist tendency to dismiss such constructions out
of hand, rather than on the basis of a critical examination of empirical
validity.
With respect to linguistics, we detect a renewed and more weighty interest
in the intersection of its disciplinary contribution to the historical concerns
among the various subdisciplines of anthropology. An example from the
1970s, notable for its methodological rigor, is Dyen and Aberle's (1974)
reconstruction of Proto Athapaskan kinship systems. Marshall (1984) offered
an exposition on the culture history of structural patterning in Oceanic
sibling classi®cations, a line of inquiry more recently taken up by Hage and
Harary (1996). A return to an interest in linguistics and archaeology is
evident as one major theme selected for the 1994 World Archaeology
Congress, stimulated in part by provocative ideas of Colin Renfrew (1987,
1989, 1992) on the spread of Indo-European (Blench and Spriggs 1997,
1998).
Two of the most robust regional endeavors linking archaeological and
linguistic evidence focus on Africa, and on the Paci®c. The ®rst includes the
work of Ehret and his collaborators (Ehret and Posnansky 1982; Ehret 1998)
on Mashariki Bantu origins and their spread in sub-Saharan Africa, and on
Nubian speakers in the Sudan. In the Paci®c, collaborative linguistic,
archaeological, and anthropological research has burgeoned since the 1970s.
In his extensive writings leading toward the reconstruction of the Proto
Austronesian lexicon, Blust (e.g., 1980, 1985, 1987, 1995a) advances many
important hypotheses regarding early Austronesian social organization and
culture, as well as the locations of homelands and particular protolanguages, stimulating new archaeological research. The Comparative Austronesian Project of the Australian National University (Fox, ed., 1993;
Prologue: on historical anthropology
7
Pawley and Ross 1994; Fox and Sather 1996; Ross et al., eds., 1998) has
likewise adopted a research methodology explicitly incorporating a historical
perspective, and drawing upon linguistic, comparative ethnographic, and
archaeological approaches. Some of these trends in the study of the
Austronesian language family and culture history are reviewed by Pawley
and Ross (1993). Recently, McConvell and Evans (1997) attempt to bring
archaeology and linguistics closer together, with a geographical emphasis on
Australia.
For those who, like us, would advance anew the cause of historical
anthropology, Pawley and Ross (1993) make several salient claims. Although
they concur that the job of the culture historian is to make sense of
resemblances as well as differences by aligning the evidence compiled by
various disciplines, Pawley and Ross point out a number of methodological
challenges. One is the sizable gaps in the data sets provided by each
contributing ®eld of study. A second issue ± the problem of synthesis ± is
more serious and not so readily corrected. Whereas each discipline and
subdiscipline has its own kinds of data and particular array of methods for
their interpretation, historical anthropology (or ``culture history'' in their
terms) as yet has no equally reliable procedures for marrying the evidence of
different disciplines.13 A third problem is ``that much writing on culture
history is marred by a weak understanding of linguistic methods'' (Pawley
and Ross 1993:428). Nonetheless their conclusion is worth quoting in full:
The problem of culture history is that it is an interdisciplinary enterprise, but the
methods and data used by each of its major constituent disciplines are not readily
comparable. Nonetheless such comparisons are necessary in order to evaluate
competing hypotheses within disciplines and to gain a more complete picture of the
past than any single method can provide. The AN[Austronesian]-speaking region offers
exceptionally favorable conditions for such interdisciplinary research. Until recently, most
prominent hypotheses about the culture history of the AN-speaking regions
originated in the data of comparative linguistics or comparative ethnography, with
scholars from these two disciplines generally working independently. Archaeology
has been a vigorous latecomer. Early attempts at integrating linguistic and
archaeological evidence concentrated on centers and directions of AN dispersal,
with archaeology providing a chronological framework for linguistically-based
scenarios. Currently, the focus of culture historical syntheses is shifting toward
comparisons of the lexicons of reconstructed languages with the content and
environmental contexts of various archaeological assemblages. There has been no
serious attempt to square the recent ®ndings of historical human biology with those
of other disciplines, but there are signs that this too is under way. (1993:452,
emphasis added)
In sum, not since Sapir has there been such renewed interest in developing
an interdisciplinary approach to historical anthropology. What Trigger, an
8
Hawaiki, ancestral Polynesia
archaeologist, espouses under the umbrella of ``holistic archaeology,'' the
social anthropologist Biersack advocates under the rubric ``historical anthropology,'' while linguists Pawley and Ross label the same endeavor a kind of
``culture history.'' (Biological anthropologists might subsume it all under
``co-evolution'' and wonder about all the fuss.) This kind of ``culture
history,'' moreover, is quite different from (although a congruent development out of ) ``traditional archaeology'' (Feinman 1997; Renfrew and Bahn
1991:407) or ``Americanist culture history'' (Willey and Sabloff 1980; Lyman
et al. 1997) of the ®rst half of the twentieth century. One would be tempted to
call such a project a ``New Culture History,'' were that label not already
appropriated by others (e.g., Hunt, ed., 1989). Although the current
emphasis on history has its ``new'' elements, its roots in anthropology run
deep indeed, as a rereading of Sapir reminds us; the adjective ``new'' is
hardly required. We thus ®nd the rubric ``historical anthropology'' elegantly
suited to our purposes.
These varied subdisciplinary efforts, not always coordinated but clearly
tending toward a common direction of historical anthropology, might be
seen on a larger canvas of late twentieth-century science as part of a
movement toward increased sophistication of the ``historical sciences.'' Thus
Stephen Jay Gould has drawn a distinction between two modes of science
(1989:277±91).14 The ®rst mode (including traditional physics and chemistry,
for example) is the Newtonian form concerned with universal laws of
invariant expression, able to make predictions about a deterministic universe. In these largely experimental sciences, time is motion, and history is
irrelevant. The second mode, of which geology is a good exemplar, is
thermodynamically based, concerned with open (rather than closed) systems
in which time and history ``matter'' (Gould 1986). This is the terrain of the
historical sciences including cosmology, historical geology, evolutionary
biology and ± notably ± archaeology and historical linguistics, in which
retrodiction rather than prediction must be to the fore. As Gould (1980),
Ernst Mayr (1982, 1997), and others have eloquently argued, in such
historical sciences the recognition of contingency and a historical narrative
mode of explanation become not only philosophically valid, but essential. As
Gould cogently writes, ``If the primacy of history is evolution's lesson for
other sciences, then we should explore the consequences of valuing history
as a source of law and similarity, rather than dismissing it as narrative
unworthy of the name science'' (1986:68).
Our book integrates a study in method with a substantive, data-rich case:
the reconstruction of the world of the Ancestral Polynesian homeland, of
``Hawaiki.'' Polynesia offers exceptionally favorable conditions for historical
anthropology, a model region in which to investigate the congruence of
Prologue: on historical anthropology
9
history, phylogeny, and evolution (Kirch and Green 1987). We intend to
explicate more fully the theoretical issues involved, as well as the methodological procedures required to forward a phylogenetic approach in historical
anthropology.
Biersack (1991:25), commenting on our 1987 contribution in Current
Anthropology, wrote that ``judging by the responses to their . . . article, the
effort [of Kirch and Green] to produce a historical archaeology . . . will
prove as theoretically and methodologically challenging and as fraught with
contention as the parallel effort in cultural anthropology has proved.'' The
contention is anticipated. Such is inevitably the case with scholarship that
aims, not to sit conformably and comfortably within its own disciplinary
cocoon, but rather to reach across disciplinary boundaries, to engage in
dialogue across ingrained scholarly traditions. We have written a work that
dares to draw upon not just the theoretical perspectives and methodological
approaches of our own ®eld of archaeology, but also those of historical
linguistics and comparative ethnography. Our hope is that this effort will
inspire a renewed appreciation of the power of a holistic, ``historical
anthropology.'' Most importantly, if this book manages to move us closer to
the kind of integrative anthropology envisioned decades ago by Edward
Sapir, we shall be pleased.
part i
The phylogenetic model: theory
and method
As a problem, recognized since Aristotle, natural similarities come in
two basic, largely contradictory styles. We cannot simply measure
and tabulate; we must factor and divide. Similarities may be
homologies, shared by simple reason of descent and history, or
analogies, actively developed . . . as evolutionary responses to
gould 1986:66
common situations.
Chapter 1
The phylogenetic model in
historical anthropology
Physical type and language, we would say, have no causal
relationship; there is no functional reason why a given physical type
should occur within a given language family. Therefore, when these
two variables do show signi®cant concordance in their distribution
this may well represent an important historical fact, namely that the
explanation for their concordance can be traced to a common point
somewhere in the past. A demonstration that these two factors are
also uniquely accompanied by a systemic culture pattern . . .
romney 1957:36
strengthens the belief in a common origin.
The ``phylogenetic model'' has a long pedigree within historical anthropology, traceable in its essentials to Sapir's 1916 monograph. In the 1950s, it
was formally developed under the label of ``the genetic model,'' a term that
might be confused with a strictly biological perspective of somatic (genetic)
inheritance, and which we (Kirch and Green 1987) therefore replaced with
``phylogenetic model.'' This revised label emphasizes historical sequences of
cultural differentiation or divergence within related groups, regardless of the
mechanism of transmission. Indeed, in the complexities of human history,
both somatic and extra-somatic modes of trans-generational inheritance are
salient (Durham 1982, 1991; Boyd and Richerson 1985). Thus a phylogenetic model within historical anthropology must incorporate data and
perspectives from the full range of anthropological subdisciplines, including
biological anthropology, archaeology, historical linguistics, and comparative
ethnology.
In this introductory chapter we will sketch the intellectual history of the
phylogenetic model within anthropology, including its applications in Polynesia; discuss some current issues surrounding its applicability; compare its
principal methods with phylogenetic (cladistic) approaches in biology and
linguistics; and, ®nally, argue the fundamental signi®cance of a phylogenetic
understanding of homologous change within historical anthropology. Our
aim, in short, is to lay out the theoretical background and framework
necessary for developing speci®c methods for an integrated historical
anthropology, especially as these apply to Remote Oceania and Polynesia.
13
14
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
A brief history of the phylogenetic model
Kim Romney (1957) ®rst delineated the speci®c criteria for cultural phylogenetic units, building upon Fred Eggan's proposals (1954) regarding ``controlled comparison'' in anthropology (see also Goodenough 1957). Basing
his argument upon the fundamental anthropological observation that there
is no necessary relation or correspondence between language, biology, and
culture, Romney outlined the essentials of what he termed the ``genetic
model'':
The genetic model takes as its segment of cultural history a group of tribes which
are set off from all other groups by sharing a common physical type, possessing
common systemic patterns, and speaking genetically related languages. It is
assumed that correspondence among these three factors indicates a common
historical tradition at some time in the past for these tribes. We shall designate this
segment of cultural history as the ``genetic unit'' and it includes the ancestral group
and all intermediate groups, as well as the tribes in the ethnographic present. The
genetic unit represents a substantive segment of cultural history while the term
``genetic model'' refers to the conceptual framework which serves as a tool to order
the data. (1957:36)
Romney's seminal proposals were expanded and re®ned by Evon Vogt
(1964) in his introductory essay to a volume on Maya cultural development
(see also Vogt 1994a). Vogt, like Romney, stressed that a ``common historical
tradition'' in any area, such as the Maya, would need to be de®ned on
independent criteria of (1) common physical type, (2) common systemic cultural
patterns, and (3) genetically related languages. Vogt elaborated on the
theoretical implications of the ``genetic model,'' explicitly comparing it to
models of adaptive radiation in biology:
In brief, the genetic model assumes that genetically related tribes, as determined by
related languages, physical types, and systemic patterns, are derived from a small
proto-group with a proto-culture at some time in the past. The model resembles
that of the zoologist who views a certain species of animal as evolving and making
an adaptive adjustment to a given ecological niche and then radiating from this
point as the population expands into neighboring ecological niches. As the
population moves into different ecological settings, further adaptive variations occur
in the species. But these variations are traceable to the ancestral animal, or, in other
words, back to the proto-type.
In the genetic model, as applied to human populations, we assume that a small
proto-group succeeds in adapting itself ef®ciently to a certain ecological niche and
in developing certain basic systemic patterns which constitute the basic aspects of
the proto-culture. If the adaptation proves to be ef®cient, the population expands,
and the group begins to radiate from this point of dispersal. As members split off
from the proto-group and move into neighboring ecological niches, they make
appropriate adaptations to these new situations and begin to differentiate ± that is,
The phylogenetic model in historical anthropology
15
there are adaptive variations from the proto-type over time as the members of the
genetic unit spread from the dispersal area. (1964:11±12)
Vogt moved the ``genetic'' model beyond a strictly theoretical concept,
and proposed a series of methodological steps and procedures for its
implementation in historical anthropology. These required ``the combined
use of a number of linguistic, archaeological, physical anthropological,
ethnological, and historical methods bringing to bear the full range of
anthropological data as these become available from ®eld and archival
research'' (Vogt 1964:12). Vogt gave primacy to the evidence of language,
suggesting that an anthropologist should commence with ``the de®nition of
genetic units in terms of genetically related languages.''1 As Sanders put it:
``Methodologically speaking, the basis of de®ning such genetic units should
be linguistic because of the relative exactness of linguistic methods as
compared to those of ethnography and archaeology'' (Sanders 1966).
However, this was primacy only in using linguistic data to de®ne which
groups to include within a speci®c genetic unit; linguistic data were always
to be cross-checked against those provided by other sub®elds, and thus were
not in any ultimate sense privileged.2
Vogt (1964:10±13) advocated eight steps for the application of the
``genetic'' model to a speci®c ``segment of cultural history'':
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
plot the geographical distribution of related languages;
calculate time depth, using lexicostatistics and glottochronology;
locate the dispersal area and spread of the proto-group;
reconstruct the proto-language and proto-culture using the
linguistic methods of lexical reconstruction;
use archaeological data to test speci®c hypotheses generated by
steps 3 and 4;
check the sequences of divergence derived from linguistic and
archaeological analyses with the independent evidence of
physical or biological anthropology;
use ethnohistorical materials to ``provide readings on the
various branches of the genetic unit'' between the time of ®rst
European contact and the present; and
add ethnographic data on contemporary communities to ``map
variations in systemic patterns that have survived from earlier
time levels and to detect cultural `drifts' or trends that are still
occurring in these living systems.''
These steps constitute an integrated methodology for delineating an
evolutionarily meaningful unit, one whose branches have diverged from a
16
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
common ancestor, according to a historical sequence that can be temporally
and geographically de®ned. Despite some necessary modi®cations and
re®nements to Vogt's research procedure (to be discussed below), Vogt's
methodology remains eminently sound and reasonable. In effect, Vogt
proposed to bring the full holistic power of twentieth-century anthropology to
bear on the problems originally outlined by Sapir (1916) nearly a halfcentury earlier.
Despite its potential, Vogt's research strategy was not widely applied, in
part because of the move by sociocultural anthropologists away from an
interest in historical and evolutionary issues, as discussed in our Prologue.
Archaeologists, too, increasingly downplayed history and homologous
change. Flannery and Marcus (1983), however, explicitly used Romney and
Vogt's ``genetic model'' in their insightful study of divergence among the
Zapotec and Mixtec populations of Mesoamerica. It was an initially
independent reading of their work that inspired the two of us to collaborate
on a joint application of the phylogenetic model to Polynesia (Kirch and
Green 1987).
Controlled comparison in Polynesia
Edwin G. Burrows (1938a, 1940) ®rst championed the Polynesian cultures as
an exemplary unit for controlled comparison. His classic monograph,
Western Polynesia: A Study in Cultural Differentiation, drew explicitly on Sapir's
methodology (1916) and established Polynesia as a cultural area (Figure 1.1).
Burrows lacked the advantages of a developed archaeological record, and of
careful historical linguistic analyses of relationships between Polynesian
groups; these were to come only later. Thus, his evidence was con®ned to
comparative ethnography, examining the distribution of a range of cultural
``traits,'' including material culture, kinship systems, cosmogony, and religious beliefs. Nonetheless, Burrows deduced a series of ``historical processes
which had apparently brought about the differentiation of western from
central-marginal Polynesia'' (1938a:92), including diffusion, local development, and abandonment or rejection of speci®c cultural traits.3
In the context of a renewed emphasis on Paci®c regional studies after
World War II, Ward Goodenough (1957) authored a programmatic agenda
for comparative research in Oceania. Marshall Sahlins (1958) produced the
®rst new comparative study of Polynesia, now theoretically situated within a
cultural evolutionary framework (Sahlins and Service 1960), and explicitly
invoking a phylogenetic analogy by describing Polynesian cultures as ``members
of a single cultural genus that has ®lled in and adapted to a variety of local
habitats'' (1958:ix). Sahlins, however, was interested neither in phylogenetic
analysis per se, nor in the reconstruction of historical trajectories of change
Fig. 1.1
Map of the Polynesian triangle and the Polynesian Outliers.
18
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
within Polynesia. Nor were such historical issues the main concern of
Goldman (1955, 1970), who like Sahlins regarded Polynesia as a group of
genetically related societies admirably suited for comparative analysis.
Goldman (1970) nonetheless incorporated newly emerging archaeological
data into his work, which, along with genealogically based oral traditions
and related ethnohistorical records, provided a historical context for his
comparative analysis of the Polynesian ``status system'' and of descent group
organization.
Motivated by broad theoretical questions of cultural evolution, both
Sahlins and Goldman were more interested in ``process'' (analogic change)
than in particular sequences of homologous change. Moreover, their enterprises relied on synchronic data sets ± the ethnographic record ± only
minimally integrating information from historical linguistic and archaeological sources. As a consequence, particular ethnographic endpoints in their
evolutionary schemes inevitably stood as exemplars of putative earlier stages
in the historical process. To use Goldman's model as an example, the
``Traditional'' societies of Tikopia, Pukapuka, or Ontong-Java represented
an original, ancestral form of Polynesian society. Such a strategy ± we now
know ± simply will not work for, to paraphrase the great evolutionist George
Gaylord Simpson, ``one cannot be one's own ancestor.'' Ethnographically
attested societies are not the changeless descendants of their ancestors, even
though they may be assessed as culturally conservative. Thus the pioneering
strategies of Sahlins and Goldman ± although they yielded valuable insights
through systematic ethnographic comparison ± are not suitable as models
for a theoretically rigorous historical anthropology.
The phylogenetic model applied to Polynesia
In the early 1980s, Kirch (1980, 1984a) attempted a broad synthesis of
historical change within Polynesia, using an explicitly comparative and
evolutionary approach, and according archaeological evidence primacy over
the ethnographic data emphasized by Burrows, Sahlins, or Goldman.
Although unaware at the time of Romney's or Vogt's ``genetic'' models,
Kirch (1984a:5±8) proposed an essentially identical type of ``study of
internal differentiation of Polynesian societies,'' one designed to draw on the
power of holistic anthropology:
Precisely because Polynesia as a region consists of a series of discrete, but historically
related societies ± all derived from a common ancestor ± and because there was
direct historical continuity between the ``ethnographic present'' and the prehistoric
past, we are in an excellent position to draw upon ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and
linguistic data, as well as upon strictly archaeological evidence in an attempt to
understand the region's prehistory. The Polynesian ethnographic baseline does not
The phylogenetic model in historical anthropology
19
provide mere analogies for the interpretation of archaeological data; it illuminates
directly the endpoints of indigenous developmental sequences. (Kirch 1984a:5)4
A graphic model, reproduced here as Figure 1.2, illustrated the process of
differentiation within Polynesia. It was fundamentally a phylogenetic model,
in which the ethnographically attested Polynesian cultures and societies were
regarded as ultimately derived from a proto-group, termed ``Ancestral
Polynesian Society'' (abbreviated APS in the diagram). Although Kirch
emphasized a series of successive colonization events (migrations out of the
original APS homeland, and out of later daughter communities), and the
effects of subsequent isolation between descendent populations, he explicitly
pointed out that cultural contact and borrowing had occurred between some
island groups (as depicted by the double-arrow linking W3 and X3 in the
diagram).
Kirch singled out the reconstruction of Ancestral Polynesian Society as a
critical step in any evolutionary study of cultural differentiation within
Polynesia. Knowledge of the APS ``baseline'' was necessary in order to assess
or measure later historical changes in the descendent cultural traditions
within Polynesia. Only by ®rst having some reasonable idea of the social and
technological bases of APS would it be feasible to determine which later
features were retentions, adaptations, or elaborations of older patterns, and
which were entirely new innovations, borrowing, or at times convergences.
Recognizing that archaeology alone was insuf®cient to reconstruct some
aspects of APS (such as social structure), Kirch drew upon evidence from
linguistics to outline important aspects of APS, including technology,
production systems, and social relations (Kirch 1984a:53±69). His methods
for such reconstruction were in retrospect insuf®ciently developed, and some
of his reconstructions were later challenged (e.g., Sutton 1990, 1996). We
will redress these initial methodological shortcomings, and signi®cantly
extend and improve his interpretations of Ancestral Polynesia in Part II.
In 1987, Kirch and Green put forward an analysis of Polynesia, for the
®rst time explicitly referring to Romney's ``genetic'' model. Others had
already delineated Polynesia's advantages for historical anthropology; we
sought to extend those advantages by adopting a formal set of procedures
under the label of the ``phylogenetic model.'' These derived initially from
the analytical steps outlined by Vogt (1964), to whose work we had been
introduced through our reading of Flannery and Marcus' monograph, The
Cloud People (1983). We demonstrated how Vogt's procedural steps could be
more rigorously applied in Polynesia, but also argued some ``initial propositions'' regarding ``evolutionary process'' within the Polynesian region. We
emphasized the critical importance of ``establishing homologies, thus
clearing the path for the analysis of evolutionary process'' (1987:432). We
20
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
Fig. 1.2
Kirch's 1984 model of phylogenetic differentiation in Polynesia (from Kirch
1984a: ®g. 1).
The phylogenetic model in historical anthropology
21
found inspiration in Stephen Jay Gould's assertions regarding what he called
the ``triumph of homology, or why history matters'' (Gould 1986). In Gould's
succinct phrasing, ``once we map homologies properly, we can ®nally begin
to ask interesting biological questions about function and development ±
that is, we can use morphology for its intrinsic sources of enlightenment, and
not as an inherently ¯awed measure of genealogical relationships''
(1986:68). Although Gould wrote as a biologist, his arguments apply equally
to issues of cultural evolution (with the proviso that similarities in culture can
result from contact and borrowing, as well as from descent). By ®rst
determining the sequence of phylogenetic divergence within Polynesian
societies, and by reconstructing as thoroughly as possible the baseline of
Ancestral Polynesian culture, we could ``get our history under control,'' thus
enabling far more rigorous analyses of cultural evolutionary process.
Although we hardly intended our 1987 paper as an exhaustive study of
such evolutionary processes (let alone a thorough reconstruction of APS) we
did outline several ``mechanisms of divergence,'' ``parallel evolutionary
processes,'' and processes of ``convergence,'' which we thought would prove
to be of signal importance in Polynesia. Among potential mechanisms of
divergence, we discussed: (1) isolation; (2) founder effect or drift; (3)
colonization, including adaptation to new and contrastive environments; (4)
long-term environmental selection resulting both from natural and from
human-induced environmental changes; and (5) external contact.5 Among
the parallel evolutionary processes alluded to in our 1987 paper are: (1)
demographic factors, such as a cultural analogue of the well-known r/K
selection continuum in evolutionary ecology; (2) intensi®cation and specialization of production; and (3) increased competition over time. We also
commented on the ``analogic emergence of similar traits or structures'' in
Polynesian societies that had not been in direct contact with each other, and
where such structures were evidently convergences.
A key aspect of the phylogenetic model insuf®ciently developed in our
1987 paper was the procedure for reconstructing the ancestral culture and
proto-language, that stand at the base or root of any phylogenetic unit. This
procedure, which we here call the ``triangulation method,'' is a main thrust
of this book, and the subject of Chapter 2.
Necessary modi®cations to Vogt's methodology
By 1987, we were both aware of problems or inadequacies in Vogt's (1964,
1994a) proposed phylogenetic methodology. We especially took issue with
his reliance upon lexicostatistics and glottochronology, not only to determine
the subgrouping relationships among the languages under consideration, but
also to calculate the time depth of cultural differentiation within a particular
22
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
``segment of cultural history.'' Vogt's recommended procedure had been
used by Marcus (Topic 2 in Flannery and Marcus 1983) to outline a
sequence of linguistic divergence among the ``Otomangueans'' who include
the modern Zapotec and Mixtec. In reading Flannery and Marcus' otherwise brilliantly argued volume, we realized that Polynesian scholars had
surpassed our Mesoamerican colleagues, because historical linguists in the
Paci®c had already recognized the pitfalls associated with a strictly lexicostatistical approach. Paci®c lexicostatistical studies in the 1950s and 1960s (e.g.,
Dyen 1965) had failed to provide the same level of acceptable propositions
about subgrouping as the comparative method. Lexicostatistics and glottochronology have little following today among Paci®c scholars, and we do not
employ them, for reasons detailed below.6
In retrospect, we should have made this point more prominently in our
1987 paper; the subgrouping model for Polynesian languages that we used
there (Kirch and Green 1987: ®g. 2, after Biggs 1971) was based not on
lexicostatistics, but rather on a great deal of careful comparative work on
phonology, lexicon, and morphology.7 It was a subgrouping model based on
signi®cant numbers of shared innovations (as opposed to retentions, or generalized similarity), a methodological advance comparable to the paradigm shift
from phenetic to cladistic methods in biological phylogenetics (see discussion, below). Furthermore, in Polynesia we did not rely on the questionable
method of glottochronology to calculate the time depth of differentiation, as
archaeological work in the Western Polynesian ``homeland'' area had
independently established this temporal frame on the basis of radiocarbon
dating (Green 1981).
We cannot overstress the importance of applying the ``genetic comparative
method'' in historical linguistics when developing a phylogenetic model in
historical anthropology. For reasons detailed in Chapter 2, this is the
approach we follow and strongly advocate for historical anthropology in
general.8 It is the only approach that leads directly to a corpus of soundly
based lexical reconstructions for a proto-language's content (Ross 1997:254).
In Polynesia, the comparative method has provided increasingly precise
models of subgrouping, and in turn a large and well-attested set of lexical
reconstructions. A similar situation obtains even in the more subtle and
entangled dialect continuum of Fiji, where a strict family tree model is even
less appropriate (Geraghty 1983; Pawley 1999). The same is true at higher
levels in the Austronesian language family, where the comparative method
yields both the major Oceanic subgroup (Pawley and Ross 1993:433±34),
and various internal subgroups within it (Ross 1988; Pawley and Ross
1993:439±40; ®g. 2; Green 1997b, ®g. 4).9 The value of subgrouping based
on the genetic comparative method likewise holds for the highest-order
subgroups within Austronesian (Pawley and Ross 1993:435±39). Beyond the
The phylogenetic model in historical anthropology
23
Austronesian region, experience with several language families (IndoEuropean, Austronesian, Niger-Congo, etc.) again indicates that the comparative method has the most to recommend it, especially when integration
with archaeological and other lines of evidence is intended.
Dendritic versus reticulate models in historical
anthropology
After decades of relative neglect, a phylogenetic perspective in historical
anthropology has again become the focus of debate.10 In two notable
papers, John Moore (1994a, 1994b) challenges the view that human societies
have typically differentiated in a branching or phylogenetic manner, arguing
instead that rhizotic or reticulate processes of ``ethnogenesis'' are more
common in human prehistory. Moore's critique, which extends generally to
the application of cladistic methods within historical anthropology, was
motivated in part by adverse reactions to the overextended claims of CavalliSforza and others associated with the Human Genome Diversity Project
(Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1988, 1994); these authors implied that virtually all of
human history can be reduced to a kind of master ``family tree'' with
unambiguous links between biological populations and major language
families. Moore's ``ethnogenetic'' approach is in¯uenced by his own ethnographic and ethnohistorical research among Native American populations in
central and southeastern North America, where, for example, he convincingly demonstrates historical fusion as well as ®ssion among groups such as
the Lakota and Cheyenne. Nevertheless, Moore does not wholly reject a
phylogenetic or cladistic model, and he points to Polynesia as one region
where such models are useful and appropriate (Moore 1994b:14).
In contrast, Ruth Mace and Mark Pagel (1994) just as cogently argue the
necessity of applying a formal comparative method within anthropology, one
that explicitly incorporates a cladistic or phylogenetic method. They write:
The critical point . . . is that the validity of comparative methods for anthropology
depends upon correctly counting independent instances of cultural change.
Independent instances of cultural change, in turn, cannot be identi®ed without the
construction of a phylogeny (or cladogram) showing the patterns of hierarchical
descent of the cultures being studied. (1994:551)
As in Vogt's method (which they seem to be unaware of and do not cite),
Mace and Pagel (1994:552) argue that ``all the evidence available, be it
genetic, linguistic, archaeological, historical, or cultural'' should be drawn
on in the complex task of constructing phylogenies. As with Vogt and
ourselves, Mace and Pagel see linguistic evidence as occupying a critical
position, for ``whilst being far from perfect, [language] may offer the best
24
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
general method of reconstructing cultural phylogenies that we have''
(1994:553). But Mace and Pagel are not so naive as to think that the
construction of cultural phylogenies is identical to the process of phylogeny
construction in biology. This is due to the problem of ``horizontal transmission'' between human cultures, what anthropologists (and linguists)
classically labeled ``diffusion'' or ``borrowing'' (what we here call synologies).
They thus recognize the issues raised in Moore's critique, but do not regard
them as overwhelming.
Dendritic versus rhizotic ± or phylogenetic versus ethnogenetic ± models
have been explicitly debated by historical anthropologists working within the
vast Austronesian-speaking region, including Polynesia. Bellwood et al.
(1995), for example, see much merit in applying a phylogenetic model to the
entire realm of Austronesian-speaking societies and cultures.11 For Madagascar, Dewar (1995) argues the relative strengths of reticulate versus
dendritic processes in that island's cultural history. John Terrell and his
associates (Terrell 1986, 1988; Welsch et al. 1992; Welsch and Terrell 1994;
Welsch 1996), on the other hand, insist that there is no phylogenetic
patterning discernible in the region of Near Oceania, and Terrell et al.
(1997) extend this argument to the whole of Oceania, proclaiming the death
knell of a phylogenetic and comparative approach. They would see the
Paci®c as a sea of islands criss-crossed by so many reticulate pathways of
interaction that any attempt to infer cultural phylogeny is inherently
doomed to failure.
Yet Terrell et al.'s own north coast New Guinea research, which they hold
up as a model case in point (Terrell et al. 1997), fails to support their
contentions. Rather, as Moore and Romney (1994, 1996; Roberts et al. 1995)
have cogently demonstrated, the New Guinea data set developed by Terrell
and Welsch yields strong patterns of association between language and
culture, even though much contact (``horizontal transmission'') between
Austronesian and Non-Austronesian cultures has occurred in the region for
at least 3,500 years. Moreover, recent molecular genetic work (Merriwether
et al., 1999) indicates strong associations between Austronesian languagespeaking populations and certain genetic traits, such as a particular 9-base
pair deletion, reinforcing earlier indications of strong biological±linguistic
correlates in dermatoglyphs and other features (Froehlich 1987). Thus,
although rhizotic or reticulate processes of cultural interaction have been
signi®cant in the cultural history of Near Oceania over the past several
millennia (Kirch 2000), in our view these were not so pervasive as to have
wholly masked or eliminated underlying phylogenetic patterns.
Bellwood (1996a) casts the debate over phylogeny versus reticulation more
broadly, arguing that both approaches have their place in the repertoire of
historical anthropological models, a point we enthusiastically second. As
The phylogenetic model in historical anthropology
25
Bellwood observes, much depends on the temporal and spatial scales at
which an investigator works. As in Moore's case examples from the
American southeast, we think that Bellwood is right to point out that these
concern ``societies already under the in¯uence, whether bene®cial or
malignant, of colonial authorities,'' and these societies, moreover, had
suffered from several centuries of severe demographic collapse. Societies
under adverse colonial in¯uence differed entirely from those associated with
earlier expansions of agricultural peoples in various parts of the world,
beginning in the early Holocene, fueled by demographic increase. Bellwood
expresses our own viewpoint quite eloquently:
Large-scale and fairly integrated colonizations did happen in prehistory; human
cultures and languages can, to varying degrees depending upon time and space
coordinates, be organized in phylogenetic arrays. The generation of human
diversity in the past has not been entirely reticulate and dependent on processes of
in situ interaction between peoples of different ethno-linguistic background. Neither
has it been entirely radiative and dependent upon adaptation in isolation. But to
rule out phylogeny as of any signi®cance in the patterning of difference and
similarity between human cultures is surely no more than a ``whimsical view.''
(Bellwood 1996a:888)
Phylogenetic analysis in biology, linguistics, and
anthropology
A phylogenetic model of cultural evolution obviously has close parallels with
its more widely understood application in evolutionary biology, as the study
of divergence or radiation among groups of historically related lineages
(Gould 1980; Mayr 1982). Yet there are signi®cant differences, resulting
from the nature of ``dual transmission'' in cultural evolution (Durham 1982,
1991; Boyd and Richerson 1985) and from the complications arising from
``horizontal transmission,'' as discussed above. A brief comparison of basic
theoretical tenets of modern phylogenetic theory and practice in biology
(what is today commonly referred to as ``cladistics'') with those underpinning
the genetic comparative method in historical linguistics is instructive. Such
comparisons reveal the same fundamental emphasis on procedures for
discovering characters that are truly innovative and hence exclusively shared by a
set of sister groups (whether these be species or languages); they also
emphasize that truly evolutionary phylogenies must be based on analysis of
``derived'' characters.
As Mayr (1982:209±21) points out, Darwin recognized that ``af®nity is
proximity of descent,'' and that phylogenetic systematics should therefore be
based on a principle of monophyletic classi®cation, but later practitioners of
macrotaxonomy largely ignored the ``splendid start'' he had made. The
26
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
inconsistent procedures for macrotaxonomy that developed among systematists throughout the ®rst half of the twentieth century set the stage for a new
approach, which seized hold of the opportunities for large-scale numeric
quanti®cation and statistical comparison provided by the development of
high-speed computers. This approach, at ®rst called ``numerical taxonomy''
and later ``numerical phenetics,'' or simply ``phenetics'' (Sokal and Sneath
1973), used large arrays of metric or discrete characters, for which statistical
assessments of ``similarity'' were then calculated ``by the mechanical operations of the computer'' (Mayr 1982:222).12 The phenetic approach enjoyed a
short period of dominance in the ®eld of biological taxonomy, but it was
doomed to failure because it equally weighted all characters, and it wilfully
ignored phyletic information. Speci®cally, phenetics made no attempt to
discriminate characters that were shared retentions of a much older
common ancestor (and thus found in more taxa than just those of the sister
groups under comparison), from characters that were uniquely inherited
from the immediate ancestor of the species being considered.
The greatest advance in phylogenetic analysis in biology, which has come
to be known as ``cladistics,'' was initially developed by Willi Hennig (1965,
1966).13 Hennig's advance ± which was in effect merely a return to the
principles advocated by Darwin ± was to hold that phylogenetic classi®cations should seek to represent genealogy, or common descent. Hennig
(1965:101±2, ®g. 1) distinguished between three quite different categories of
morphological resemblance, categories that had not been suf®ciently discriminated among by prior generations of systematists, and worse, had been
wholly ignored by the pheneticists. Hennig termed these categories: (1)
plesiomorphy, similarity that results from using ancestral characters which may
be shared among taxa well beyond the ``sister group'' under consideration;
(2) convergence, similarity owing to analogous (as opposed to homologous)
innovations; and (3) synapomorphy, similarity that truly re¯ects mutually
exclusive derivation among a sister-group of taxa, and which therefore is the
only kind of similarity which can truly be used for phylogenetics.14
Since Hennig's initial proposals and the development of a core methodology, there has been a vast outpouring of literature on the theory and
methods of cladistics, much of which is worthy of consideration by historical
anthropologists (and indeed has in¯uenced such scholars as Mace and Pagel
[1994]).15 A thorough review of these materials would digress well beyond
our intended scope. Here we simply point to the core of Hennig's cladistic
methodology, in Ernst Mayr's clear prose:
The crucial aspect of cladistics is the careful analysis of all characters in the
comparison of related taxa and in the partitioning of these characters into ancestral
(plesiomorph) and uniquely-derived (apomorph) characters. Branching points in the
phylogeny are determined by the backwards tracing of uniquely derived characters
The phylogenetic model in historical anthropology
27
(synapomorphies) because such apomorph characters are believed to be found only
among the descendants of the ancestor in which the character ®rst occurred.
(1982:227)
The development of historical linguistics ± a discipline also fundamentally
concerned with the methodology of historical reconstruction ± displays
remarkable similarity to that of biological macrotaxonomy during the course
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.16 The early philologists, beginning
with Jacob Grimm, Friedrich Schlegel, and Franz Bopp, and continuing with
others such as Brugmann (1884), had worked out a series of principles of
historical reconstruction and of the subgrouping of related languages. These
were codi®ed in several classic texts of the early to mid-twentieth century
(e.g., Bloom®eld 1933; Hoenigswald 1960), and laid out such principles as
the working out of regular sound correspondences, based on careful,
systematic comparison of cognate morphemes from a set of languages
hypothesized to be related (Hoenigswald 1963; Allan 1994).
In the 1950s and 1960s, motivated by the development of radiocarbon
dating in archaeology and by the desire for a comparable method that could
give quick and precise results, some historical linguists began to advocate a
set of strictly quantitative procedures, called ``lexicostatistics.'' In many
respects, this paralleled the phenetic approach in biology. The inventor and
chief proponent of this approach was Morris Swadesh (1952, 1955; see also
Gudchinsky 1956), who extended the method of numerical comparison to a
core list or ``basic lexicon,'' which he reasoned could then be used as a
method for absolute dating of pairwise language separations. As Trask
(1996:362) points out, however, lexicostatistics ``can be applied only after the
languages of interest have been shown to be related and after cognate words
have been securely identi®ed''; that is, after the basic hard work of the
comparative method has been done.
Unfortunately, lexicostatistics has sometimes been used as a substitute for
the comparative method itself. One example was Dyen's (1965) vast
statistical comparison of Austronesian languages (requiring access to newly
developed high-speed computing), leading to a ``family tree'' or classi®cation
that has proven to be completely at odds with the tree resulting from
application of the comparative method (Grace 1966; Guy 1980; Blust
1981b). For reasons discussed by Wang (1994:1,446), glottochronology ± as
an extension of lexicostatistics ± was also fraught with uncritical assumptions, and is little used today. Most historical linguists have now returned to
the properly cladistic methodology for subgrouping which has been available
to them for more than a century (i.e., since Brugmann 1884).
Lexicostatistics and glottochronology were remarkably parallel, in both
theory and method, to the approach of the ``numerical taxonomists'' or
28
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
``pheneticists'' in biology. Neither paid proper attention to the weighting of
characters (in linguistics, lexemes), or to a method for discriminating ancestral
(i.e., plesiomorphic) from derived (i.e., synapomorphic, or innovative) characters, so essential in the construction of rigorous phylogenetic models. This
brief comparison of phylogenetic theory and method in biology and
historical linguistics has critical implications for historical anthropologists
who would seek to advance phylogenetic analysis and reconstruction using
archaeological and ethnographic data.
The signi®cance of phylogeny for historical
anthropology
We believe that a phylogenetic approach should be a central component of
the tool kit of the historical anthropologist; we do not claim it should be the
only component, or even necessarily the most important component, in that
kit. To draw an analogy again with biology, our position closely parallels that
of Eldredge and Cracraft (1980), who argue the necessity of integrating
phylogenetic systematics with the study of evolutionary process, especially
macro-evolutionary process.17 The cultural equivalent of microevolution is
probably best observed in the short-term ethnographic (or ethnohistoric)
record, and hypotheses concerning cultural change in the short term do not
necessarily require close historical analysis (i.e., synchrony can be assumed).
When we turn to the macroevolutionary equivalent in cultural evolution ±
the longue dureÂe of change that leads to the emergence of new cultural
con®gurations out of older ± control over history becomes essential. Boyd et al.
(1997:376) make this same point when they state that ``reconstructing the
histories of peoples without written records requires that one distinguish
between homologies . . . analogies . . . and synologies (similarities produced
by diffusion or borrowing).'' Just as the testing of macroevolutionary
hypotheses in biology, then, ``require[s] a cladogram'' (Eldredge and Cracraft 1980:327), we would argue that the testing of hypotheses of long-term
cultural change necessitates the careful working out of cultural phylogenies.
And we hasten to add ± lest we be misunderstood on this point ± that
phylogenetic analysis would certainly include the testing of the null hypothesis that any particular group of cultures under consideration does not, in
fact, constitute a monophyletic unit, or that similarities between them have
arisen from signi®cant interaction, diffusion, or borrowing (rather than from
common descent).
Many contemporary archaeologists ± if not all those in related disciplines
who might consider themselves to be ``historical anthropologists'' ± operate
within one or another evolutionary theoretical framework. But these frameworks vary considerably in various aspects of their epistemology and in their
The phylogenetic model in historical anthropology
29
premises about the fundamental processes of evolution with respect to
culture (Spencer 1997). Although most archaeologists would now probably
regard a unilineal or progressive evolution by stages (sometimes called,
unfortunately, ``cultural evolution'') as naive and outdated, they are by no
means agreed on what model should replace it. At least two principal camps
can be discerned, termed the ``processualists'' and the ``selectionists'' by
Spencer (1997:210).18 It seems to us, however, that the essential problem of
disentangling homology from analogy or synology is equally critical to both
schools, and as Neff and Larson write in a recent review of the methodology
of comparison in evolutionary archaeology, ``evolutionary archaeology is as
much about history as it is about ecology and economics'' (1997:83±4).
They go on to note that ``history matters . . . because use of comparative
data to test hypotheses about cultural adaptation requires independence of
the cases being compared.''19 Lyman and O'Brien, representing the contemporary selectionist school of evolutionary archaeology, likewise insist that
``history matters'' (1998:622±23).
Certainly not all historical anthropologists are interested in evolution, and
not even all archaeologists. But the importance of ``getting one's history
right,'' of working out particular historical trajectories of cultural change
and sequences of cultural differentiation and divergence, is not con®ned to
evolutionary approaches within anthropology or archaeology.20 In our view
it applies equally to schools of thought that regard themselves as distinct
from either evolutionary ``processualists'' or ``selectionists,'' for example
explicitly Marxist theorists (McGuire 1992). It was, after all, Marx himself
who said that men make their own history not ``just as they please,'' but
rather ``under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the
past.'' In his famous phrase, ``the tradition of all the dead generations weighs
like a nightmare on the brain of the living'' (Marx 1978:595).
We will not further belabor our point, but simply conclude by stressing
that, for us, the determination of phylogenetic sequences is not an end in
itself, although it has intrinsic interest. Rather, phylogenetic analysis in
historical anthropology provides the means to the following ends: (1) it offers
a degree of methodological rigor necessary for the reconstruction of
ancestral cultural patterns; and (2) it allows for a more controlled and
rigorous study of change among descendent groups.
Objectives of this book
Ward Goodenough, an early champion of controlled comparison, more
recently proclaimed that: ``Remote Oceania, where we can presume that we
are dealing with phylogenetically related cultural traditions, as well as with
phylogenetically related languages, is an excellent area in which to conduct
30
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
. . . systematic examination of structurally homologous traditions''
(1997:24). In our view, this exercise requires a well-developed program in
historical linguistics (using the genetic comparative method), paralleled by
an ethnographic corpus that can be engaged with historical issues, and by an
archaeology whose outcomes are solid enough to address wider historical
interests. We agree with Pawley and Pawley that ``for doing culture history
several disciplines are, ultimately, better than one'' (1998:209).
Sapir wisely concluded his pioneering essay, Time Perspectives in Aboriginal
American Culture, with the comment that ``anything like real completeness is,
of course, entirely out of the question'' (1916:460). Heeding Sapir's words,
we do not aim here at a full and systematic method for historical or
evolutionary analysis. Our more modest objective is to explore some fruitful
avenues of phylogenetically based reconstruction that have emerged in
Polynesia, part of the Remote Oceanic region viewed by Goodenough as
particularly favorable to phylogenetic study. A truly sophisticated methodology for historical anthropology is something that will develop only over
time and through practice, as others apply it to varied units of time and
space, in regions well outside the Paci®c.
An exhaustive application of the phylogenetic model would require
tracing each different local branch and divergence within Polynesia historically, and examining each instance of a parallel trend or convergence. Such
a grand enterprise is not our purpose here (although we hope to see it
someday accomplished). Rather we will explore more fully the ``commonly
inherited structural base'' (Kirch 1984a:262), what we call Ancestral Polynesian
culture. We limit ourselves to this aspect of the phylogenetic model in
Polynesia for two reasons. First, reconstruction of the ancestral, structural
base from which all later Polynesian societies and cultures arguably
descended is an essential step that must be accomplished before more
sophisticated analyses of cultural divergence and evolution can proceed.
Second, believing that the methods for historical reconstruction themselves
need further re®nement, we hope to contribute to the general ®eld of
historical anthropology by working these methods out through their application to Polynesia. These may then be applied beyond the particular timespace constraints of our own study region.
In Chapter 2, we consider in detail the theoretical principles and
methodological procedures for correlating linguistic and archaeological
evidence, speci®c problems of lexical and semantic reconstruction, and the
application of the direct historical approach, all in the context of Polynesia.
This is followed, in Chapter 3, by a discussion of the speci®c linguistic,
biological, ethnographic, and archaeological evidence permitting us to
circumscribe Polynesia as a discrete and well-de®ned phylogenetic unit, and
to delineate its major internal branches. These two chapters develop the
The phylogenetic model in historical anthropology
31
conceptual and methodological tools allowing us to tackle the substantive
problem in Part II, the historical reconstruction of Ancestral Polynesian
culture and societies.
It may be that in Polynesia we have chosen an unusually simple case, and
some will say that it would be dif®cult or impossible to apply our approach
in more complicated situations. We are not so pessimistic. By focusing on a
``peripheral'' region such as Polynesia, where time depth is relatively shallow
and where linguistic diversity is restricted to a single subfamily of Austronesian, we can work out our principles and methods most clearly.21 But we
would argue ± as has Goodenough (1997:22±24) ± that the phylogenetic
approach is just as applicable elsewhere in Remote Oceania. We believe it
can be applied productively even in Near Oceania, complicated as that
region is by a time depth of more than 30,000 years, by signi®cant cultural
complexity, and by great linguistic diversity at the family level. Moreover, we
are convinced that a phylogenetic approach in historical anthropology holds
great promise for other regions of the world.22
Chapter 2
Methodologies: implementing
the phylogenetic model
Anthropologists have long recognized that cultural traditions in
different societies can be related phylogenetically in that they derive
historically from a common ancestral tradition in the same way that
languages can be related phylogenetically. Problems of method for
convincingly establishing such relations for cultural traditions have
remained unresolved. Remote Oceania, where we have reason to
assume that nearly all existing cultural traditions are phylogenetically
related, offers possibilities for comparative study to illustrate the
goodenough 1997:16
methodological issues to be resolved.
Sophisticated application of a phylogenetic model in historical anthropology
requires a rigorous methodology. Using our Polynesian case, we begin with
the problem of correlating linguistic and archaeological evidence, followed
by possible models for linguistic divergence. We will show that such models
are not limited to strictly ``tree-like'' branching models; historical linguists
have recently developed ``network-breaking,'' or ``dialect-chain'' models that
are more appropriate to Paci®c history. This in turn leads to matters of
de®ning ``homelands,'' and of establishing time depth. All of these issues are
essential to establishing a proper phylogenetic framework. The second half
of this chapter examines what we call the ``triangulation method'' in
historical anthropology, which allows one to achieve a reconstruction of the
ancestral culture which lies at the root of a phylogenetic ``tree.'' The
procedural details of the triangulation method will take us into the realm of
lexical and semantic reconstruction, especially the ``recovery of meaning'' by
using comparative ethnographic materials to develop speci®c semantic
history hypotheses.
Correlating linguistic and archaeological evidence in
Polynesia
In his pioneering formulation of a phylogenetic method, Vogt (1964; see also
1994a) advocated commencing with linguistic evidence, in order to de®ne
the scope of a particular ``segment of cultural history'' (see Chapter 1).
32
Methodologies: implementing the phylogenetic model
33
However, matters are more complicated than Vogt imagined, necessitating
some modi®cations. For reasons explained in Chapter 1, we reject lexicostatistics and glottochronology as inadequate for determining the time depth of
linguistic splits within a language family. Moreover, we see the need to
identify linguistic ``homelands'' ± within which one can search for archaeological correlates of any given proto-language ± as a necessary part of a
linguistic methodology.
For Remote Oceania including Polynesia, Pawley (1966, 1967) and Green
(1966) initially applied family tree models based on the comparative method,
and tried to work out their implications for Polynesian archaeology and
prehistory. Building upon these early endeavors, Pawley and Green (1973)
outlined ®ve principles, which we also take as our starting point for applying
linguistic evidence in historical reconstruction. They began by labeling ``the
language of the ®rst well-established population in an island the foundation
language, and the language of any later arrivals an intrusive or invading
language'' (1973:38). Equivalent terms can be applied to archaeological
sequences with the ®rst well-established cultural traditions in a region being
the foundation culture, and later traditions designated as intrusive or invading
cultures.
Pawley and Green equated the foundation culture with the earliest
cultural tradition appearing in the archaeological record. For the western
sector of Remote Oceania (i.e., the Reef/Santa Cruz Islands, Vanuatu,
Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia, and Fiji±Western Polynesia) this foundation
culture is the Lapita cultural complex (Green 1979a, 1997b; Spriggs 1984,
1991, 1997; Kirch 1997a). Green (1997b) argues that the only apparent
intrusive cultures in this sector occur on the island of NendoÈ (Santa Cruz)
and in the main Reef Islands, during the last 1,000 years. Possible intrusive
cultures occur from Vanikoro to Tikopia and through northern and central
Vanuatu to New Caledonia in the form of the Mangaasi culture,1 while
invading cultures are well documented for various of the Polynesian Outliers
such as Tikopia and Anuta (Kirch and Yen 1982; Kirch 1984b). For this
same region, the foundation languages all fall within a set of closely related
subgroups deriving from a late stage of Proto Oceanic (Ross 1988; Green
1997b).2 Again, intrusive language replacements include only Reef/Santa
Cruz (Wurm 1969, 1970, 1978, 1992),3 while invading languages are
represented by the various Polynesian Outlier languages (Pawley 1967), and
by the northern Tongan case described by Pawley and Green (1973:39).
Thus, within the vast Remote Oceanic area ± permanently settled only
3,200±3,300 years ago on radiocarbon chronology ± the linguistic and
archaeological histories coincide remarkably, allowing the following principles to be advanced as guidelines (the following is paraphrased from
Pawley and Green 1973:39±41):
34
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
Principle 1. Under the conditions obtaining in the Paci®c in pre-contact times, the
foundation language of a remote island group could seldom be replaced by an intrusive
language. A remote island group is one isolated by more than 450 km of open
sea. The principle does not apply to non-remote island groups, although it
may be that the de®nition of ``remote island group'' can be made more
sophisticated, and that under certain conditions a distance of less than 450
km was suf®cient to reduce the frequency of two-way contact. The same
claim cannot be made about the kinds of materials with which the
archaeologist deals. Fusion of distinct cultural traditions occurs commonly,
and a small intrusive population may have a large effect on the material
culture of a region. For these reasons an analogous principle cannot be
applied to material culture, or at least can be applied only with important
reservations.
Principle 2. Once a language X has become established on two island groups, separated
from each other by more than 450 km of open sea, linguistic splitting (gradual divergence
into separate dialects Y and Z) is inevitable.
Principle 3. After 1,000 years Y and Z will have diverged to the point of being separate
languages or will be very close to that point. (There are various criteria for
determining whether two speech traditions are separate languages or dialects
of one language. A low degree, or lack of, mutual intelligibility is one
criterion of distinctness; some would give less than 80 percent, or less than
70 percent, cognation in basic vocabulary as another, more arbitrary, index.)
Principles 2 and 3 make predictions about diversi®cation only between
relatively isolated islands, not within an island group or archipelago. One
might reasonably ask how long the language of a Neolithic society can
persist as a unity in an island group where some neighboring islands are
separated by shorter distances of 50 or 100 km. Is linguistic splitting
inevitable under such conditions? The Tongan and Samoan cases show that
linguistic unity can be maintained over single archipelagos of widely
dispersed islands for more than 2,000 years. In fact, there are no known
cases of separate languages developing in the same archipelago anywhere in
Polynesia.4
We now turn to the contribution archaeology can make to the dating of
linguistic splits. The following principles are suggested as the most economical way of relating certain archaeological and linguistic facts for a given
island group.
Principle 4. For a given island group, the foundation language can be equated with the
foundation culture in the archaeological sequence, provided that the latter is well
established and widely distributed throughout the group.
Principle 5. If the archaeological sequence in a remote island group is continuous, i.e.,
if one tradition has not replaced another at some stage, then the foundation language is
ancestral to the present language or subgroup spoken in that region.
Methodologies: implementing the phylogenetic model
35
In sum, there are logical reasons for expecting that the language of a
remote island or island group will in most cases be descended from the
languages spoken by the ®rst society to establish a sizable population there.
Yet, even with these principles, more realistic models than those conveyed
solely by classic ``family tree'' diagrams are essential to the joint archaeolinguistic enterprise.
Linguistic models of divergence
Historical connections among related languages are typically conveyed by
the graphical device of the ``family tree,'' or ``dendrogram.'' The linguistic
splits thus depicted are usually taken to imply that a high degree of isolation
(or, conversely, a low level of continuing contact and lexical borrowing)
obtained between each of the branches. Such claims usually have a strong
geographical and distributional underpinning (cf. Terrell 1986:248±49, ®gs.
87, 88). But, as Terrell (1986:247) ± reiterating Biggs (1972) ± observed,
scholars working in the Paci®c have repeatedly warned against converting
such family tree subgroupings into ``simple A to B to C models'' of
prehistory. Ross (1997:213) likewise comments, ``although the model is
isomorphic enough with a wide-angle view of linguistic prehistory, it can be
inimical to more narrowly focused research.''
Green (1981) documented the use (and misuse) of a narrowly focused
branching model, its problems, and the need for an alternative in the search
for the putative location of the Polynesian ``homeland.'' As the ``wave
theorists'' and dialect geographers of Indo-European and other languages
have long been aware (Diebold 1987), linguistic histories are typically more
complicated than implied by the family tree model. Such trees are indeed
``often unsatisfactory for making sense of and for representing historical
relationships among languages'' (Pawley and Ross 1995:51). Thus, Austronesian comparativists have given increased attention to the problems that
ancient dialect chains present in determining subgrouping models, and in
lexical reconstruction (Pawley and Ross 1993:437). Pawley and Ross cite
numerous instances where ``in early Oceanic, dialect differentiation and
network-breaking were the rule rather than the exception'' (1995:51). For
example, it would be quite inappropriate to transform a typical branching
family tree diagram of the closely related Polynesian, Fijian, and Rotuman
languages into a simple sequence of settlement steps commencing in island
A as the homeland of the founding proto-language, proceeding on to island
B, and thence to C, D, and so on.
Pawley and Green (1984) addressed this problem directly by setting out
two models within which the linguistic evidence for Oceania may be
framed:
36
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
In work on Austronesian subgrouping since the 1950s there has been a tendency to
conceive of subgroups as being formed by what we will call the radiation model. This
model posits an initial period of uni®ed development undergone by a localized,
homogenous language community, followed by a period of geographic expansion,
leading to the creation of dispersed, isolated daughter communities which develop
independently from the time of dispersal. (1984:138)
However, as more detailed evidence accumulated, it became apparent
within many Austronesian-speaking regions that other conditions have
frequently obtained, and that linguists had ± especially for Remote Oceania
± underestimated the
capacity of the early Austronesians to spread quickly over a vast area, and to
maintain a fairly uni®ed speech tradition across a network of local communities
dispersed across an archipelago ± a unity that may last for many centuries, even
millenia [sic], before there is a decisive divergence of local dialects. In some cases it
is clear that the location of the ancestral language was approximately equal to the
area now occupied by all of its daughter languages. That is to say, it is not necessary
for there to be a geographic expansion for the proto-language to break up. A
gradual weakening of ties between the network of sister dialects suf®ces: eventually,
sharp language boundaries appear. Call this the network-breaking model. (Pawley and
Green 1984:138±39, emphasis added)
A network model is especially relevant for ascertaining the probable
linguistic correlates of: (1) the Lapita cultural complex which spread rapidly
through much of Remote Oceania and was ancestral to Polynesian culture
(Pawley 1981; Green 1997b); (2) the Ancestral Polynesian stage centered in
the western Polynesian archipelagos (see Chapter 3); and (3) the early
Eastern Polynesian stage centered in the Cook±Society±Marquesas region
(Kirch 1986a; Green 1988).
The formation and break-up of proto-languages in a networking model
assumes a ¯ow of lexical and grammatical innovations across the dispersed
local communities. What one is really studying are situations of dialect
geography that require a different approach, as Geraghty (1983) amply
demonstrates in the Fijian and pre-Polynesian case. While the spread of
innovations will never be entirely constant or always congruent throughout
the network, as long as they continue to be fairly even, the entire dialect
chain will continue to change as a unity or partial unity.
In these circumstances, there is no single point in time that can be equated with the
breakup of the proto-language. Instead, there is a period during which unity
declines; when one dialect has ceased to be intelligible to the rest, or has ceased to
take part in the ¯ow of innovations, the breakup may be said to be complete.
(Pawley and Green 1984:139)
For these reasons, Pawley and Green (1984:139) argued that ``if pressed,
most linguists would probably have always conceded that subgroups are
Methodologies: implementing the phylogenetic model
37
sometimes formed in this general manner.'' However, in doing lexical
reconstruction it is often more convenient (and hence less ``messy'') to simply
assume that each descendent of the proto-language is an independent
witness to the parent stage. In 1984, Pawley and Green found that with
respect to the Oceanic branch of Austronesian languages, it is necessary ``to
employ both the radiation and network-breaking models (for different
stages). Both permit the construction of family trees and proto-languages''
(1984:139). In many of the Oceanic cases listed by Pawley and Green (1984:
fn. 30), both kinds of models are required to account for different phases of
the family tree sequence. Similarly, in the classi®cation of western Oceanic
languages, Ross (1988) drew a distinction between the well-marked subgroups that result from complete splits, and those that form imperfect
linkages.
Such alternative models to the radiation or family tree types in Oceania
have now reached considerable sophistication, and differ from the IndoEuropean ``wave model'' which does not seek family trees and is best used in
dialect studies (Pawley and Ross 1995:64±65, fn. 9). For the Oceanic
languages, we now have innovation-de®ned subgroups based on isolating
mechanisms, and innovation-linked subgroups where continuing linkages are to
the fore (Pawley and Ross 1995:50±51; Ross 1997:222±25). Pawley
(1997:472±73) calls these ``perfect'' and ``imperfect'' subgroups (the latter
category including persisting dialect linkages), and has shown that the
second category has major application not only for Oceanic, but for the
higher-order Malayo-Polynesian level as well. Ross (1997) has formalized
and theorized the entire process in a ground-breaking article on social
networks and on kinds of speech community events, a paper we recommend
to all ``linguistic prehistorians'' (1997:211), those who would practice any
form of archaeolinguistics. The current situation in the ®eld can be summed
up in two quotes from Ross:
It is only in the last twenty or so years that linguistic prehistorians have become
more adept at recognizing that there are different kinds of linguistic divergence, and
that there are also varieties of linguistic convergence re¯ecting community contact and
integration (1997:213, emphasis in original).
It is obvious that the social network diagram can not replace the family tree as a
means of representation. (1997:254)
In sum, the family tree: (1) functions as the presentation of event sequences
and the subgroups that are their outcomes; (2) determines what words are
reconstructable in the proto-language; and (3) is crucial to locating the
homeland of a proto-language (Ross 1997:254±55).
We cannot overstress that both linguistic strategies ± trees as well as networks
± are required; it is not a case of one or the other. In Oceania we have both
38
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
dispersed dialect chains, and localized homogeneous languages and protolanguages, and we ®nd extended periods of continuing contact as well as
points of fairly sharp diversi®cation when a population moved to a distant
island group creating a sharp break.5
Dispersal centers and homelands
Sapir (1916:456±57) discussed some of the principles for inferring ``historical
centers of distribution'' for related languages, based on historical evidence
for signi®cant linguistic differentiation in certain regions. Dyen (1956)
formalized these and related propositions into a set of speci®c procedures.
The objective is to infer from the linguistic evidence the most probable
dispersal centers or homelands for any given language family, once the main
internal relationships within the family have been established. Inferences
about movement are based on identi®cation of those regions exhibiting the
greatest genetic diversity according to a subgrouping of the languages concerned, rather than simply those displaying the greatest number of daughter
languages. Invoking the principle of parsimony, regions that served as
primary dispersal centers should also require the fewest subsequent moves
for all subgroups and daughter languages to have achieved their contemporary geographic distribution. Lexical reconstructions ± for a given protostage ± of words for the environment and distinctive physical features, as
well as for plants and animals of restricted range, can also be explored to test
hypotheses of former homelands of a language family or its subgroups (the
WoÈrter und Sachen method). However, in our opinion these should not be
relied on as a primary means of homeland identi®cation. Rather, as Ross
(1997:255) indicates, ``a well-argued tree is . . . crucial to locating the
homeland of a proto-language.''
Pawley and Ross (1993:440±42) discuss the historical conclusions drawn
from the evidence for the higher-level subgroupings within Austronesian (see
Figures 2.1 and 2.2). At the level of Proto Austronesian they start in Taiwan
and the northern Philippines, and proceed south and east through several
interstages to northern Halmahera and Cenderawasih Bay in New Guinea,
a likely homeland for Proto Eastern Malayo-Polynesian. They place the
primary dispersal center for the Oceanic subgroups in western Melanesia,
speci®cally the Bismarck Archipelago possibly including the northern coast
of New Guinea (1993:441). In Chapter 3, using similar procedures, we will
consider probable dispersal centers in Remote Oceania for the various
eastern Oceanic subgroups, especially Proto Central Paci®c and Proto
Polynesian.
Methodologies: implementing the phylogenetic model
Fig. 2.1
39
The higher-level subgrouping of the Austronesian languages, down to the
Oceanic level (after Pawley 1996a).
Establishing time depth
Linguistic methods for establishing time depth can yield only relative sequences
of events, not precise chronology. Only a general sense of age is obtained
from the internal structure of family trees; for example, it is clear that the
closely related Polynesian languages have differentiated more recently than
those of most other Oceanic or other higher-level subgroups of Austronesian.
Likewise, Polynesian ties to the various western Austronesian subgroups
(e.g., the Formosan languages of Taiwan) where the languages are far more
differentiated, are even more remote in time. However, precise chronological
estimates for dispersals from a series of centers by linguistic methods alone
are not possible, as the Austronesian case indicates.
Grace (1964) originally proposed a time frame of roughly 1500 BC to
AD 500 for the movement of Malayo-Polynesian speakers into Oceania.
Drawing on lexicostatistical analysis and referring to the great diversity
among Austronesian languages of western Island Melanesia, Dyen (1971)
suggested that Oceanic speakers of Austronesian had been present in that
region for at least 5,000±6,000 years.6 By attempting to correlate the
linguistic evidence from Remote Oceania (and especially Fiji and Polynesia)
with the archaeological evidence, Pawley and Green (1973:53) reduced
Fig. 2.2
The geographic distribution of higher-level subgroups in the Austronesian phylum.
Methodologies: implementing the phylogenetic model
41
Dyen's estimate to 4,000±5,000 years, and subsequently on further consideration (Pawley and Green 1984) to c. 3,600±4,000 years.
In Chapter 3, we will revisit in greater detail the evidence for dating the
Proto Central Paci®c subgroup of the Oceanic languages through its
correlation with radiocarbon-dated archaeological assemblages of the
Eastern Lapita complex, found in the Fiji±Western Polynesian region. Our
view is that key intersections between an independently dated archaeological
record and speci®c internal subgroups within a language family can yield
convincing estimates of time depth for a sequence of proto-languages. As
stressed earlier, while lexicostatistics and glottochronology might be consulted as independent lines of evidence, these are marred by inherent
methodological ¯aws, and cannot be relied on as the primary means for
calculating time depth.
Terminology and units of analysis
It is essential to de®ne unambiguously a few key terminological units that we
employ, terms suggested previously (Kirch and Green 1987:434, 451).
Drawing upon the ®eld of historical linguistics, we use the well-established
convention of a proto-language to refer to each separately reconstructed node
or stage in a linguistic sequence, whether based on a radiation or on a networkbreaking model. In this study, we focus primarily on the Proto Central Paci®c
(PCP) and Proto Polynesian (PPN) stages, and to a lesser extent the Proto Nuclear
Polynesian (PNP) and Proto Tongic (PTO) stages which followed upon the
breakup of PPN. The period of accumulating language change following a
previous node, and leading up to the next, is usually described as the pre-stage
(i.e., pre-Polynesian or pre-Central Paci®c). To avoid any confusion between
reconstructions which derive from separate sets of data, we strongly inveigh
against attempts to use these linguistic terms simultaneously as cultural or
biological designations. Thus we employ the tripartite terminological set of:
proto-languages, parental populations, and ancestral cultures (and societies) to clarify
this distinction. At any given time in the past, a parental population of interbreeding individuals, organized into one or more social units, spoke a
common proto-language, and shared an ancestral culture.
Having been remonstrated with by several colleagues over the label
``Ancestral Polynesian Society,'' we emphasize our view that archaeological
units must ± in a phylogenetic approach ± be on a level commensurate with
those used by historical linguists (i.e., languages, dialects, dialect chains, and
communalects), and by biological anthropologists (i.e., inter-breeding or
potentially inter-breeding populations). As we wrote in our earlier paper:
Polynesian culture and society will not do. Rather what we are talking about are
Samoan, Tongan, and other ancestral societies, and not ancestral Polynesian society,
42
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
Lapita, or any other societal or cultural entity in the general sense. (Kirch and
Green 1987:451, emphasis added)
One way of addressing this issue is to use existing archaeological designations ± Lapita cultural complex (and its regional variants such as Eastern,
Western, Far Western, or Southern Lapita; see Kirch 1997:69±74), and
Ancestral Polynesian culture ± as the temporally successive cover terms for
these two broadly based archaeological entities, each of which is known to
exhibit variation from island group to island group. It is then possible to
speak of Ancestral Polynesian societies in the plural, recognizing the variation
that obtained from site to site, between localities, and within and between
regions, as well as to more accurately re¯ect the small size of the social and
political entities and therefore settlement units involved. In short, this
focuses discussion at the community and island or island group level.
The triangulation method and its application to the
phylogenetic model
We seek to develop a triangulation method in which the subdisciplines of
historical linguistics, archaeology, comparative ethnology, and biological
anthropology independently contribute their data and assessments to the
common objective of historical reconstruction. We derive the label from a
surveying metaphor, which should be immediately understood by most ®eld
archaeologists at least.7 In the classic method of survey by triangulation,
sightings are taken from two or more points along a known baseline to an
unlocated point which one wishes to ®x in space. As these sightings begin to
converge on that point, a ``triangle or polygon of error'' is de®ned, within
which the real point lies. So it is with our proposed triangulation method.
Our ``sight-lines'' are those provided by the independent evidence of
historical linguistics, archaeology, comparative ethnography, biological
anthropology, or even oral traditions. As these converge and cross-check
each other, the target of our sightings ± some aspect of the historical record
± comes increasingly into focus, and the ``polygon of error'' decreases in size.
Of course, our focus on the historical ``reality'' may never be crystal clear,
but, as in surveying, triangulation is always preferable to estimating the
position of a point from backsights taken from a single station.
While Sapir (1916) distinguished ``direct'' historical evidence (i.e., written
documents, oral history, and archaeological materials) from ``inferential''
evidence (i.e., data from ethnology, linguistics, and living biological populations), the situation is arguably more complicated. Archaeologists have come
to realize that their data too exist in the present, and that interpretations of
past events are accomplished through a variety of inferential techniques.
Methodologies: implementing the phylogenetic model
43
The same restrictions apply to the study of ancient skeletal remains
(although biological anthropologists also have information derived from
living populations). In both cases, once the effects of taphonomy are
removed from remains created at some past time ± that time being
determinable through a variety of ``absolute'' dating techniques such as
radiocarbon ± analysis of such remains does offer a kind of ``direct'' evidence
on those events. In contrast, the evidence from ethnology or linguistics
permits only a relative sequence of past events to be inferred, and chronological dates must be obtained through correlations with non-ethnographic
or linguistic evidence of a historical kind. The triangulation method brings
to bear these two distinct classes of evidence, those which are truly diachronic
in that they derive directly from past events and can be ``dated'' in real
chronological time, and those that permit the construction of relative time
sequences through systematic comparison of synchronic, but historically
related, evidence.8
The analytical power of the triangulation method ± and the robustness of
the historical reconstructions derived from it ± only holds, however, if one
treats each data source separately, respecting the relevant subdisciplinary
methods, inferences, and conclusions as they are developed independently,
based exclusively on the evidence from that ®eld.9 A brief example from
Polynesia ± the problem of reconstructing ancestral ®shing strategies (Green
1986) ± illustrates this principle of independence. Based strictly on the
evidence of ethnographic observations, one might conclude that simple
(one-piece) ®shhooks, consistently absent in museum collections from
Western Polynesia, were an Eastern Polynesian innovation (Anell 1955).
Indeed, initial archaeological excavations in such Eastern Polynesian islands
as Hawai`i and the Marquesas yielded an abundance of shell and bone
hooks, and, combined with the absence of such hooks from sites in Tonga or
Samoa, seemed to con®rm this hypothesis. However, the independent
evidence of historical linguistics indicated that a term *mataqu, `®shhook,'
could be reconstructed at the Proto Polynesian stage ancestral to both
Western and Eastern Polynesian cultures. Of course, the reconstructed word
± while evidently meaning some kind of ®shhook ± gave no speci®c clues as
to form, materials of manufacture, or frequency of use. It was only after
more extensive archaeological excavations in Western Polynesia increased
our sample sizes, that simple one-piece ®shhooks in Turbo shell were shown
to have been present in the Western Polynesian region at an early time depth
(Kirch and Dye 1979). These archaeological discoveries were consistent with
the Proto Polynesian reconstruction from linguistics, permitting us to infer
that one-piece ®shhooks had indeed been part of the Ancestral Polynesian
®shing kit, but had later been abandoned in Western Polynesia. Moreover,
the archaeological evidence also indicates that the ubiquitous simple ®sh-
44
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
hooks of Eastern Polynesia (present in both early and late contexts) derive
from the ancestral Turbo-shell hook tradition in Western Polynesia (Kirch et
al. 1990:11), but for environmental reasons (Allen 1992) came to be made
predominantly of pearl shell (Pinctada sp.) in the eastern archipelagos. This
case, albeit a simple example, illustrates how alternative historical inferences
can be developed on independent lines of evidence, and when taken together
and submitted to cross-examination, permit a more rigorous reconstruction.
The advantage of the triangulation method is underscored by the
philosopher of science Allison Wylie (1989, 1992, 1993, 1999), discussing
problems of con®rmation in archaeology. Disavowing either an objectivist
or a relativist stance, Wylie notes that employing independent sources of
data and analysis in any given reconstructive-evaluative argument ensures
that the constituent arguments are not merely mutually reinforcing but also ±
and crucially ± mutually constraining. We are in¯uenced ± but not monolithically controlled by ± our current understanding which makes us largely see
or understand what our background knowledge and theoretical commitments prepare us to see. For this reason, each subdiscipline initially arrives
at a slightly different conclusion regarding a particular historical phenomenon. But we can also assess our data differently when the circumstances
change, and we can be forced by the evidence to consider alternative
interpretative possibilities to those we have previously entertained (Wylie
1989:16). In short, ``if diverse evidential strands all converge on a given
hypothesis ± if you can use different means to triangulate on the same
postulated set of conditions or events ± then you may be able to provide it
decisive, if never irreversible, support simply because it is so implausible
that the convergence should be the result of compensatory error in all the
in¯uences establishing its evidential support'' (Wylie 1992:28). In Part II we
employ this triangulation method to develop a set of hypotheses about a
given ``domain'' in the ®eld of Polynesian culture (such as subsistence,
cooking, or social organization).
Lexical reconstruction and meaning
In their assessment of Austronesian historical linguistics, Pawley and Ross
(1993) observe that most lexical work has concerned itself chie¯y with
historical phonology, paying little attention to the ®ne grain of semantics.
Fortunately, increasing attention is now paid to ``the history of particular
semantic ®elds, especially those of interest for cultural history, and to
specifying reconstructed meaning more precisely'' (1993:441). These endeavors have focused particularly on lexicons for the Proto Austronesian, Proto
Malayo-Polynesian, Proto Oceanic, and Proto Polynesian stages.10 Our
concern is with Proto Polynesian (PPN), and our approach follows the
Methodologies: implementing the phylogenetic model
45
practice of proceeding by semantic ®eld or domain, as will be evident in
Part II.
Different procedures for the reconstruction of meaning have been developed, beginning with Dyen and Aberle's (1974) pioneering work on Athapaskan kinship, and more recently by Dyen (1985), Blust (1987), and Ross,
Pawley, and Osmond (1998:4±7). Green (1994) examines these methods
from the point of view of an archaeologist concerned with ``culture history''
(what we prefer to call ``historical anthropology''). Unfortunately, there is a
high degree of skepticism among Paci®c archaeologists concerning the use of
linguistic evidence, partly because of the problems posed by meaning.11 The
focus of such archaeological criticism of linguistic culture history is not on
the morphological or phonological reconstruction of a given lexical form ± a
task most archaeologists are happy to leave to the linguists ± but on the
assignment of likely former meanings to these reconstructed etyma, given
the often multiple meanings for cognates in the various daughter languages.
The problem, naturally, is one of concern both to the archaeologist cum
historical anthropologist, and to the historical linguist.
Following Blust (1987:81), we make a critical distinction between lexical
reconstruction and semantic reconstruction as separate approaches.12 Semantic
reconstruction asks the question, ``what was the probable meaning of protomorpheme `X' within a given semantic ®eld,'' while lexical reconstruction
asks the question, ``what was the proto-morpheme which probably meant
`X.' '' Green, favoring the methodology of semantic reconstruction, observed
that ``this method is more likely to provide the kind of former meanings and
subsequent changes in them which archaeologists would be inclined to
explore using their own data, rather than the limited, rather stark and still
currently preserved sameness of meaning resulting from the Dyen and
Aberle approach'' (1994:177).13 In Green's view there is a need for wellworked-out versions of what Dyen (1985) called ``semantic history hypotheses,'' or what Diebold (1987:56) refers to as a ``strong diachronic semasiology.'' Historical linguists making lexical reconstructions need to spend
more time and effort attending to how they construct their meaning glosses;
so do archaeologists who wish to employ their data.
Most recently, Ross, Pawley, and Osmond (1998:4±7) have elaborated a
methodology for ``terminological reconstruction,'' which is similar to Blust's
semantic reconstruction. Essentially, they use semantic history hypotheses
informed not only by linguistic evidence, but by comparative ethnography,
as we do also in Part II of this book. Their method is as follows:
First, the terminologies of present-day speakers of Oceanic languages are used
the basis for constructing a hypothesis about the semantic structure of
corresponding POc terminology, taking account of (i) ethnographic evidence .
and (ii) the geographical and physical resources of particular regions of Oceania .
as
a
..
..
46
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
Secondly, a search is made for cognate sets from which forms can be reconstructed
to match each meaning in this hypothesized terminology . . . Thirdly, the
hypothesized terminology is re-examined to see if it needs modi®cation in light of
the reconstructions. (Ross, Pawley, and Osmond 1998:4)
In the ®rst of a projected ®ve-volume set dealing with the lexicon of Proto
Oceanic, Ross et al. (eds., 1998) elaborate a series of terminological
reconstructions dealing with aspects of material culture, such as architecture,
horticulture, ®shing, canoes, and related domains.
Careful semantic or terminological reconstruction provides historical
anthropologists with strong arguments, particularly when there is what Dyen
(1985) terms ``prime semantic agreement'' (PSA), a sameness of meaning
(homosemy) ``between cognates belonging to members of different branches''
of a language family or subgroup (1985:358). Examples of stable prime
semantic agreement from Proto Polynesian down through other interstages
to the various modern daughter languages include PPN *talo, `taro' (Colocasia
esculenta), and *toki, `adz/axe/chisel' (Green 1994:178±79). However, PSA
applies in only a limited number of cases, and when there is disagreement in
the meanings of the cognate terms a ``semantic history hypothesis'' is
required to explain how multiple and often quite varied daughter language
meanings (among words still judged to form a cognate set) could have
developed.14 The issue of meaning must always be kept to the fore when one
is doing semantic reconstruction in historical anthropology.
The POLLEX project
Polynesianists ®nd themselves especially well positioned to apply the triangulation method because ± in addition to having a sophisticated subgrouping
model based on the genetic comparative method ± the work of lexical
reconstruction for the ancestral PPN interstage is well advanced. Thanks to
decades of careful research by Bruce Biggs and his students and colleagues,15
a lexical database called POLLEX (Biggs 1998) has been developed,
containing more than 2,300 speci®c PPN reconstructions, a monumental
achievement.16
Table 2.1 shows a typical data array for one such PPN term, *waka,
`canoe.' The POLLEX ®le lists the re¯exes of *waka for thirty-two modern
Polynesian languages plus a few external witnesses (keyed according to
standard three-letter abbreviations for language names, see list of language
abbreviations (pp. xvi±xvii)), along with brief glosses derived from dictionary
or other sources. Since *waka is a case of prime semantic agreement, there is
little hesitancy in accepting Biggs' reconstructed PPN gloss of `canoe.' 17
Note also that in this case PPN *waka is itself derived from yet older cognate
terms that can be reconstructed for antecedent interstages of Austronesian,
Methodologies: implementing the phylogenetic model
Table 2.1. POLLEX database entry for PPN *waka, `canoe'
.AN
*0
*4
*41
*5
*6 =
*8
*9
*PN*
ANU
SAAEAS
ECE
EFU
EUV
FIJ
HAW
KAP
MAE
MAO
MFA
MQA
MQA1
MTA
MVA
NIU
NKO
OJA
PEN
RAP
PUK
RAR
REN
ROT
SAASAM
SIK
TAH
TAK
TIK
TOK
TON
TUA
WEV
WFU
WYA
WAKA.A
5/11/96.
POC *wa9ka ``boat'' (Ply. 1973).
PCEMP *wa9ka ``canoe'' (Bst. 1993a).
PMP *va9ka9 (Dpf ).
PAN *wa9ka ``boat'' (Ply. 1973), *ba9kaq ``canoe'' (Rss. 1988).
Note. (Bst. 1993a) argues that *wa9ka9 (Dpf ) is a Chinese loanword.
PBN *vaka ``ship'' (Lvy. 1979).
:Canoe.
Vaka. :Canoe (Yen).
<Haka. :A ship, white people, foreign countries (Ivs)>.
Baka. :Boat, vessel.
Vaka. :Canoe.
Vaka. :Canoe.
Vaka. :Canoe.
Waqa. :Canoe.
Wa`a. :Canoe.
Waga. :Canoe (Lbr).
Vaka. :Canoe, ship (Clk).
Waka. :Canoe.
Vaka. :Old word for canoe.
Vaka (MQN). :Canoe (Bgs).
Va`a. :Canoe.
Aka. :Canoe (Cdn).
Vaka. :Embarcation, navire, radeau, pirogue (Rch).
Vaka. :Canoe.
Vaga. :Big ship/Canoe.
Va`a. :Canoe.
Vaka. :Canoe.
Vaka. :Canoe (Stk).
Vaka. :Canoe (Bge).
Vaka. :Canoe.
Baka. :Canoe, vehicle, receptacle (Ebt).
Vaka. :Canoe.
<Haka. :A ship, white people, foreign countries (Ivs)>.
VA`A. :Canoe.
Vaka. :Canoe.
VA`A. :Canoe.
Va`a. :Canoe.
Vaka. :Canoe (Fth).
Vaka. :Canoe.
Vaka. :Canoe.
Vaka. :Canoe, boat, ship, vessel etc. (Stn).
Vaka. :Embarcation, pirogue, bateau (Hmn).
Vaka. :Canoe.
Waqa. :Canoe.
Note that ``9'' in POLLEX stands for ``ng'' sound.
47
48
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
such as POC and PCEMP (Proto Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian), but
not for PMP or PAN (Pawley and Pawley 1998:178). These deeper (higherlevel) lexical reconstructions are listed at the top of the data set, although the
extensive list of cognates in extra-Polynesian languages from which these
pre-PPN reconstructions are derived are not given in POLLEX.
Without POLLEX, we would have hesitated to even attempt the sort of
historical analysis undertaken in Part II. Nonetheless, the POLLEX project
has concentrated primarily on lexical reconstruction, with (until recently)
minimal attention to semantic or terminological reconstruction, and no effort to
spell out detailed semantic history hypotheses for the many cases in which
the varied glosses for the modern cognates do not closely agree in meaning.
Taking the lexical items in POLLEX as our starting point, we have paid
close attention to semantic reconstruction. Moreover, consistent with our
triangulation method, we have done this not by relying on dictionary glosses,
but by systematically mining the rich ethnographic corpus for Polynesia.
Ethnographic evidence
If dictionaries provide less than ideal sources for semantic reconstruction, a
major resource for expanding on the meanings encapsulated in words are
ethnographies. These, however, do far more than simply ®ll out the domain
of meaning covered by a term; they also contextualize the lexicon within the
broader systemic cognitive patterns and behaviors of a particular society and
its culture. Unlike Vogt (1964), for whom the use of ethnohistorical and
ethnographic data formed later steps (7 and 8) of his phylogenetic method,
our strategy considers these sources in conjunction with the initial linguistic
data (steps 1±4).
The outstanding comparative ethnographic sources begin with E. G.
Burrows' monograph (1938a), Western Polynesia: A Study in Cultural Differentiation, an explicit analytical adaptation of some of the methods outlined by
Sapir (1916). Burrows examined distributions of distinct resemblances
between geographically adjacent cultures to infer historical relationships
(1938a:7). Differential distributions of a highly selected set of cultural traits
were then interpreted within the historical processes of diffusion, local
development, and abandonment or rejection (1938a:92). Everything from items of
material culture through kinship terms to the ``nights of the moon'' is
included in these distributional analyses. Burrows argued that all three kinds
of historical processes played their part in the differentiation of Western
Polynesian culture from either a central or a central-marginal grouping,
together with unspeci®ed responses to a changed natural environment
(1938a:153), thus laying the long-standing basis for the distinction between
Western and Eastern Polynesia.18 Burrows' 1938 study contrasted markedly
Methodologies: implementing the phylogenetic model
49
with the two- and three-strata migration models previously employed by
anthropologists such as E. S. C. Handy (1930). Indeed, Burrows rejected
such multiple-strata migrations and concluded with respect to ``the remote
period of ®rst settlement'' that a ``fundamental unity of Polynesian culture''
was indicated (1938a:156), and further suggested how that unity might be
demonstrated.
Subsequent explorations of systematic regularities within Polynesian
societies and cultures, such as those of Sahlins (1958) and Goldman (1970),
drew upon Burrows' notion of an underlying Polynesian unity. Sahlins
highlighted the importance of natural resource distribution and its variations
in Polynesia, and the role that a hitherto neglected environmental component had played in the elaboration of social arrangements. In a similar
vein, Goldman's exercise in carefully controlled comparisons revealed
orderly patterns of social variability in Polynesia (1970:545±49), and
principles of status differentiation (1970:551±54) which he regarded as the
outcome of tension within the status system (1970:567).
The most recent contribution in this comparative genre is Howard and
Borofsky's (eds., 1989) Developments in Polynesian Ethnology. The contributors to
this volume examine social organization, mana and tapu, chieftainship, art
and aesthetics, and other topics within several kinds of framework, all having
one or more of three goals:
(1) they should aim at illuminating underlying structural patterns shared among
Polynesian groups as well as explaining variations on common themes; (2) they
should strive to illuminate key variables that have facilitated continuity and change
through time; and (3) they should look for similarities and differences between
Polynesia and other areas within Oceania and beyond. (Borofsky and Howard
1989a:287)
Within these goals two types of comparisons are delineated (Borofsky and
Howard 1989a:287±88): (1) controlled comparisons of particular island
groups with similar institutions where convergences (as well as differences)
arise from parallel conditions or constraints acting on a commonly inherited
structural base; and (2) broader multi-island comparisons of the Burrows/
Sahlins/Goldman kind which explore general patterns within Polynesia as a
whole. Borofsky and Howard (1989a:289) also draw attention to the
possibilities for broader comparisons between Polynesia and other parts of
Oceania.
In short, a rich tradition of ethnographic analysis employing comparative
frameworks and goals is available to inform a renewed historical anthropology of Polynesia. These works, of course, are not without recognized
defects. As one of the more telling critiques suggests, problems with these
works ``go deeper than has been previously acknowledged'' so that speci®c
50
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
misinterpretations are consistently generated, even though they cannot be
totally written off on grounds of theoretical or ideological contamination
(Thomas 1989:79). Thus it is claimed that ``the earlier forms of ethnography
have been discredited to an extent quite out of proportion to the actual
differences between such texts and modern anthropological writing''
(Thomas 1989:79); this applies particularly to the Polynesian museum
ethnographies of the 1920s and 1930s (1989:32±33).
In his phylogenetic model, Vogt (1964) called for separating ethnohistory
(his step 7) from more recent ethnographic endeavors (his step 8), in order to
assess changes during the period of European contact, colonialism, and
emergence of traditional societies into the present world system (see Chapter
1). Some of the problems posed by this era of rapid change are covered in
Borofsky and Howard's chapter (1989b:241±75) on the early contact period
in Polynesia. Discussion of this complex period within Polynesia has reached
a new level of sophistication, moving well beyond pre-World War II decades
of ``museum ethnographies'' much criticized by Thomas (1989:32±33,
41±49). We now have the ``island-centered'' approaches of the Paci®c
historians, with the attempts at careful reconstruction by anthropologists of
selected Polynesian cultures or their institutions at the time of initial Western
contact (e.g., Oliver 1974; Valeri 1985), as well as a multi-faceted approach
to that period from both a European and local perspective of the agents and
processes of change involved in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
(e.g., Dening 1980; Sahlins 1981, 1985; Hooper and Huntsman 1985;
Salmond 1991, 1997; Kirch and Sahlins 1992). If these improved reconstructionist enterprises (Vogt's step 7) are thus combined with the greater
depth in content offered by modern ethnographic perspectives (Vogt's step
8), the latter can allow us ``to gain insights into the cultural logics formerly at
work in Polynesian societies'' (Borofsky and Howard 1989b:248), thus highlighting some of the enduring structures of history.19
While Thomas (1989:32±33) rightly criticizes the bookshelf of museum
ethnographies of Polynesia for what they failed to do, and for their naõÈveteÂ
in viewpoint and approach to their data, this corpus remains much valued
by archaeologists dealing with indigenous material culture. Just as stark
linguistic meanings taken from dictionaries can often be ampli®ed and
enhanced through ethnographic inquiry, so also are the methods for
production, function, and use of archaeologically recovered objects greatly
illuminated by museum collections and descriptions of them in these sources.
Nonetheless, as with the reassessments undertaken for ethnographic
accounts, a new level of evaluation has been required in the study of
museum-based collections. Te Rangi Hiroa certainly distinguished contact
and earlier period pieces from those of later manufacture (Hiroa
1944:412±13), but a great deal of work has been required since to
Methodologies: implementing the phylogenetic model
51
distinguish and to authenticate the full range of genuine early items
(Kaeppler 1971, 1978b). With better documentation, these museum collections time and again prove their worth not only to archaeologists seeking to
understand the manufacture and use of the bits and pieces which they
recover through excavation, but also as to how these traditional productions
once ®tted within the now-transformed societies.
Granted that Te Rangi Hiroa's comparative analysis at the conclusion of
Arts and Crafts of the Cook Islands (1944:410±526), with its three-period
temporal separation of material culture traits into early, late, and postEuropean contact, has been completely superseded, but the basic descriptive
data on the known distribution and the techniques of manufacture, use, and
function of these items within Polynesian traditional societies during the
early contact period have not. One has only to cite the work of Duff (1956,
1959), especially that on stone adz heads, to see how the approaches of
Burrows and Hiroa in¯uenced some of the initial interpretations of archaeologically recovered materials within a prevailing ethnological paradigm
that lasted well into the 1960s. Interpretations of archaeological data
typically have deep roots within ethnology, as is evident in Polynesia where
the transition from one data set to another is virtually seamless.
Archaeology and the direct historical approach
Several factors favor a direct historical approach for Oceania. The ®rst is
strong support, especially in Polynesia, for continuity in dated, well-attested,
and connected local chronologies ranging from 1,200 to 3,300 years in
length and exhibiting changes over time, but with little or no signs of
population replacement. Such continuities, indeed, seem to be a feature of
most local sequences in Remote Oceania during the past 3,200±3,300 years
(Green 1997b); they also occur, at least in parts of Near Oceania, over the
last 2,000 to 6,000 years (Spriggs 1997; Kirch 2000). While there certainly
are instances of contact between related societies and their cultures within
various subregions of Polynesia (see Chapter 3), evidence for exchanges with
either extra-Oceanic or more distantly related cultures (e.g., South American, Fiji, Eastern Micronesia) is fairly circumscribed prior to the eighteenth
century. Greater intersocietal contact, and even occasional displacements by
distantly related or even unrelated societies and their cultures, is evident for
western Remote Oceania, while in Near Oceania the need to consider
contacts between totally unrelated societies and cultures (and occasions of
replacement of one by another) rises sharply.
In sum, a main contribution of archaeological data to an integrated
historical anthropology is to reveal local, materially evidenced cultural
sequences providing a wide spectrum of information on technological,
52
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
economic, social, political, and even religious practices. These sequences
serve as an independent basis for formulating constructions about some
period or periods in the past, as well as for testing and cross-checking
constructions based on linguistic or ethnographic data sources. Despite its
invariably partial nature (see Chapter 7), the archaeological record provides
historical anthropologists with the means to convert comparative synchronous, or only relatively sequenced diachronous, constructions of former
events and cultural patterns as offered by linguists, ethnographers, and
biological anthropologists, into accounts that truly re¯ect deep time.
Chapter 3
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
The Polynesian cultures derive from a common source; they are
members of a single cultural genus that has ®lled in and adapted to
sahlins 1958:ix
a variety of local habitats.
. . . in many instances race, language, and culture do coincide to
establish an authentic ethnic coherence. Polynesia seems to be such
goldman 1970:xxiii
an instance.
Space, time, and content must be the prime de®nitional axes for any
phylogenetic entity in the kind of historical anthropology for which this book
is an extended argument. We insist that the issue itself requires multiple
perspectives: linguistic, ethnological, biological, and archaeological. Having
laid out speci®c methods and procedures by which a phylogenetic model can
be promulgated, we now scrutinize the Polynesian case, searching for
congruence among independent lines of evidence to test whether Polynesia
meets the criteria for a discrete ``segment of cultural history.'' We will
demonstrate, ®rst that the linguistic subgrouping of Polynesian languages is
closely mirrored by systemic ethnographic patterns across Polynesian societies, and second that there is biological coherence as well among the
various Polynesian populations.
It is also essential for us to de®ne precisely what is meant by ``Ancestral
Polynesian'' culture and societies. This is not some vague notion of a
putative cultural stage loosely corresponding to a set of reconstructed Proto
Polynesian words. On the contrary, we will identify a discrete group of
archaeological sites and their artifactual assemblages, dating to the second
half of the ®rst millennium BC, as the physical manifestations of those
Ancestral Polynesian societies and communities that ¯ourished in the
Tonga±Samoa homeland region prior to the diaspora that ultimately put
Polynesians on virtually every habitable island in the vast eastern Paci®c.
These archaeological materials allow us to ground the root of the Polynesian
phylogenetic tree in time and space.
53
54
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
Polynesia as an emic category
The very term Polynesian is, need we say, a European construction which
nonetheless has acquired a certain cogency since its de®nition by the French
explorer Dumont d'Urville (1832) in the early nineteenth century. Anthropologists have consistently regarded Polynesia as a group of related societies
within a geographic area possessing a high degree of homogeneity in
language, culture, and human biology. But from an insider perspective, the
concept of a region inhabited by people of like culture, speech, and physical
appearance is a matter of substantial antiquity. Thus in the Proto Polynesian
lexicon itself we ®nd the term *tangata ma(a)qoli, which probably meant
something very close to `indigenous person, one of our own kind.'1 And
present-day, indigenous populations in various islands groups within Polynesia use re¯exes of *maqoli to demarcate themselves as maaori (New Zealand,
Cook Islands), maohi (Tahiti), or maoli (Hawai`i) in opposition to nonindigenous occupants, bringing the concept squarely into the present. In
ancient Polynesia, where the *tangata ma(a)qoli were invariably the ®rst
human occupants on island after island as these were discovered and settled,
it was unnecessary to have a contrastive term, hence the confusing diversity
of appellations which were given to the European `invaders' when these
appeared from the seventeenth century onwards: papalagi, popa`aa, papa`aa,
pakeha, haole, and so on.
The obvious af®nities of language, culture, and biology that link the
various Polynesian groups have probably always been recognized by the
indigenous peoples of this region, as they continue to be today. Moreover,
this native perspective was not lost on early European explorers, traders,
missionaries, and settlers, and would only be further reinforced by later
nineteenth-century investigators such as Abraham Fornander or Percy
Smith, and ®nally encoded within the canons of early twentieth-century
anthropology. Thus the notion of a fundamental category ± call it Polynesian
or call it Maoli ± has from an ethnic point of view substantial and longstanding historical relevance (Green 1987), suggestive of its potential claim
to the status of a phylogenetic unit. To forward that claim now requires
that we examine the category ``Polynesia'' from the standpoints of linguistics, comparative ethnology, archaeology, and some aspects of human
biology.
Linguistic perspectives
Linguistic relatedness contributes in high degree to attributions of ethnic
identity, and is one basis for promulgating historical connections among
now-dispersed peoples who speak related languages. Fortunately, the place of
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
55
the Polynesian (PN) subgroup of languages within the larger Austronesian
(AN) language family is unusually well understood.2
The Oceanic subgroups
The Austronesian language family, dispersed geographically from Madagascar to Easter Island and encompassing most of the indigenous languages
of the Paci®c island world, includes several high-level subgroups (Blust
1985), of which the most easterly is Oceanic (OC; Pawley and Ross 1995:43).
The distribution of these major subgroups within the western part of the
Paci®c (see Figure 2.2) ± with the Oceanic subgroup occupying the entire
eastern portion ± points to an Austronesian homeland in Island Southeast
Asia. On more detailed linguistic evidence, the favored immediate homeland
region for Oceanic is the Bismarck Archipelago (speci®cally the Admiralty
[Manus] and Mussau Island groups), although the region extending along
the north New Guinea coast remains a possibility (Pawley and Ross
1995:57±58; Pawley 1997). Oceanic itself encompasses approximately nine
higher-order subgroups (Figure 3.1).3 Five of these lie in Remote Oceania, a
region not inhabited until about 3,300 years ago; one subgroup (Southeast
Solomonic) is situated at the most eastern end of Near Oceania, occupied
for at least 6,000 years and probably much longer (Figure 3.2). Attempts to
show that this cluster of six easterly subgroups of Oceanic constituted a
single higher-order unit (termed Eastern Oceanic) have not proved convincing (Pawley and Ross 1995:65, fn. 6). Rather, these six subgroups
constitute the widely dispersed set of language groups in Oceanic that
cannot be included in any of the internally complex high-order subgroups to
the west (i.e., in Near Oceania), the region which is thought to be the
homeland region for Oceanic itself.
The best interpretation of this cluster of six Oceanic subgroups extending
eastwards from the southeast Solomons is that their wide distribution over
the previously unoccupied island groups of Remote Oceania re¯ects a
former dialect chain or linkage. This linkage resulted from an early, but not
initial, stage of Oceanic speakers who ®rst expanded into this region from
the southeast Solomons, and thereafter differentiated into the ®ve primary
subgroups found today in Remote Oceania (Pawley 1981). These became
the foundation languages for each of the separated regions, replaced at a
much later time only in the case of an intrusive group of non-Austronesian
languages in NendoÈ (Santa Cruz) and the Main Reef Islands, and on some of
the Polynesian Outliers (Green 1997b). The spread of these Oceanic
languages from eastern Near Oceania throughout Remote Oceania has
been linked with the initial expansion of the Lapita cultural complex
through the Outer Eastern Islands of the Solomons group, to Vanuatu and
56
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
Fig. 3.1
The major subgroups of Oceanic form a ``rake-like'' tree structure.
New Caledonia, between about 3,300 and 3,200 years ago (Pawley and
Green 1984; Green 1997b; Kirch 1997a; Spriggs 1997). This colonization
proceeded uninterrupted into the Fijian archipelago and to the islands of
Western Polynesia (Tonga, Samoa, Futuna, `Uvea).
The archaeological assemblages of dentate-stamped Lapita pottery which
mark initial settlements throughout Remote Oceania are dated to a fairly
narrow time horizon of 200±300 years duration (Kirch 1997a:57±63). Using
the principles we set out in Chapter 2, it is possible to link the foundational
Oceanic language subgroups with the foundational Lapita cultural assemblages in Remote Oceania.4 These were the cultural complexes upon which
all later cultural developments would build.
Proto Central Paci®c and the emergence of Proto Polynesian
The Central Paci®c (CP) subgroup of Oceanic (see Figure 3.2) includes the
languages of Rotuma and Fiji, and all those of Polynesia. The Proto Central
Paci®c (PCP) interstage, however, is only weakly attested by lexical innovations (Geraghty 1983, 1996a; Pawley 1996a, 1997), suggesting that it was
temporally ephemeral. Proto Central Paci®c consisted of a geographically
extensive dialect chain stretching throughout the rapidly settled Fiji±Western
Polynesian region. In the terminology of Pawley and Ross (1995:52), Central
Paci®c is an innovation-linked subgroup, and language differentiation within that
dialect chain did not follow a strict family tree type of model (Geraghty
1983; Pawley 1996a, 1999). Rather, there was a process of network-breaking
and reemergence, resulting in successive subgroups whose boundaries
Fig. 3.2
The geographic distribution of major subgroups within the Oceanic branch of Austronesian languages.
58
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
Fig. 3.3
The Proto Central Paci®c dialect chain.
shifted and re-formed through time (Figure 3.3); the details need not detain
us here.
The soon-to-be Polynesian portions of this PCP dialect chain, at its
eastern geographic end (what Geraghty [1983] calls Tokalau±Fijian±Polynesian), accumulated in their pre-Polynesian stage a signi®cant range of
innovations not shared with Rotuman or any languages in the Fijian region
(Pawley 1996c). These extensive innovations include ®fteen phonological,
fourteen morphological, and eight syntactic changes exhibited only by
languages in the Polynesian subgroup (Pawley 1996a:392±95). More importantly, the POLLEX lexical ®les contain upwards of 1,300 reconstructed
Proto Polynesian (PPN) lexemes lacking cognates outside of Polynesian, or
which continued old forms with new semantic innovations. 5 Thus Polynesian
(PN) constitutes a well-marked, innovation-de®ned language subgroup.
In sum, out of dialectal variation in PCP, one innovation-de®ned subgroup
of languages ± called Polynesian ± ®rst differentiated in the eastern part of the
region covered by the original PCP dialect chain. Yet this Polynesian
subgroup already exhibited some dialectal variation, and as Pawley
(1996a:401) remarks, the elegant family trees that are often drawn by
historical linguists do not satisfactorily re¯ect the processes of differentiation
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
Fig. 3.4
59
North±south dialect differentiation within Proto Polynesian (after Pawley
1996a).
involved. In its pre-PN stage, internal dialectal variation within the subgroup
can be detected, with northern and southern dialect clusters (Figure 3.4).
These clusters were to become the basis for the two highest-order subgroups
within PN itself, the Tongic (TO) and Nuclear Polynesian (NP) subgroups
(Pawley 1996a:401±2). Thus linguistic variation was present right from the
beginning in the formation of the Polynesian subgroup. What is normally
reconstructed as PPN, therefore, represents the point at which this subgroup
®nally broke apart; this would also have been at the approximate time that
parts of central Eastern Polynesia and certain Polynesian Outliers6 to the
60
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
west were initially settled.7 It is to this late stage of PPN that the
approximately 2,300 lexical reconstructions in POLLEX, assembled by
Bruce Biggs, belong.
Internal classi®cation of Polynesian
The long-standing internal genetic classi®cation of the Polynesian languages
(Elbert 1953; Green 1966; Pawley 1966), usually graphed as a family tree
(e.g. Clark 1979), has recently undergone some modi®cations (Figure 3.5).8
The Eastern Polynesian branch remains more-or-less intact, with only minor
alterations at the lower levels (Marck 1996c), and has been considerably
strengthened by additional evidence. However, modeling Proto CentralEastern Polynesian (PCE) and its dissolution requires application of a dialect
chain-network breaking model (similar to that discussed above for PCP; see
Green 1988; Pawley 1996a:403; Marck 1999b). These revisions are informed by evidence of grammatical (especially pronominal) innovations, and
for geographical distributions (isoglosses) of irregular changes in some
lexemes (Wilson 1985; Marck 1999b). This evidence allows us to revise
signi®cantly: (1) how the numerous Outlier languages group (or do not
group) under the Nuclear Polynesian umbrella; (2) how the Proto Ellicean
(PEC, Tuvalu) subgroup includes certain Outlier languages, as well as
Tuvalu and Tokelauan under one sub-branch, and Samoa under another;
and, (3) how Eastern Polynesian joins these two as a third sub-subgroup
category.
The implications of these revisions are multiple (Marck 1999b, in press),
but most importantly they demonstrate that all the higher-order subgroups
within Polynesian ± and thus true genetic diversity, as opposed to simple
language diversity ± lie in the Western Polynesian region, and unequivocally
mark that zone as the PPN homeland. This conclusion has long been supported
by environmental lexical evidence. Words such as PPN *malau, `megapode,
incubator bird,' and the archaeologically recovered bones for one extant and
several extinct megapode species in the Fiji±Tonga±Samoa region but not
elsewhere in Polynesia, provide one example (Clark 1982; Steadman
1997:74; see Chapter 4). Likewise the PPN word *palolo for the marine
seaworm, present only in the central islands of Western Polynesia, is telling
among a long list of such lexical items (Pawley and K. Green 1971:21±23).
However, such lexical environmental evidence is hardly necessary to identify
the Proto Polynesian homeland, de¯ecting any critique from those who
regard WoÈrter und Sachen methods as questionable (e.g., Renfrew 1987; see
Mallory 1997). Far more important for Polynesian are arguments that
depend on language distribution, delimiting the area of greatest genetic diversity
(Sapir 1916), and invoking the principle of parsimony that requires the
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
Fig. 3.5
61
A ``family tree'' type classi®cation of the Polynesian languages (modi®ed after
Marck 1999a).
fewest and shortest moves necessary to account for the geographic distribution of the higher-order Polynesian subgroups (Dyen 1956).
In short, language admirably identi®es Polynesia as a discrete phylogenetic unit. Moreover, it isolates that part of the vast region now covered by
its daughter languages (the well-known Polynesian ``Triangle,'' plus the
62
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
Fig. 3.6
Islands in the Fiji±Western Polynesian region linked by voyaging circles of 24
hours or less (after Marck 1999a).
``Outliers'' in Melanesia and Micronesia) in which the initial homeland lay,
and shows how early dialect variation within PPN became the basis for later,
high-level subgroup emergence within the homeland zone. The process of
language differentiation does not require an A to B to C sequence of moves
from one island group to another, as Biggs (1972) cautioned against (see also
Green 1981). Differentiation in the early stages of Polynesian was not strictly
the outcome of isolation, but occurred within a zone over which interaction
was continuous for some 3,000 years (Green 1975, 1996), a zone in which an
overnight voyage permitted few real isolates (Marck 1999a:13, map 1.3), yet
encouraged dialectal differentiation into discrete subgroups, then languages,
over several millennia (Figure 3.6).9
Ethnological perspectives
Cultural regions in Oceania
No consensus exists regarding major cultural areas in the Paci®c. In
anthropology, many scholars have de®ned Oceania as encompassing the
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
63
nineteenth-century categories of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.
Others have included Australia within the Oceania framework (e.g., Oliver
1989). But it has become clear that such categories are of limited value for
historical analyses. Green (1991, 1994), in trying to overcome some of these
problems, identi®ed a vast region in the western Paci®c ®rst settled by
humans c. 50,000±40,000 years ago, which he termed Ancient Near Oceania.10
Archaeological evidence suggests that by about 6,000 years ago ± still some
millennia before people began to expand into the farther reaches of the
central Paci®c ± the Ancient Near Oceanic zone might have been divided
into three distinct cultural entities: Island Southeast Asia (Bellwood 1997),
Australia (Lourandos 1997), and modern Near Oceania (Kirch 1997a;
Spriggs 1997). Each of these units, which are de®nable by 6000 BP, was to
have a somewhat separate history thereafter (Figure 3.7).
The large island of New Guinea, along with the immediately adjacent
Bismarck Archipelago and Solomon Islands, is usually regarded as a linked
but environmentally divergent part of ``Sahul'' or ``Greater Australia''
(White and O'Connell 1982; Allen 1993, 1996). ``Island Melanesia'' has
recently been accorded its own separate archaeological analysis (Spriggs
1997). Delineating possible phylogenetic units within such broad zones as
these will be challenging, although the Comparative Austronesian Project
has shown the value of language as an index.11 Two possible units for
application of a phylogenetic approach, as indexed by language, are Oceanic
(see Kirch 1997a for discussion), and the Trans-New Guinea Phylum which
occurs within New Guinea (Pawley 1995; Ross 1995b). Echoing the views of
Bellwood, Fox, and Tryon (1995:3±4) that phylogenetic models have
considerable analytic power for Austronesian studies as a whole, we are
con®dent that historical analyses informed in part on such language relationships, as well as other kinds of indices, will emerge in time. 12
Whatever analytical units may develop through future research, these
surely will not be the overworked and outdated categories of ``Melanesia''
and ``Micronesia.'' From our knowledge of the histories and diversity of
these two regions ± whether in linguistic, biological, or cultural terms ± there
can be no doubt that these units are fatally ¯awed (see Kirch 2000). We
employ instead the distinction between Near Oceania and Remote Oceania (Fig.
3.7). Polynesia, the phylogenetic unit of interest to us, geographically
occupies a large part of the Remote Oceanic zone, and it is the only one of
Dumont D'Urville's original tripartite classi®cation of Oceanic peoples to
have survived the test of anthropological scrutiny.
Based on an increasingly sharp pattern of radiocarbon dates, human
expansion into Remote Oceania began approximately 3,300±3,200 years
ago, proceeding as a rapid series of colonization events (Irwin 1992, 1997;
Kirch 1997a, 2000; Green 1997c). Initial expansion into the southwestern
Fig. 3.7 The Paci®c region with Near Oceania, Remote Oceania, and the Andesite Line and ``continental'' type
islands indicated (after Green 1994).
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
65
part of Remote Oceania encompassed the Reef/Santa Cruz, Vanuatu,
Loyalty, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa archipelagos. Occupation
of Nuclear Micronesia and of Eastern Polynesia did not occur until somewhat later. The reason for this pause in the geographical advancement of
people, its duration, and its explanation are all hotly debated issues among
Paci®c prehistorians.13
Within Remote Oceania, we can de®ne four regions with separate and
internally intertwined historical trajectories, and these exhibit striking
differences ethnographically: (1) Nuclear (sometimes referred to as Central/
Eastern) Micronesia; (2) western Remote Oceania (encompassing the Outer
Eastern Islands of the Solomons, Vanuatu, Loyalties, and New Caledonia);
(3) the Fijian archipelago; and (4) Polynesia. In our view, each of these
regions potentially constitutes a valid phylogenetic unit. However, our
concern in this book is only with Polynesia. Within Remote Oceania,
Polynesia is perhaps the most viable, ethnographically well-attested unit,
comprised of related societies possessing numerous cultural regularities,
many of which were surely inherited from the ancestral culture. Many of the
speci®c systematic patterns that mark Polynesia off as a distinctive unit will
be discussed in detail in Part II. In the following section we will support our
claim that at their ethnographic endpoints (i.e., from the time of effective
European contact to the present), the various Polynesian societies may be
grouped together as a phylogenetic unit.
Systemic cultural patterns that de®ne Polynesia
We agree with Shore (1989:164) when he writes that ``no coherent vision of
local variation in Polynesia is possible without a prior clari®cation of what
common characteristics make it a real culture area.'' Certain ethnographic
domains more explicitly set Polynesia off from both Island Melanesia and
Fiji than others. We will canvas just a few of these, seeing no point in
attempting to be exhaustive.
In the domains of food and food production, Polynesia does not
particularly stand out from regions to the west, except perhaps in its
attention to the breadfruit, something also found in Micronesia (Yen 1971,
1973; Oliver 1989:188). When one turns to domestic architecture and
domiciliary arrangements, however, Polynesia exhibits a contrasting set of
patterns from Fiji, or from those of societies in Island Melanesia. Thus
Oliver (1989:339±41) treats Fiji's nucleated settlement pattern and its
distinctive house forms, men's clubhouses, and a temple-like god house as
quite different from the Micronesian or Polynesian cases (1989:337±38).
Oliver paraphrases Green (1970; see also Green 1986) in describing some
regularities in physical layout of tropical Polynesian communities:
66
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
Throughout Polynesia the most common pattern consisted of a dispersed or loosely
clustered neighborhood of relatively small households each located on its own kinconnected land and all focused, socially and religiously, on a common complex of
edi®ces that usually included, or was close to, the household of the community's
chief. In most places the household buildings housed groups of extended-family
composition. They consisted of one or more sleeping houses, a cookhouse, a canoe
shed (if located near the coast), occasionally a separate hut for menstruating
women, and occasionally a family god house or some other type of religious shrine.
In most Polynesian societies the household compounds of chie¯y persons tended to
be larger, mainly because of the larger number of persons in residence, but it was
only in the more highly strati®ed societies (Tonga, Society, Hawaii) that the chie¯y
domestic buildings were superior in terms of workmanship or elaborateness. (Oliver
1989:348)
One could add other public buildings for secular assemblies, and sleeping
houses for bachelors and/or young people, in contrast to the strongly
gender-restricted men's houses of Fiji or Island Melanesia.
Sea-craft and ocean travel in the Paci®c have been ethnographically
surveyed many times (e.g., Hornell 1936; Haddon 1937; Haddon and
Hornell 1938; Doran 1974; Oliver 1989:361±422), and the topic has been
recently studied from the viewpoints of historical linguistics (Pawley and
Pawley 1994, 1998) and of prehistoric Paci®c colonization strategies (Irwin
1992; Finney 1994, 1996). As Doran (1974) shows, a distinctive Polynesian
sea-craft complex, overlapping in some of its elements with Fiji, may be
mapped from the available ethnographic sources. We reproduce Doran's
map here as Figure 3.8.
External (long-distance) exchange systems throughout Island Melanesia
have long been seen by ethnographers as contrasting with the lack of similar
networks in Polynesia. Of Fiji, Oliver (1989:577) writes: ``it has separate
exchange institutions of both Melanesian and Polynesian types, along with
some that contained a blend of both.'' Polynesia exhibits several noteworthy
contrasts, and Oliver lists some reasons for this (1989:563±65). For one,
there are much greater traveling distances in Polynesia, that not only would
have minimized the quantities of cargo able to be transported, but which
also would offer fewer possibilities for the development of distinctly localized
production, and hence a ``goods-focused'' exchange. The exceptions are in
the Tonga±Samoa-Fiji area (Kaeppler 1978a; Kirch 1984a:217±42), and in
the Tahitian±Tuamotuan sphere (Oliver 1989:565±66, 1,177±81). Classic
ethnographies of Polynesian societies contain relatively little information
about inter-community circulation of goods other than in chie¯y tribute or
in exchanges between chie¯y persons as part of marriage (Oliver
1989:564±65). Archaeology, using advanced methods of sourcing unevenly
distributed resources such as ®ne-grained basalt, is now beginning to
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
Fig. 3.8
67
Canoe regions of the Paci®c (after Doran 1974).
demonstrate that there may have been more extensive or frequent interisland exchanges at deeper time levels in Polynesian prehistory (Weisler and
Kirch 1996; Weisler 1997; 1998). With regard to internal as opposed to
external exchange,14 however, ethnographic data indicates that the former is
of widespread signi®cance within Polynesia, and hence a systemic pattern:
``Formalized exchange is an essential part of social life in Polynesia and
operates at every level of society, from the domestic to the apically political''
(Howard and Kirkpatrick 1989:84). In short, the ethnographic differences
between the exchange systems of Polynesia and Melanesia lie in how they
were structured ± in the one case largely internally, and in the other
externally ± and the ways in which contrast in emphasis in the two regions
based on this distinction has been developed.15
To several generations of Oceanic scholars, the chief/big man distinction
was paradigmatic of the differences between Polynesia and Melanesia.
Marcus (1989:178±80) revisited the concept of chieftainship in Polynesia,
Fig. 3.9
The geographic distribution of sibling classi®cation types in Oceania (after Marshall 1984: ®g. 7).
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
69
looking in particular at what he calls its ``kingly'' and ``populist'' sides, which
effectively collapses the chief/big man distinction used by Sahlins (1963).
Marcus suggests ``not only that chiefs who share much in common with
Melanesian big men are to be found in Polynesia, but that big men who
share much in common with chiefs, and in fact are chiefs, are to be found in
Melanesia'' (1989:180). Yet the Polynesian boundary is maintained through
a concept of chieftainship rooted in the institution of kingship throughout
the region, and if Sahlins has its analysis correct, one that is of ``a distinctive
pan-Polynesian form'' (Marcus 1989:181). In short, Polynesian chieftainship
has a recurring set of characteristics that contrast with those of the chie¯y
institutions of Fiji (Oliver 1989:1,174±76), and with those occurring on
occasion in some societies to the west.
A wide range of other social institutions exhibiting ethnographically
attested patterns held in common have also been identi®ed as characteristically Polynesian. Thus the Fijian method of classifying cognatic kin, and the
resulting kin types, are sometimes described as ``Dravidian'' (Oliver
1989:1,167±68), and are quite distinct from those of Polynesia, which are
generally classi®ed as ``Hawaiian'' following Morgan (1871; see also
Murdock 1949). The Polynesian sibling term pattern is characteristic of
what Marshall (1984) called ``Type 10,'' though a few societies in Western
Polynesia and some Outliers were of his Types 3 and 4. In contrast, the close
kin terminologies of Fiji and most Island Melanesian societies were of Type
6, with a scattering of other types dominated by Type 3 (Figure 3.9). In this
respect, Polynesian kinship is largely of generational type (Marck 1996b),
organized on two principles ± seniority and gender duality ± the one
dominant in Eastern Polynesia and the other in Western Polynesia (Howard
and Kirkpatrick 1989:65). This results in kinship groupings and descent
units that are more varied than might be expected, and which do not permit
of ready generalities. Once regarded as ``almost invariably based on
common descent from an ancestor in the male line'' (Howard and Kirkpatrick 1989:52±4), since the 1950s anthropologists have regarded Polynesian social groups as based on a nonunilineal principle.16 Oliver (1989:938,
1,028) indicates that in only three Polynesian societies was descent-unit
af®liation normatively unilateral; in all others a person was entitled to
af®liate with the descent unit of either parent, or of both. This contrasts with
Melanesian societies, in which the principal kinds of descent units were
typically unilineal (1989:1,028).
Oliver (1989:935, 937) summarizes Polynesian descent groups in terms of
three general features: (1) most widely identi®ed with descent units, corporately, was land; (2) the collective activity they engaged in most widely was
religious; and, (3) their structure in relation to kin was pyramidal. Thus he
sees Polynesian societies as ``all very much alike in some fundamental
70
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
features of social structure, especially those having to do with kinship''
(1989:883). Howard and Kirkpatrick provide an even more sweeping view,
following their review of the recent literature on Polynesian descent groups:
The cultural perspective argues that Polynesians carried with them a set of
principles for interpreting the world and organizing their social lives. From this
standpoint Polynesian social formations are expressions, under a variety of historical
and ecological conditions, of a basic world view that includes speci®c notions about
kinship, relationships between human beings and ancestral gods, and a host of
related beliefs. (1989:59)
Shore (1989) explores the maintenance of such a basic world view among
Polynesian societies under the widely known concepts of mana and tapu,
advancing eleven propositions of systemic patterns holding throughout
Polynesia in respect to these categories, and demonstrating how even in
concepts more widely shared throughout the Oceanic world, Polynesians are
distinguished by their speci®c interpretations in practice.
Other kinds of regularities and systemic patterns could be cited, such as
Goldman's (1955, 1970) attention to status rivalry and status lineages in
Polynesia, or widespread practices in child rearing and adoption (Borofsky
and Howard 1989a:288). All of these systemic patterns make it abundantly
evident that, from the ethnological perspective, Polynesia quali®es as a
``segment of cultural history'' eminently suited for study as a phylogenetic
unit.
Cultural differentiation within Polynesia
While systemic cultural patterns help to de®ne Polynesia as a discrete and
robust phyletic unit, an ethnographic perspective also provides evidence for
internal differentiation within the Polynesian ``cultural clade.'' That is to say,
ethnographers have long recognized that cultural traits among the various
Polynesian societies are not randomly distributed, but show regularities of
clustering. Thus the ethnographically attested societies of Western Polynesia
(Tonga, Niue, Samoa, Futuna, `Uvea) share a number of cultural patterns ±
such as elaborate kava ceremonial, the fahu privilege of the sister's son, or the
pasting method of bark cloth joining ± which are not found in Polynesian
societies outside of this core region. On the other hand, many of the societies
to the east, north, or south of Western Polynesia (collectively referred to as
the Eastern Polynesian societies) similarly share traits or patterns not found in
Tonga, Niue, Samoa, Futuna, or `Uvea. Examples include the pantheon of
®rst-order anthropomorphic gods (especially Tu, Tane, and Rongo; see
Marck 1996a), the architectural elaboration of walled or platform ritual
structures (marae), or the method of bark cloth retting.
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
71
These intra-Polynesian geographic associations or clusters of traits began
to be formally recognized as one outcome of the systematic ethnographic
survey of Polynesia initiated by the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in 1920,
through the Bayard Dominick Expeditions and successive ®eld studies
(Kirch 2000:20±24). Ralph Linton (1923), for example, used a wide array of
material culture traits from six Polynesian cultures (Tonga, Samoa, Society
Islands, Marquesas, Hawai`i, and New Zealand) to infer a set of culturehistorical relationships; Handy (1930a, 1930b) did much the same based on
an expanded trait list that included social organization and religion. These
early attempts, however, suffered from a total lack of archaeological
perspective and proper time depth, from a strongly diffusionist theoretical
perspective, and from undue in¯uence of the then-current racial classi®cations of the somatologists. (Linton, for example, was convinced that the
clustering of material traits would have to be explained as the outcome of
three distinct migrations of ``negroid, Caucasic, and Indonesian races''
[1923:465].) Interestingly, however, Linton's data were later used by Driver
and Kroeber (1932:220±25) in a pioneering quantitative study to assess
statistically the validity of inferred cultural relationships. Their analysis
con®rmed that the Western Polynesian cultures (in this case represented by
Tonga and Samoa) grouped most closely with each other, while the Eastern
Polynesian cultures' similarity displayed the highest statistical af®nities with
each other.
Burrows (1938a) formally extended and re®ned these early efforts, comparing the distribution of cultural traits within Polynesia as a whole, and
leading him to de®ne Western Polynesia as a distinctive subregion, marked by
a constellation of cultural traits that set it off from other subregions (which
he named Intermediate, Central, and Marginal). Table 3.1 provides a
selection of these traits, adapted from Burrows (1938a:88±90). The range of
traits includes aspects not only of material culture, but also of kinship,
religion, and calendrics. What was particularly path-breaking about
Burrows' approach, however, was his rejection of multiple migrations as an
explanatory device; rather, Burrows emphasized the role of internal processes of cultural change, not only ``diffusion'' (what we would now call
``horizontal transmission''), but also local development and abandonment or
rejection of traits.
Burrows' (1938a) delineation of a culturally based major internal division
within Polynesia ± the Western Polynesian/Eastern Polynesian distinction ±
continues to be well supported (Howard and Kirkpatrick 1989:69; Marcus
1989:179; Shore 1989:165). But since Burrows' pioneering effort we have
learned that although systemic patterns with great time depth in Polynesia
may be expected to appear in both Western and Eastern Polynesia (and in
the Outliers to the west), in the core region of Western Polynesia some
72
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
Table 3.1. Cultural traits distinguishing Western and Eastern Polynesian regions
(adapted from Burrows 1938a)
Cultural trait
Western Polynesia
Eastern Polynesia
One-piece ®shhooks
Ruvettus hooks
Bonito hooks
Stone or wood food pounders
Bark cloth retting
Bark cloth joining
Bark cloth watermarking
Bark cloth decoration
Right-angle plaiting
Coiled basketry
Twining in kilts
Stone adzes
Canoe hulls
Canoe planks
Outrigger attachment
Canoe sail
Carved human ®gures
Dart
Wooden slit-gong
Drum
Formal kava ceremonial
Chief 's ``language''
Brother±sister avoidance
Vasu (fahu) privilege of sister's son
Tu, Tane, Rongo as major gods
Myth of origins of humankind
Nights of the moon
Name of ancestral homeland or
underworld
0
0
proximal projection
0
0
pasting
0
tablet rubbing
+
+
0
tangless
low ends
¯ange lashing
indirect
Oceanic lanteen
0
composite
+
0
+
+
+
+
0
evolutionary
0
+
+
distal projection
+
+
felting
+
stamping
0
0
+
tanged
upturned ends
right-through lashing
direct
Oceanic spritsail
+
simple
0
+
0
0
0
0
+
procreative
+
Pulotu
Hawaiki
ancient patterns may have been lost or obscured; it will require the
techniques of historical linguistics and of archaeology to fully recover them.
Thus a strictly ethnographically based attempt to determine which systemic
patterns are truly homologous as opposed to convergences (analogous), or
the mechanical application of the age-area hypothesis, is not suf®cient for a
rigorous historical anthropology. This caution is not meant as grounds for
dismissing these approaches as of little account in historical work, for they
are often useful starting places. Only when cross-checked with the independent evidence of archaeology and historical linguistics, however, can the
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
73
hypotheses generated by comparative ethnography be advanced with con®dence to the status of historical narrative explanation.
Polynesia as a biological unit
The immediate as well as remote biological origins of the Polynesians have
been the subject of much debate (see Howells 1979; Terrell 1986; Green
1989a; Houghton 1996). We aver that paleo-populations associated with the
Lapita cultural complex in Near and Remote Oceania gave rise to the
founding parental Polynesian and Fijian populations from which all later
populations in that region derive (Houghton 1989, 1996; Pietrusewsky 1989;
Serjeantson and Hill 1989; Kelly 1996; Clark and Kelly 1993; Martinson
1996; Kirch 1997a; Lum and Cann 1998; Lum et al. 1998). At the time of
initial Lapita settlement of Fiji±Western Polynesia, the founding or parental
population constituted what could be called (after Howells 1979) a ``prePolynesian'' phenotype. The phenotypic differentiation toward ``Polynesian''
was a slow evolutionary process.17 From morphological evidence of skeletal
remains dated to between 2200 and 1700 BP, the Lapita-descended people
of Watom (Bismarcks), Natunuku, Sigatoka, Waya (Fiji), and several later
populations of Polynesia were still much alike (Visser 1994:195±219,
248±49). Thus the biological separation so evident today was accomplished
by a fair degree of secular change in one direction within Fiji during the past
1,500 years, presumably with the input from the west of new genetic material
into that archipelago (Visser 1994:249), and change in another direction in
Tonga (Van Dijk 1993) and in other Eastern Polynesian islands. As a result
of these later changes, Polynesian populations came to be marked off
phenotypically from those elsewhere in the Paci®c.
We cannot neglect the role of strong genetic bottlenecks, ®rst in coastal
Papua New Guinea (Redd et al. 1995:611), and later in Fiji±Western
Polynesia (Flint et al. 1989; Martinson et al. 1993; Harding and Clegg
1996:591, 593). Recent genetic evidence strongly indicates that the ancestors
of the Polynesians passed through a constricted demographic bottleneck in
which a parental group of small size (and one showing the genetic traces of
initially having resided in a malarious region [Kelly 1990; Clark and Kelly
1993; Martinson 1996]) served as its founding colony.18 Together with the
well-known founder effect (Dobzahnsky 1963), this combined to make
Polynesians relatively homogeneous, a biologically more uni®ed set of
populations. The bottleneck evidence has a second important implication,
that the parental populations were of extremely small size, perhaps less than
100 individuals19 at the onset of established settlements in the Fiji±Western
Polynesian region. One result was a largely homogeneous set of late
Polynesian populations in a physical and genetic sense, now perhaps best
74
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
typi®ed by the phenotype exhibited by people of Eastern Polynesian descent.
Thus major later changes within Polynesia from this small founding parental
base follow the general pattern of an east/west split, with three isolates
(Easter Island, New Zealand, Hawai`i) attached to the central Eastern
Polynesian cluster (Matisoo-Smith 1990), and with Fiji separated off from
the Western Polynesian cluster (or on some traits grouping with populations
even further to the west).
Because these biological processes and outcomes do not directly affect
how one reconstructs the Ancestral Polynesian societies and their culture, we
will not further consider strictly biological aspects of the phylogenetic
approach (as in Vogt's step 6, see Chapter 1). But the small number of
people involved as a founding population in the Fiji±Western Polynesian
region ± strongly supported by the biological evidence ± does help to
condition our views of population size in these societies. Beyond that, we will
merely comment that a variety of multivariate studies of Polynesian populations, using anthroposcopic traits as well as metric and non-metric traits of
crania, yield dendrograms in which the Western Polynesian populations of
Samoa and Tonga cluster together (with Fiji joining them in some analyses),
while the Eastern Polynesian populations also tend to cluster in various
arrangements (Pietrusewsky 1970, 1971, 1996; see Howells 1979, ®g. 11.3).
An especially clear example is the dendrogram of relationships deriving from
Pietrusewsky's analysis of thirty-eight non-metric cranial traits (1996: ®g. 1),
in which Tonga±Samoa link closely with Fiji, forming one major clade,
while the Eastern Polynesian groups of Hawai`i, Marquesas, Easter Island,
Chatham Islands, Society Islands, New Zealand, and Tuamotu link together
to form a second, distinct clade (Figure 3.10). Summarizing his most recent
thinking, Pietrusewsky writes that ``although samples remain small for
Western Polynesia, differentiation between Western and Eastern Polynesia is
suggested'' (1996:351). Thus whatever continued biological evolution there
has been among Polynesian populations over the past 2,500 years, this has
been conditioned by the relative isolation between Western and Eastern
Polynesian subregions.
Archaeological perspectives
The key contribution of archaeology, in the process of de®ning a phylogenetic unit, is to offer temporal and spatial (geographic) controls that
cannot be provided by either linguistic or ethnographic data. For example,
while lexicostatistics and its derivative, glottochronology, offer only the
crudest approximations of time depth, archaeology through its use of radiocarbon and other ``absolute'' dating methods can ®x the temporal dimension
of a phylogenetic unit fairly precisely. Archaeology also furnishes evidence to
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
Fig. 3.10
75
Relationships among Polynesian biological populations as indicated by
distance analysis of thirty-eight non-metric cranial traits (after Pietrusewsky
1996: ®g. 1).
de®ne the spatial boundaries of a phylogenetic unit which have been
tentatively sketched from linguistic and ethnographic distributions, and may
more accurately de®ne the probable homeland region for the unit. Once a
phylogenetic unit has been de®ned, and its branching structure worked out,
archaeology also contributes substantially to the history of the individual
cultural trajectories represented by those branches.
Fixing Ancestral Polynesia in time and space
Archaeological evidence de®nes a boundary between Fiji and Polynesia,
discernible in material culture, beginning around 2500±2200 BP, which continued
to be maintained thereafter (Green 1981). Direct continuity in the archaeological sequences and developmental trajectories within Western and Eastern
Polynesian archipelagos and islands convinces most archaeologists that there
are strong ties between speci®c foundation cultures and their ethnohistoric
endpoints throughout Polynesia (for further details see Kirch 1984a; Kirch
and Green 1987). There is no indication of cultural replacements within
island groups, and certainly none of major intrusions from outside of the
Polynesian phylogenetic unit itself. This is not to deny evidence for occasional, if signi®cant, extra-regional contacts with Fiji, Eastern Micronesia,
and even South America;20 nonetheless, there can be little doubt that
archaeologically one is dealing with a discrete phylogenetic unit.
Fig. 3.11
A graphic representation of the ``density'' of available archaeological information for major Polynesian
cultural sequences (modi®ed after Kirch and Green 1987: ®g. 4).
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
77
The archaeological record of three millennia-long continuous sequences
in Western Polynesia, compared with sequences ranging from about
2,000±1,000 years duration in Eastern Polynesia and the Outliers (Figure
3.11), supports the view that the Ancestral Polynesian homeland was situated
in Western Polynesia. In reviewing the Polynesian homeland issue, Green
(1981) concluded: (1) that this homeland had to encompass a region made
up of several island groups including Tonga, Samoa, `Uvea, and Futuna,
rather than being centered on a single island or group (e.g., Tonga) as some
had argued (Groube 1971; Pawley and K. Green 1971); (2) that a model for
the differentiation of cultural (and linguistic) entities throughout the homeland region had to incorporate continuing contact and interaction among
the societies involved, rather than proceeding strictly by isolation; and (3)
that demarcation between the historical trajectories of the Fijian societies to
the west and the Polynesian societies to the east was not well attested in the
archaeological record until around the latter part of the ®rst millennium BC.
Green (1987) also argued that there was no a priori reason that initial
biological, linguistic, and cultural differentiation among Ancestral Polynesian societies had proceeded as strictly contemporaneous events or processes,
as long as within a reasonable period of time all three began to cohere. That
is, the emergence of a parental population, proto-language, and ancestral
culture into what became a foundation phylogenetic unit ± prior to its
expansion over the larger region it eventually occupied ethnographically ±
need not have been a synchronous event, but rather a process of historical
differentiation. Indeed, attempting to get too close a chronological ``®t''
between the different biological, linguistic, and cultural ®elds is probably an
unwarranted expectation, and not even a realistic occurrence historically.
The small founding biological populations discussed in the previous
section were associated with the ®rst cultural (and archaeological) assemblages distributed throughout the Fiji±Western Polynesian region. Referred
to as Early Eastern Lapita (Kirch 1997a:73), this regional variant of the
larger Lapita cultural complex is marked by ceramic assemblages characterized by particular vessel forms, decorated in a distinctive subset of the
dentate-stamped Lapita design system (Mead et al. 1975). Recent evidence
from Ha`apai (Burley 1998), combined with data from Fiji, Niuatoputapu,
Futuna, and Samoa, now indicates that the period of dentate-stamped
ceramics in the Early Eastern Lapita style is con®ned to a narrow time span,
beginning not earlier than about 1100±1000 BC and ending by 800±700
BC (Kirch 1997a:66±69; Burley 1998). The archaeological evidence suggests
that these colonizers were socially organized into small-scale communities
(see Chapter 8).
The earliest archaeological assemblages, and their associated radiocarbon
ages, give us a ®rm temporal ®x on the initial occupation of the Fiji±Western
78
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
Polynesian region. It is precisely this ``horizon-like'' portion of the Eastern
Lapita cultural complex21 that we would associate with the founding Proto
Central Paci®c (PCP) innovation-linked language subgroup (see above).
Linguistically, we visualize this entity to have constituted a kind of rapidly
dispersing dialect chain. As the chain lengthened through the rapid and
progressive colonization of islands to the east, the main variation in dialects
occurred between its western and eastern (Tokalau±Fijian/Polynesian) portions. Some dialect differences seem to have rapidly emerged between
speakers of communalects in the northern as opposed to southern zones in
the eastern portion of the PCP chain (i.e., along its Tonga±Samoa alignment). Given direct archaeological evidence for such north±south variation
in another communication medium ± that of the Lapita decorative design
system as expressed on pottery (Kirch 1988:187±88, ®g. 114) ± the possibility
of corresponding lexical variation is noteworthy. As Pawley (1996a:401±2)
suggests, such pre-Polynesian dialectal differences probably laid the bases for
the highest-order internal splitting within the Polynesian subgroup of
languages, just as early cultural variation between the ceramic design
systems of northern and southern groups re¯ects a parallel process, one
which is the basis for the later distinctions drawn between Samoan and
Tongan ``cultural provinces.''22
If the eastern portion of the PCP dialect chain became increasingly
marked as an innovation-de®ned Polynesian subgroup, how long did this
process of differentiation take? Pawley's (1996a:395, 400) best estimate from
linguistic information (especially his admittedly shaky use of glottochronological computations) is that 400 years is possible but improbably rapid,
whereas a more reasonable estimate is at least 800 years, and conceivably
longer. To allow only 400±500 years would in Pawley's view suppose a rate
of language innovation accumulation and lexical change ``probably unparalleled in the subsequent history of any of the 30 individual Polynesian
languages'' (1996a:400). Pawley's construction ± the most sophisticated
presently available ± accommodates the dialect chain concerns adumbrated
by Dyen (1981:97±99) and Rensch (1987; see also Pawley 1996a:406, fn. 17,
18). It sees Polynesian (a subgroup of languages already exhibiting dialectal
variation at the pre-Polynesian stage) emerging during the mid-®rst millennium BC as it simultaneously split into two ®rst-order subgroupings: Tongic
and Nuclear Polynesian (see Figure 3.5).
It is likewise in the mid to later ®rst millennium BC that archaeologists are
able to demonstrate the development of a distinctive Polynesian adz kit
within Western Polynesia, and of a type of pottery termed Polynesian
Plainware (for details, see Chapter 7). More importantly, Kirch (1981, 1988)
and Sand (1990, 1992), using ceramic assemblages from Futuna and `Uvea,
as well as from Tonga and Samoa, demonstrate island-speci®c variation in
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
79
pottery. Thus, archaeologists are able to de®ne a material form of early
Polynesian culture which emerged toward the middle of the ®rst millennium
BC, ®ve to seven centuries after initial Lapita colonization. The correspondence between linguistic and archaeological evidence here is essential: both
occur in the same set of islands and during the same temporal interval.
Archaeology and historical linguistics converge on the later part of the ®rst
millennium BC as the formative period for Ancestral Polynesian societies
and their culture, and on the chain of islands stretching from Tonga to
Samoa but also incorporating Futuna and `Uvea as their geographic
location.
The breakup of Ancestral Polynesia and subsequent dispersals
The end of the formative stage in Polynesia was marked by a series of events
that portend ± from the linguistic perspective ± the break-up of Proto
Nuclear Polynesian (PNP), and thus the endpoint of Proto Polynesian (PPN)
as Biggs (1971) employs the term. These events are beginning to be
recognized archaeologically through settlement sequences for various island
groups lying beyond the boundaries of the core Western Polynesian area.
Speci®cally, these were the discovery and colonization of the most northerly
atolls in Western Polynesia (the Tuvalu and Tokelau groups), of some of the
Polynesian Outliers further west, and of the central islands of Eastern
Polynesia. While an ``absolute'' radiocarbon chronology for these events is
still in its early stages of development, and the subject of some debate (e.g.,
Kirch 1986a; Spriggs and Anderson 1993; Kirch and Ellison 1994), we
would bracket these events to the period dating from about 2200±1900 BP.
This makes them consistent with Pawley's (1996a:399) glottochronological
estimate of about 50 BC to AD 100 (with a scatter of median dates from 550
BC to AD 400). While admitting the controversial dating of the initial
settlement of central Eastern Polynesia, we are convinced that this process
must have started by 1600 BP, the date now minimally attested for early
human activity in the Society Islands and Mangaia (Ellison 1994; Kirch and
Ellison 1994; Lepofsky et al. 1996).23
Whatever the date of ®rst settlement in central Eastern Polynesia eventually proves to have been (i.e., for the area occupied by the Cook, Austral,
Society, Tuamotu, and Marquesas archipelagos), there is ®rm evidence that
all of these islands were well populated by AD 800. Moreover, recent
advances in the sourcing of basalt adzes and other kinds of artifacts (Weisler
1997, 1998) demonstrate that central Eastern Polynesia constituted a
complex network of communities linked by frequent inter-island and interarchipelago exchanges. This archaeological evidence for an early interaction
network linking the central Eastern Polynesian islands meshes well with the
80
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
linguistic evidence for an innovation-based Proto Central-Eastern Polynesian (PCE) speech community, in all likelihood a dialect chain or linkage. It
was presumably within and across such a linkage that a number of
phonological, syntactic, lexical, and semantic innovations arose, as well as
various cultural developments (``synapomorphies,'' in cladistic terminology)
that are uniquely shared by the modern Eastern Polynesian cultures
descended from this interstage in the Polynesian phylogenetic ``tree.''
The farthest-¯ung and most remote of the Eastern Polynesian islands and
archipelagos (those termed ``Marginal Polynesia'' by Burrows [1938a]) lie
beyond the central Eastern Polynesian core, including Hawai`i to the north,
Rapa Nui to the southeast, and New Zealand and the Chathams to the
southwest. There is substantial archaeological as well as paleoecological
evidence con®rming Hawaiian settlement no later than AD 800, and quite
possibly as early as AD 300±500 (Kirch 1985; Athens 1997). The immediate
source of the colonizing population in Hawai`i is likely to have been the
Southern Marquesas, but continued contact between Hawai`i and islands in
the core region is indicated by linguistic evidence (lexical borrowings from
the Tahitic subgroup), abundant oral traditions (Cachola-Abad 1993),
botanical indications, uniquely shared mtDNA sequences in populations of
the Paci®c Rat (Matisoo-Smith et al. 1998), and possibly some archaeological
style changes as well. However, long-distance voyaging between Hawai`i and
the central Eastern Polynesian core became less frequent after about AD
1200, and was little more than a memory encoded in Hawaiian oral
traditions by the time of European contact. Rapa Nui seems to have been
settled as early or earlier than Hawai`i, as re¯ected in its conservative
language which retains phonological and lexical forms lost in other Eastern
Polynesian dialects (Green 1966, 1988, 1998a).24 Archaeologically, the
earliest period on Rapa Nui is imperfectly attested, although excavations at
Anakena (Steadman et al. 1994) con®rm occupation by AD 900, and
indications of human disturbances to the island's vegetation in the lake cores
are dated even earlier, c. AD 700±800 (Flenley 1996). It is doubtful that
Rapa Nui was ever connected with the central Eastern Polynesian core area
by regular two-way voyages, although the possibility of a limited number of
post-colonization contacts should not be ruled out (Green 1998a). Finally,
current archaeological evidence holds that the vast temperate islands of New
Zealand were the last landfalls within Eastern Polynesia to be discovered,
explored, and eventually colonized, around AD 1000±1200 (Anderson
1991; Sutton 1994). The degree of continued, two-way voyaging contact
between New Zealand and the central Eastern Polynesian core region is
uncertain, but seems unlikely to have been extensive. As with Hawai`i, New
Zealand Maori societies had become wholly isolated from the rest of
Polynesia by the time of European arrival.
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
81
Without belaboring the details of the Eastern Polynesian archaeological
record, the overall sequence of island colonizations just summarized provides
an independent model of the most recent stages in the differentiation of the
Polynesian cultures, a process that involved migration and expansion into
previously uninhabited lands and proceeded in a series of stages lasting
perhaps a millennium. Isolation by distance became a signi®cant factor in
this process of differentiation with respect to the most marginal islands
(Hawai`i, Rapa Nui, and New Zealand), but played a lesser role within the
central Eastern Polynesian core, where early interaction spheres are being
indicated by archaeological evidence (Weisler 1998). In this core area,
interaction over complex networks allowed for the spread of numerous
lexical as well as cultural innovations which, however, did not spread
westwards as far as the Tonga±Samoa region, and thus contributed to the
marked differentiation between Western and Eastern Polynesian subgroups.
In short, in their general outlines the archaeological and the linguistic
models for the ®nal stages of phylogenetic differentiation in Eastern
Polynesia are remarkably concordant.
Ancestral Polynesian sites and assemblages
Having established a temporal and geographic framework, we can nominate
speci®c sites and archaeological assemblages relevant to the construction of
the cultural content of Ancestral Polynesian societies and their culture.
Hence we respond, in part, to the criticism of Sutton (1996:377±78) that in
our earlier writings on Ancestral Polynesian Society we had failed to de®ne
``APS'' in discrete archaeological terms. In Table 3.2, we list numerous sites
and assemblages dating to the time period de®ned above for the emergence
of a distinctive innovation-linked Polynesian language group, and which
demonstrate material culture innovations (in ceramics and adzes, particularly)
that mark these assemblages off from those of earlier time periods, as well as
from later sites (see Figure 3.12 for geographic locations of sites). The
selection of sites and assemblages listed in Table 3.2 is conditioned not solely
on the radiocarbon evidence, but also on internal evidence of a consistent (if
variable) set of artifacts. The most important of these artifacts are the
ceramics known as Polynesian Plainware (see Chapter 7). It is from these
thirty-odd sites and assemblages that we adduce archaeological evidence for
the reconstruction of certain cultural domains within Ancestral Polynesia, in
the analytical chapters of Part II.
Many of the sites listed in Table 3.2 are known only by their ceramic
assemblages; for others, there is additional and useful evidence. In large
part, this re¯ects the excavation strategies that archaeologists have used in
Western Polynesia, at least for sites of this time period. Many sites have been
82
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
Table 3.2. Selected archaeological sites and assemblages associated with the Ancestral
Polynesian period
Ceramic phase
representedb
References
Open midden
2500±2400
Open midden
2400±2200
Numerous open
ceramic scatters
LEL
LEL
Groube 1971
Poulsen 1967, 1987
LEL to PPW
Spennemann 1989
Coastal midden 2750±2550
EEL to PPW
Coastal midden 2600±2500
PPW
Dye 1987a; Shutler
et al. 1994; Burley 1998
Burley 1998
Coastal midden 2600±2500
EEL (?) to PPW Shutler et al. 1994;
Burley 1998
EEL to PPW
Shutler et al. 1994;
Burley 1998
EEL to PPW
Dye 1987a; Shutler
et al. 1994; Burley 1998
EEL to PPW
Burley 1998
Island and site
Site type
Tongatapu
Vuki's Mound
To.6
Tongatapu:
general
Ha`apai Group
Tongoleleka
(Lifuka Is.)
Holopeka
(Lifuka Is.)
Faleloa (Foa Is.)
Age range
(BP)a
Pukotala
Coastal midden 2750±2500
(Ha`ano Is.)
Vaipuna (`Uiha Is.) Coastal midden 2750±2650
Mele Havea
(Ha`afeva Is.)
Coastal midden 2750±2500
Vava`u Group
Falevai (Kapa Is.) Open site
(TO-Va-19, -20)
Pangaimotu
Open site
(`Utungake Is.)
±
PPW
Davidson 1971; Kirch,
®eldnotes 1976
Davidson 1971; Kirch,
®eldnotes 1976
±
PPW
Niuatoputapu
Lolokoka (NT-90) Open midden
Lotoa (NT-100)
Open midden
Pome`e (NT-93) Open midden
3200±1800
2800±2000
2500±2000
EEL to PPW
LEL to PPW
PPW
Kirch 1988
Kirch 1988
Kirch 1988
Tafahi
Fatuloa
Open site
±
PPW
Dye, in Kirch 1988
Futuna and Alo®
Tavai (FU-11)
Asipani (SI-001)
Mamalua (AL-09)
Alo®tai (AF-34B)
Buried midden
Buried midden
Open site
Coastal midden
2100
2200±2000
±
2350
LEL
LEL to PPW (?)
PPW
PPW (?)
Kirch 1981
Sand 1990
Kirch 1975
Sand 1990
`Uvea
Utufua
Atuvalu
Utuleve
Open site
Open site
Open site
±
±
±
PPW
PPW
EEL to PPW
Kirch 1975
Kirch 1975
Frimigacci et al. 1984
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
Samoa
Sasoa`a (SU-Sa-3) Inland site
1900±1800
83
PPW
Vailele (SU-Va-1) Base level under 1900
mound site
Vailele (SU-Va-4) Base level under
mound site
Potusa (SM17±1) Coastal midden 1800
PPW
Falemoa
(SM17±2)
Faleasi`u
Coastal midden
PPW
Basal layers of
mound
Buried midden
on now in®lled
bay
Buried coastal
midden
Buried coastal
midden
PPW
`Aoa Valley
(Tutuila)
Ofu Is., To`aga
(AS-13±1)
Ta`u Is., Si`ufaga
(AS-11±51)
PPW
PPW
2900±?
LEL to PPW
3100±2000
LEL to PPW
2300
PPW
Green and Davidson
1974
Green and Davidson
1969
Green and Davidson
1969
Jennings and Holmer
1980
Jennings and Holmer
1980
Jennings and Holmer
1980
Clark and Michlovic
1996
Kirch and Hunt, eds.,
1993
Hunt and Kirch 1988
a
Ranges given are approximations in calibrated years BP, based on available radiocarbon age
determinations.
b
Abbreviations: EEL, Early Eastern Lapita; LEL, Late Eastern Lapita; PPW, Polynesian
Plainware.
de®ned only by limited test excavations. Where formal sampling strategies
have been applied (e.g., Kirch 1988 on Niuatoputapu; Kirch and Hunt, eds.,
1993 at To`aga), these have had geomorphological or other objectives in
mind, rather than extensive areal exposure of former living surfaces. We
currently lack ± for any site of this critical time period ± extensive horizontal
excavation and exposure of deposits, such as have been undertaken for some
later sites. Because of these limitations, the archaeological record for
Ancestral Polynesia is not as extensive as we would like, or as we imagine
might be obtained from future ®eldwork using different excavation strategies. We are cognizant of the problems of sampling error, and of differential
survivability of items of material culture, and do not minimize these here
(see Chapter 7). Rather, we hope that the current limitations on archaeological evidence will stimulate archaeologists to turn ®ner-grained attention
to sites in the age range bearing on Ancestral Polynesian culture.
Isolation, interaction, and phylogeny
We cannot end our consideration of Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit without
discussing the linked issues of isolation and interaction, especially given that
Fig. 3.12
Locations of key archaeological sites dating to the Ancestral Polynesian phase.
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
85
recent critiques have pointed to inter-island and inter-archipelago interaction as posing fundamental or even insurmountable problems for a phylogenetic approach (Terrell et al. 1997; Hunt et al. 1998). We have already
shown that sudden and absolute isolation is unlikely to have been the case
during the early stages of human colonization in the Fiji±Tonga±Samoa
region. Instead of an A ? B ? C sequence of colonization with discrete
breaks, the formation of linked communities and dialect chains is more
plausible, and a gradual process of network-breaking accounts for the
formation of dialectal and cultural differentiation within the Polynesian
homeland. But what of later, and continued, contact or interaction among
related Polynesian societies? Would such interaction, combined with ``horizontal trait transmission'' such as lexical borrowing, or the diffusion of
technological innovations, lead to a total masking of the phylogenetic
patterns of shared ancestry and inheritance? This is the position argued by
Hunt et al., that phylogenetic ``trees re¯ect an unknown and unknowable
mixture of ancestry and later sharing'' (1998:3; their emphasis).
Terrell et al. (1997) opine that Paci®c Island societies have never been
``primitive isolates,'' and that some degree of interaction and communication
has always been present between island communities. We concur.25 Indeed,
a decade earlier, Kirch (1986b) offered a detailed analysis of Tikopia as a
case study of ``inter-island contact in the transformation of an island
society.'' Arguing that islands were rarely, if ever, ``closed systems,'' Kirch
wrote that ``even in the more geographically remote islands of Eastern
Polynesia, the notion that island societies developed in vacuo, as it were,
deserves on recent evidence to be seriously questioned'' (1986b:33). The
issue is not whether such contact or interaction occurred, but more
speci®cally what effects it had on island languages, cultures, and gene pools,
and whether interaction would inevitably and inexorably lead to the
dissolution of patterns of homologous traits, fatally undermining a phylogenetic model. In this regard, we do not share Terrell et al.'s (1997)
pessimism.
Ethnohistoric and ethnographic evidence for interaction within the Polynesian region demonstrates that degrees of isolation varied signi®cantly.
Despite oral narratives of an earlier period of two-way voyages between
Hawai`i and an ancestral land called ``Kahiki,'' for example, the Hawaiians
had not been in contact with other Polynesian groups for at least several
centuries prior to Cook's arrival in 1778 (Cachola-Abad 1993). Similarly,
there is no evidence that the Rapa Nui people had maintained regular
communication with other islands after the period of initial settlement by
their founding ancestor Hotu Matu`a (MeÂtraux 1940). New Zealand, too,
had been isolated for some time prior to European voyaging. Thus the
marginal sectors of Eastern Polynesia, set off from the core by open-ocean
86
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
distances ranging from 2,000 to 4,000 km, were unquestionably isolated,
and had not been in regular contact with the Eastern Polynesian homeland
for many centuries at least.
The situation was different in the tropical core, where inter-island
distances were typically in the range of 200±600 km. Two major spheres of
regular inter-island voyaging can be identi®ed in the ethnohistoric record:
(1) a formal exchange system linking Tonga with Samoa and other Western
Polynesian islands, and with Fiji; and (2) a less formalized system linking the
Society Islands, directly or indirectly, with the Tuamotus, Australs, Marquesas, and southern Cooks. The Tongan system is sometimes known as the
``Tongan maritime empire,'' and has been analyzed by Kaeppler (1978a),
Kirch (1984a:217±42), and Hage and Harary (1991:16±20). What is crucial,
for our purposes, is that the Tongan exchange network was operated by a
small number of Tongan elites, and involved the transfer of prestige goods
(such as mats and feathers) and the marriage of limited numbers of highranking spouses. The central Eastern Polynesian network, best known
perhaps from the famous map dictated by the Tahitian priest-navigator
Tupaia to Captain Cook (Dening 1962), is less well documented, but also
involved elites and was probably restricted to prestige goods. Neither of
these systems involved large numbers of people, or high-frequency movement of goods and materials. We infer that the impacts of such exchange
were principally con®ned to the elite sectors of society, where they doubtless
did in¯uence political affairs and, at times, religious ideology.
That such inter-island contacts did not lead to wholesale horizontal
transmission of traits (linguistic or cultural) is patently obvious in that the
interacting groups maintained distinctive languages and cultural patterns.
Thus, despite limited inter-marriage between high-ranking Tongan males
and Samoan chie¯y women, Tongans and Samoans retained their own
cultural distinctiveness (as in bark cloth designs, club forms, or monumental
architecture, to name just a few). Tongan and Samoan languages, likewise,
remained discrete and distinctively separate, even though there was some
borrowing between them. Marck (1999a:134) identi®es ninety-nine words in
the ``metropolitan Western Polynesian vocabulary which may constitute post
Proto Tongic and/or post-Proto Nuclear Polynesian borrowings around
Western Polynesia.'' While signi®cant, this hardly constitutes massive
linguistic impact. The same can be said for the maintenance of cultural and
linguistic differences among the various central Eastern Polynesian cultures.
Indeed, various Polynesian groups consciously maintained distinctive cultural and
linguistic identities, quite the opposite of willy-nilly borrowing of every new
word or thing they heard or saw on voyages to other islands.
While the ethnohistoric and ethnographic evidence demonstrates that
some degree of isolation did separate various Polynesian groups, and that
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
87
interaction both was restricted to certain (elite) segments of society and did
not inexorably lead to cultural homogenization, we can go farther. Contrary
to the assertion of Hunt et al. (1998) that the ``mixture of ancestry and later
sharing'' is ``unknowable,'' historical linguists and archaeologists alike have
developed empirical methods for determining historical contacts between
groups. In historical linguistics, ``borrowing'' can be detected through the
presence of irregular sound correspondences, and sometimes ``doublets,''
resulting in what Biggs termed ``direct and indirect inheritance'' in his
classic study of Rotuman (Biggs 1965).26 Given the ethnohistoric evidence
for the Tongan ``maritime empire,'' one would predict the presence of
Tongan loan words in the languages of other groups with whom the
Tongans interacted; this is precisely the case (Clark 1979:264; Biggs 1980;
Dye 1980:352; Marck 1999a:137±43). Indeed, with East `Uvea, which was
conquered and politically dominated by the Tongans for some centuries,
extensive lexical change did occur, although Pawley (1967) could still
determine convincingly that `Uvean was fundamentally a Samoic language
with a heavy Tongan overlay. The respective contributions of ancestry or
shared inheritance could be unambiguously separated from those of culturecontact. Similarly, for Hawai`i, Green (1966; see also Marck 1999a:146±7)
was able to point to a small number of Tahitic borrowings in Hawaiian, a
language that otherwise groups with the Marquesic branch of Eastern
Polynesian. Again, shared retentions can be distinguished from the effects of
later contact.
With the recent development of archaeometric techniques for sourcing
prehistoric artifacts, and especially the application of x-ray ¯uorescence
(XRF) techniques to the sourcing of basalt adzes in Polynesia (Weisler and
Woodhead 1995; Weisler and Kirch 1996; Weisler, ed., 1997; Weisler 1998),
archaeologists are now able to empirically trace and de®ne ancient spheres
of interaction. Weisler (1998) has recently shown that basalt adzes from Eiao
Island in the Marquesas moved as far as Mo`orea and Mangareva, in
agreement with ethnohistoric predictions of a central Eastern Polynesian
exchange network. Likewise, Best et al. (1992) demonstrated that adzes
produced at the Tatagamatau quarry on Tutuila in Samoa radiated outwards
to Tuvalu and Tokelau, as well as to Tonga, Fiji, and even the eastern
Solomons.
The archaeological sourcing evidence, still in its early stages of development, will in time provide an invaluable data array for de®ning prehistoric
interactions within Polynesia. It is essential to keep in mind, however, that
the transport of a handful of stone artifacts from one island or archipelago to
another implies exactly the kinds of relatively low-frequency, elite-centered
voyaging demonstrated by the ethnohistoric record. Moreover, the emerging
archaeological evidence supports a model of initial integration of some
88
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
island populations into an interaction sphere, followed by later isolation.
This is the case, for example, with some of the Southern Cook Islands, such
as Mangaia and Ma`uke, where importing basalt and pearl shell occurred in
the prehistoric sequences, followed by a long period of non-importation and
exclusive use of local resources (Kirch et al. 1995; Walter 1998; Sheppard et
al. 1997). Indeed, Mangaian oral traditions (Hiroa 1934) speak to several
attempts by groups from Rarotonga, Aitutaki, and Atiu to invade Mangaia,
and the repulsion of such groups by Mangaian warriors.
Yet a third body of independent evidence bearing on the question of
interaction versus isolation in prehistoric Polynesia comes from recent
studies of biological variation. With regard to mtDNA variation in human
populations, Lum and Cann (1998:116) ®nd ``signi®cant correlations
between genetic and linguistic distances,'' which they interpret as ``evidence
of isolation between populations.'' The one area in the Paci®c where they
®nd evidence of extensive gene ¯ow, central Micronesia, ®ts the ethnographic pattern there of extensive two-way voyaging (see also Lum 1998).
Referring to Terrell et al.'s (1997) critique of the so-called ``myth of the
primitive isolate,'' Lum and Cann tellingly urge ``caution against the
adoption of panmictic alternatives'' (1998:109).
Additional biological evidence comes from the recent analysis of variation
in the mtDNA of the Paci®c Rat (Rattus exulans), a commensal species
transported by Polynesians from island to island (Matisoo-Smith et al. 1998).
Mitochondrial DNA phylogenies of R. exulans populations from Polynesian
islands provide evidence of both isolation and interaction. For example,
``the close relationships between the R. exulans sequences of the Cook and
Society Islands suggest a broad central east Polynesian interaction sphere
encompassing the Southern Cook and Society Islands'' (Matisoo-Smith
et al. 1998:15,146), agreeing with what we know from ethnohistory, linguistics, and archaeological sourcing studies. On the other hand, the rat
mtDNA data also suggest signi®cant isolation for the Chatham Islands and
the Marquesas. And for Hawai`i, links with both the Marquesas and the
Society±Cook Islands are indicated, again independently con®rming the
evidence of historical linguistics.
In sum, the attack on the validity of a phylogenetic model ± on the
grounds that in the absence of total isolation, massive interaction overwhelmed patterns of shared ancestry ± proves to be thoroughly unconvincing, indeed anthropologically naive. While regular patterns of interaction
certainly characterized parts of Polynesia, other more geographically remote
sectors were signi®cantly isolated. Where interaction was ongoing and is
ethnographically described, it involved small numbers of elites. Furthermore,
the claim that the effects of interaction are ``unknowable'' is uninformed, for
linguists, archaeologists, and biological anthropologists have an arsenal of
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
89
empirical methods to track interaction. Correspondence between the results
of their independent analyses is striking. In the last analysis, we need only
point to the kinds of deep divisions within Polynesia, so well analyzed by
Burrows (1938a; see Table 3.1), to realize that interaction did not produce a
homogenized culture. The major and pervasive distinctions between
Western and Eastern Polynesia are suf®cient to differentiate two major
clades or branches within the Polynesian phylogeny. Polynesian societies
were never ``primitive isolates,'' nor were they a panmictic meÂlange. Their
history, as de®ned by shared ancestry, by innovation, and by interaction, is
both real and knowable. What is essential is good theory, and rigorous
method.
Phylogenetic differentiation in Polynesia: a summary
We now brie¯y restate the essential points emerging from our analysis of
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit distinct from other such units within
Remote Oceania. (1) On linguistic, ethnographic, biological, and archaeological criteria, the Polynesian cultures and societies comprise a distinct
phylogenetic unit set apart from the rest of Remote Oceania, a consequence
of their shared history. (2) The formative or Ancestral Polynesian stage, at
the root or base of the Polynesian phylogenetic tree, can be geographically
situated within the region including Tonga, Samoa, and its near neighbors
such as Futuna and `Uvea (but excluding Fiji), which constitute its immediate
homeland. (3) It was in this homeland region that Ancestral Polynesian
culture and societies emerged out of an immediately preceding Early
Eastern Lapita precursor, the date of such emergence being the mid to later
®rst millennium BC. (4) Initial dialectal as well as cultural differentiation
within the Ancestral Polynesian region occurred not as a series of discrete
branches as in a classic dendritic model, but rather as an overlapping series
of innovations over a linkage, network, or interaction sphere encompassing
many islands and at least several dozen individual social communities. (5) A
further stage of linguistic, cultural, and biological differentiation within
Polynesia, beginning roughly 2000 BP, was accelerated through the expansion of Polynesian populations into previously uninhabited islands and
archipelagos outside of the core Ancestral Polynesian homeland. This
included the discovery and eventual colonization of islands both in Eastern
Polynesia, and to the west (the Polynesian Outliers). (6) Once the central
Eastern Polynesian core archipelagos had been settled, there was considerable isolation between these and the original Ancestral Polynesian homeland
region. Much like the Tonga±Samoa interaction sphere, the central Eastern
Polynesian islands constituted a second, complex, linked network among
which various new innovations spread, leading to marked cultural as well as
90
The phylogenetic model: theory and method
linguistic differentiation between Western and Eastern subgroups of Polynesia. (7) The settlement of the most geographically remote outposts of
Eastern Polynesia, which were only infrequently or minimally linked to the
central Eastern Polynesian core, led to additional ``branches'' of the
Polynesian ``cultural tree,'' which through time and as a consequence of
increasing isolation also developed their own distinctive cultural patterns. (8)
Finally, within the core of central Eastern Polynesia, regular inter-island
communication began to decline after about AD 1400 and, although this did
not completely cease, encouraged social isolation and some degree of
cultural differentiation. By the time of regular European intrusion into
Polynesia beginning in the late eighteenth century, the island groups of
central Eastern Polynesia, as well as those of Western Polynesia and the
Outliers, were each distinguished from the other by myriad local variations
in speech, dress, material culture and architectural styles, details of sociopolitical organization, and so forth.
A ®nal note on method
We have repeatedly pointed to various lines of evidence ± not just linguistic,
but ethnographic, archaeological, and biological ± indicating not only that
Polynesia as a whole constitutes a robust phylogenetic unit, but that at least
two internal subdivisions are also well marked: the Western and Eastern
Polynesian regions. This brings us to one additional methodological detail:
the importance of using information from both Western and Eastern
Polynesian subgroups when reconstructing the society and culture ancestral
to both.
Given the traditional family tree for the Polynesian languages (see Figure
3.5), a particular lexeme or word may be considered to have been part of the
PPN vocabulary if it is attested by cognates in the two main branches of
Polynesian languages: Tongic and Nuclear Polynesian. Or, in the case where
such cognates are missing in one of these branches, an external witness from
either Fijian or Rotuman (the other members of the Central Paci®c group of
languages) is required to demonstrate that the lexeme under question was
present at the PPN stage. However, we can see that a potential problem
arises in the case of terms that satisfy these requirements, but for which the
re¯exes are found exclusively in Western Polynesian languages (e.g., Tongan and
Futunan). In such cases, the term may potentially be a later innovation, after
the breakup of PPN, which was then borrowed into one or more other
Western Polynesian languages, given that the speakers of these languages
have been in intermittent contact throughout prehistory.
Addressing such problems in the context of a comparative study of
Polynesian cosmogonic traditions, Marck proposed two principles of histor-
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
91
ical reconstruction, which we will also follow. These principles, as stated by
Marck, are:
1. If a feature . . . is universal or occurs in Tonga and Eastern Polynesia the feature will be
suggested to have occurred amongst the beliefs of the PPN speakers. (Agreements between
Tongan and Samoan will be considered possible borrowings unless there is
agreement from Eastern Polynesia as well.) . . .
2. Similarly, if a feature occurs in two widely separated groups not otherwise known to have
borrowed from each other, the feature will be suggested to have occurred in the community of
speakers of their common proto-language rather than to be borrowed. (1996a:218±19)
As an example of the ®rst kind of feature, Marck gives the cosmogonic
``belief that the sky was close to the earth at the time of creation . . . and that
an early act of the early gods was to raise the sky into its present position''
(1996a:219). Because versions of this belief are attested in Tonga and
Samoa, and from Eastern Polynesia, Marck regards it as an aspect of the
belief system of the PPN speakers. As an example of the second principle, he
gives the naming of the male of the Primordial Pair as Papa-adjective in
both Samoa and the Marquesas. We will also apply these principles in our
work of cultural reconstruction to the Ancestral Polynesian level.
Conclusion
Based on the conjunctions of independent sets of evidence ± derived from
linguistics, comparative ethnology, and archaeology, with more limited input
from biological anthropology ± we have de®ned a phylogenetic unit called
Polynesia. Within the vast geographic region now occupied by Polynesian
societies and populations, we have moreover identi®ed a homeland region
situated in the core islands of Western Polynesia, an inference supported by
both linguistics and archaeology. Polynesian culture emerged out of the
Early Eastern Lapita cultural complex, representing the founding settlement
of the Fiji±Western Polynesian area at the beginning of the ®rst millennium
BC. A distinctive Polynesian culture is archaeologically recognizable by the
mid-®rst millennium BC, and continued no later than the ®rst centuries of
the Christian era. After this time it is no longer reasonable to speak of an
Ancestral Polynesian culture or societies, for differentiation within the homeland had proceeded suf®ciently for us to distinguish distinctive Tongan and
Samoan cultural provinces. By the close of the ®rst millennium BC, an
expansion of Polynesian populations had commenced, out of the homeland
into central Eastern Polynesia, as well as into the Outliers.
Having thus delimited our units in time and space, including the main
branches of the Polynesian phylogeny, we proceed to the challenging task of
de®ning the cultural content of Ancestral Polynesian societies.
part ii
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Hawaiki, as one of the names of the homeland, has been carried
along and applied to various islands in memory of the past, but the
original Hawaiki lies buried under the accretions of time.
hiroa 1945:12
If there is a word that can persist in the memory of Polynesians in
their centuries of wandering, it would have to be a word such as
Hawaiki: a word of origin that tells of greatness and divine ancestry; a
word of identity stamped with a glorious past; a word which,
whatever the particular cognate and its language-speci®c
associations, may be taken to symbolise the journey of Polynesians
taumoefolau 1996:406
through time and space.
Introductory remarks
We have chosen the title for Part II of our book ± Rediscovering Hawaiki ±
quite consciously. We might have called it ``reconstructing'' Hawaiki, for one
aim of the triangulation method within a phylogenetic model is to determine
as fully as possible the ancestral culture which stands at the root of any
``segment of cultural history.'' But every label carries its own intellectual
baggage, and the baggage of ``reconstruction'' includes an ubiquitous usage
during the heyday of the New Archaeology, thus tending to be associated
with an uncritical form of positivism. We recognize that history (or
prehistory) is ± to a certain degree ± ``constructed'' by its practitioners,
although we would strongly assert that what makes anthropological history a
science and not an art is that its constructions of the past are self-consciously
and continually constrained by the evidence. What is more, a central goal of
triangulation is to assure that this array of evidence is as broad as possible,
that it is not con®ned to any single line of inquiry, but draws upon the full
spectrum of anthropological insight.
Thus we prefer rediscovering Hawaiki, a simple phrase that, in our view,
more aptly conveys the essence of our enterprise. Hawaiki was, after all, in
the indigenous Polynesian conception of their history the original homeland,
a place ± an island or islands ± that their own ancestors had ®rst discovered
and populated (see below). Historical anthropology can only hope to ``rediscover'' this ancestral space and time, to recover only partially the material
culture, the social and political organization, the calendar and rituals, and
other aspects of life in the Ancestral Polynesian homeland some two or more
millennia ago.
Hawaiki as the ancestral Polynesian homeland
Hawaiki is a word deeply ingrained in the annals of Polynesian scholarship.
Smith (1921:35 passim) regarded Hawaiki as the name of a place which had
been ``occupied by the people in the remote past,'' noting that it ``is known
to nearly every branch of the race, though it varies in form from island to
island according to the changes that have taken place in the language since
the dispersion.'' Williamson (1933, 1:312±13) pondered the matter at
95
96
Rediscovering Hawaiki
length, concluding that ``we are justi®ed by the evidence . . . in believing
that the name Havaiki . . . was in some islands given to one or another ±
sometimes to more than one ± place which was regarded as being an
ancestral home; and that in some islands certain souls were supposed to pass
to an ancestral home, which was sometimes called Havaiki, and was sometimes given another name.''
Burrows (1938a:73±76, diagram 17) pointed to the ``distinct regional
distribution'' of the names Hawaiki and Pulotu, the latter being a strictly
Western Polynesian concept of an ``island in the west, home of gods and of
the elect after death.''1 While the two names thus have similar meanings,
they are in complementary distribution in Eastern and Western Polynesia,
respectively. As Burrows comments, Pulotu ``is as de®nitely western Polynesian as the concept of Hawaiki as underworld or ancestral home is
central-marginal'' (1938a:76).
Geraghty (1993) deals at length with Pulotu while Taumoefolau (1996)
reconsiders Hawaiki, both invoking detailed linguistic arguments. The
fascinating details of their respective arguments need not concern us here,
except to note that Geraghty regards Pulotu as the original (pre-)Polynesian
homeland, which he speci®cally situates in the Eastern Lau Islands, perhaps
on Matuku. Taumoefolau offers an intriguing etymological hypothesis for
the origin of Hawaiki, suggesting that it was originally a loan word from
PTO into PNP, and that it can be traced back to a compound term in PPN,
*sau ariki, meaning `chie¯y/ancestral/traditional ruler.' She believes that
``simultaneous with the modi®cation of the proto-form, there has been a
corresponding shift in the proto-meaning from the `title of ancestral rulers'
to the `name of the ancestral land' '' (1996:398). These lexical and semantic
shifts would have occurred ``some 2,000 years ago, perhaps earlier, after
PPN separated into PTO and PNP'' (1996:405).
Our position in this continuing discussion over the naming of the
Polynesian homeland is as follows. We think the most reasonable explanation
for the distribution of the terms Pulotu and Hawaiki, and their varied
meanings, is that Pulotu is the more ancient, reconstructable to PCP as
*burotu, and which for the PPN speakers probably referred to the Fijian
archipelago, their immediate homeland and place of the ancestors. *Sawaiki
was a lexical innovation at the PNP interstage, corresponding to the period
when the original PPN speech community (or dialect chain) was breaking up
as a coherent unit. Its origin at this time is signi®cant: to the immediate
descendants of the Ancestral Polynesians who began expanding out of the
Samoa±Tonga homeland region, *Sawaiki/Hawaiki indexed that homeland,
again the abode of the ancestors. Thus the origin of Hawaiki marks the end of the
Ancestral Polynesian period. The name would be carried by Polynesian voyagers
throughout virtually the whole of Eastern Polynesia, where it was variously
Introductory remarks
97
given to islands or places (e.g., Hawai`i, `Avaiki), and where it would ®gure in
local religious ideology as the ancestral homeland, and abode of spirits of the
dead. We thus use the word in much the same sense that we infer the PNP
speakers to have done, as the name of the ancestral homeland in which a
distinctively Polynesian culture arose.
Plan of Part II
Each of the six chapters to follow addresses a domain of Ancestral
Polynesian culture. We begin with the physical world of the archaic homeland, its islands and seas, ¯ora and fauna, and how these were culturally
categorized. We next turn to the economic basis of Ancestral Polynesian life,
to cultivation practices, and strategies for exploiting the bounty of reef,
lagoon, and open sea. This will lead in turn to a quintessentially cultural
domain, the culinary complex. From the world of the ancient Polynesian
cookhouse, we proceed to other aspects of technology and material culture.
Social and political organization are then addressed, and ®nally, the spiritual
world-view and ritual practices which structured the seasonal round, year
after year. We are aware that these six major domains do not exhaust the
possibilities for historical analysis; ``music'' and ``myth,'' for example, are
domains we have left for others to pursue.
For each of our chosen domains, we endeavor to show how the different
strands of evidence ± linguistic, comparative ethnographic, and archaeological ± can be brought to bear through triangulation. In some cases, the
direct evidence of archaeology plays a strong role, while in others we must
depend almost exclusively on linguistic clues aided by comparative ethnography. In every case, the comparative ethnographic corpus is essential for
robust semantic reconstruction. We hope to show, however, that there is no
domain for which at least some reasonable hypotheses cannot be put
forward.
Although the ``rediscovery'' of Ancestral Polynesian culture is an intellectually suf®cient goal in its own right, as a substantive contribution to cultural
history it is just as much the means to larger ends. These are the study and
explanation of cultural change, ``evolution'' if you will, represented by the
diversi®cation and differentiation of the myriad Polynesian cultures that
descended from the ancestral ``Hawaiki.'' By de®ning the cultural content of
the ancestral node or root, we set the stage for a more comprehensive
analysis of subsequent cultural change, through the individual trajectories of
daughter cultures and societies. But these larger ends extend far beyond our
goal in this book. We will return to these future possibilities in the Epilogue,
and offer there some thoughts on where the phylogenetic approach in
historical anthropology might lead us in future endeavors.
98
Rediscovering Hawaiki
A note on orthography and abbreviations
In the following chapters, we consider a great many Polynesian (PN) and
Proto Polynesian (PPN) words, for which the following conventions apply.
Reconstructed lexemes (whether attributable to PPN or other interstages of
Austronesian) are designated by an initial asterisk (*). For PPN reconstructions, a glottal stop is indicated by the letter q, following Biggs' practice in
POLLEX. For modern Polynesian language words, we use the more familiar
symbol (`) to indicate the glottal stop. The velar nasal we have rendered
consistently as ng (although in some modern Polynesian orthographies, such
as for Samoan, it is indicated with a g; linguists denote it with h).
The principal proto-languages or interstages with which we will be
concerned are the following, with the abbreviations used for them: Proto
Austronesian (PAN); Proto Malayo-Polynesian (PMP); Proto Oceanic (POC);
Proto Central-Paci®c (PCP); Proto Polynesian (PPN); Proto Nuclear Polynesian (PNP); Proto Ellicean (PEC); and Proto Central-Eastern Polynesian
(PCE). For modern Polynesian or other Oceanic languages, we use the
standard three-letter abbreviations widely adopted by Austronesian linguists.
A complete listing of these languages and their abbreviations is given in the
list of language abbreviations (pp. xvi±xvii).
Chapter 4
The Ancestral Polynesian world
The lexical reconstructions indicate that the PPN speech community
were ®shermen-horticulturalists, familiar with a typical tropical IndoPaci®c high island environment and also with certain objects found
natively only on certain islands of this category, including the balolo
worm, the pearl oyster, such land animals as snakes, pestiferous
mosquitoes, bats, owls, rails, pigeons, parrots, and [a] moderately
pawley and k. green 1971:23
diverse land ¯ora . . .
The Ancestral Polynesian homeland
Linguistics, archaeology, and comparative ethnography converge to situate
the Ancestral Polynesian homeland in space and time: the region known
today as Western Polynesia. A WoÈrter und Sachen1 approach to locating a
proto-homeland, well known to Indo-European specialists (Diebold 1994) is
thus unnecessary. Nevertheless, it may be instructive ± from a theoretical
perspective ± to ask whether the classic evidence of ``words and things''
independently agrees with the conclusions derived from archaeology and
linguistic subgrouping. Some years ago, Pawley and K. Green (1971) queried
the evidence of PPN lexical reconstructions, to ask where the homeland of
the PPN speakers was most likely to have been located. Drawing on a
preliminary version of POLLEX (Biggs et al. 1970), they discussed a range of
relevant terms, contextualizing these within a set of postulates. For example,
their Postulate 4 stated that ``the presence in any proto-language of a term
denoting a category of objects is taken as indicating that the referents were
familiar to the speakers of the language, either as part of their own
immediate environment or as part of a nearby environment'' (Pawley and
K. Green 1971:17). They correctly realized that such ``referents'' might
include species introduced to the islands by humans themselves. We will not
discuss all of their thirteen postulates, but simply note that the method
applied by Pawley and Green was an exemplary instance of circumscribing
the assumptions underlying a WoÈrter und Sachen approach.
Among the many PPN lexical reconstructions considered by Pawley and
K. Green are several words indicating that the Ancestral Polynesian home99
100
Rediscovering Hawaiki
land was situated ``on or near a high island or island group,'' and which at
the same time preclude the possibility of this island(s) being located within
Eastern Polynesia (1971:21). One of the most intriguing terms is PPN *palolo,
re¯ected by TON, EUV, and SAM cognates, with an outside witness in FIJ
balolo (indicating that the word was a PPN retention from the immediately
preceding PCP interstage). As Pawley and Green relate, ``this `sea-worm'
[Nereis sp.] lives in the crevices of coral reefs in certain regions of the Paci®c.
The egg-swollen tail segments of the balolo rise to the surface around dawn
on the 8th or 9th day after the ®rst full moon in October or November
(sometimes in both months), and are taken in hand-nets as a highly prized
food'' (1971:21). The Nereis sea-worm occurs only in Fiji, Tonga, and
Samoa, and nowhere in Eastern Polynesia. Cognates of PPN *palolo are
found in some Eastern Polynesian languages, but the reference is usually to a
lunar month in the calendric system (see Chapter 9), or as in ECE to a small
marine insect eaten by birds. The distribution of palolo terms, when
compared with the geographical distribution of the sea-worm itself, unambiguously supports a PPN homeland in the Tonga±Samoa region.
Similar evidence is provided by PPN *ngata, ``snake.'' The term is retained
in TON, SAM, EFU, and EUV, along with TOK and a few Outlier
languages, but snakes themselves are distributed only as far eastwards as
Samoa (Loveridge 1946). As Pawley and K. Green observe, ``this does not
imply that Samoa is the only possible homeland within the Triangle region,
for snakes were evidently known by reputation to the inhabitants of some
other island groups near to Samoa or Fiji'' where snakes also occur
(1971:22). But it precludes the Eastern Polynesian archipelagos, where
snakes are entirely absent, as possible candidates for the homeland of PPN
speakers. Other lexical evidence delimiting the geographic region in which
the PPN speakers resided includes an extensive list of plants and other
organisms commonly found ± if not always exclusively distributed ± in
Western Polynesia. This lexical evidence converges on the same homeland
archipelagos indicated independently by both archaeology and by linguistic
subgrouping.
Beyond the shadow of a doubt, the Ancestral Polynesian homeland
consisted of ``the central area of West Polynesia, i.e. the area bounded by
Samoa, Uvea, Futuna, and Tonga'' (Pawley and K. Green 1971:23). We
will now examine in greater detail the physical and biotic environments of
this homeland, characterizing the opportunities as well as constraints or
challenges posed by this environment, and exploring the ways in which
Ancestral Polynesians categorized and conceptualized the natural world.
We rely heavily on a careful review of the PPN lexicon, but do not neglect
archaeological evidence, which provides a critical perspective on dynamic
landscape and biotic changes, modi®cations to the Ancestral Polynesian
The Ancestral Polynesian world
101
environment which often resulted from human actions and land-use
practices.
The physical environment
The Ancestral Polynesians inhabited a geographically diverse island world.
The volcanic ``high'' islands included Futuna, `Uvea, Niuatoputapu, and the
Samoan group, the makatea or upraised-coral islands were represented by
Tongatapu and Vava`u, and the low-lying atoll or atoll-like islands by the
Ha`apai group. Each type posed its own environmental challenges, and
offered unique resources. The high islands, with their fertile volcanic soils
and rainforests, were well suited to shifting cultivation (see Chapter 5). On
the smaller coral islands, cultivation must have been more limited, but
intensive forms of tree cropping (especially of coconuts and breadfruit)
would have been favored. Yet the coral islands had their own advantages,
especially their vast reefs and lagoons rich in ®sh and shell®sh. This
spectrum of environmental variability, necessitating particular human adaptations, encouraged cultural variation among the Ancestral Polynesian
societies.
In moving eastwards beyond the large Fijian islands of Viti Levu and
Vanua Levu, the immediately pre-Polynesian (Early Eastern Lapita) peoples
crossed a fundamental threshold of Paci®c geology and biogeography. The
``Andesite Line'' which runs between Fiji and Western Polynesia (see Figure
4.1) marks the tectonic divide separating the vast Paci®c Plate on the east,
from the Fijian Plate on the west. As the Lapita peoples expanded out of the
Bismarck Archipelago, down through the Solomon Islands and out to Fiji,
they encountered islands that, while different in minor respects, were all of
andesitic-arc geological origin (Nunn 1994). Such islands have long and
complex geologic histories, composed of a diverse suite of rocks, including
both igneous and meta-volcanic types, as well as sedimentary formations.
East of the andesite line, the islands are exclusively formed by ``hot spot'' or
mid-plate volcanic eruptions, largely of basaltic composition. Erosion and
subsidence of these volcanic islands gradually converts some of these to
atolls, or when they are elevated, to makatea islands.
The consequences of moving over this transition from island-arc to midplate volcanic islands were far-reaching. For one, the islands east of the
andesite line are generally much smaller than those to the west. Within the
Ancestral Polynesian homeland, the largest island is Savai`i with 1,600
square kilometers, a good-sized land mass but considerably smaller than Viti
Levu at 10,388 square kilometers. Most other islands in the Polynesian
homeland are much smaller, such as Niuatoputapu at 15 square kilometers,
or many of the islets in the Ha`apai group. Second, the lithic resources
102
Rediscovering Hawaiki
available for stone tool production were limited to dense, relatively hard-towork basalt or hawaiite;2 a low-silica type of obsidian also occurred at a few
localities, such as on Tafahi Island. This restricted suite of available rock
types inspired changes in the way in which stone tools, especially adzes, were
manufactured (see Chapter 7). Third, biotic diversity (both terrestrial and
marine) declines as one moves eastwards out of Fiji into Samoa and Tonga.
Although the ¯ora and fauna of the Ancestral Polynesian homeland is part
of the Indo-Malasian and Indo-Paci®c provinces from which the Lapita
peoples had hailed, many of the useful or edible species found in the larger
westerly archipelagos were missing in Samoa and Tonga.
How did the Ancestral Polynesians conceptualize this new world of
properly ``oceanic'' islands? The PPN reconstructions pertaining to the
physical world open a window into the Ancestral Polynesian mind, yielding
the very semantic categories into which this world was partitioned and
classi®ed. Table 4.1 presents the set of PPN words for aspects of the physical
world.3 Because this is the ®rst of many such tabular presentations of PPN
lexical items we will use, a few brief explanations are offered. The ``probable
gloss'' is our best judgment of the meaning of the PPN term. The POC and
PPN reconstructions are as given in POLLEX (Biggs 1998), augmented by
other sources, especially for POC (e.g., from the chapters in Pawley and Ross
[1994], and in Ross et al. [eds., 1998]). If cognate POC and PPN terms are
given, the PPN term must obviously be a retention, whereas if only a PPN
form is given, it is probably an innovation at the PPN (or in some case PCP)
interstage.
Table 4.1 and others to follow include columns bearing the codes
``NCOG,'' ``P1,'' ``P2,'' and ``PSA.'' NCOG is the number of cognates within
Polynesian languages (excluding extra-Polynesian languages such as FIJ and
YAS). If NCOG is high (~20±30), the PPN term has been retained in the
majority of Polynesian languages, while if it is small (<10) the term has been
lost (or replaced by another innovation) in many languages. P1 and P2 stand
for Jeff Marck's ``Principles 1 and 2,'' discussed at the end of Chapter 3. We
regard any PPN reconstructions meeting either criteria for P1 or P2 as
robust, even though in the case of P2 there may only be a small number of
cognates. If neither P1 or P2 is checked, the reconstructed term is
represented by modern witnesses found exclusively in Western Polynesia. In
such cases, it is possible that the term is a post-PPN innovation which has
spread through borrowing within Western Polynesia. Finally, PSA indicates
prime semantic agreement, in which case the meanings of modern re¯exes within
all major branches or subgroups of the PN language are in essential
agreement. If the PSA column is not checked, there are divergences among
the meanings of the cognates, and a probable semantic history will in most
cases be provided in the text.
The Ancestral Polynesian world
103
Table 4.1. Selected Proto Polynesian terms for the physical world
Category/probable
gloss (PPN interstage)
General
Land; placenta
Island, islet
Earth, land
Earthquake
Terrestrial environment
Mountain
Ridge of mountain
Point of land, headland
Cliff
Lake, swamp
Swampy area (especially under
cultivation)
Fernland, degraded lateritic zone
Fresh water, stream, river
Stream, river
Waterfall
Spring (of water)
Inanimate objects
Stone, rock
Earth, soil, dirt
Mud, dirty
Sand (calcareous)
Hard, black, volcanic stone
Limestone, coral
Coral, brain coral
Branch coral
Marine environment
Seashore, coast
Sea beyond the reef, open ocean
Lagoon
Reef
Coral head, rock in sea
Channel through reef, passage
Ocean side of reef
Rock or coral head
Sea current
Ocean wave
Rough, of sea
Low tide
Proto
Oceanic
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
*panua
*motu
*fanua
*motu
*nuku
*mafuike
28
27
17
13
3
3
3
3
*maqunga
*tuqa-siwi
*mata
*pali
*rano
*fusi
29
12
11
5
10
8
3
3
3
*toafa
*wai
*wai-tafe
*safu
*wai-puna
7
33
10
9
8
3
3
3
3
*fatu
*kele
*pela
*qone
*kalaa
*lase
*punga
*feo
27
26
23
31
15
11
27
13
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
*tahi
*moana
*loto
*hakau
*toka
*awa
*tuqa-hakau
*toka
*qau
*ngalu
*loka
*(tahi)-masa
18
26
11
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
Cont . . .
*mata
*dano
*waiR
*patu
*9kele
*lepa/pela
*qone
*lanje
*pu9a
*ta(n)sik
*zagaRu
*awa9
*qaRus
18
24
18
16
7
P2
PSA
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
104
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 4.1. (cont. )
Category/probable
gloss (PPN interstage)
Astronomical phenomena
Sun
Moon (also month)
Star (general term)
The Milky Way
The Pleiades (also a month name)
The Morning Star
A star name (Venus or Antares)
A star name (probably Sirius)
Guiding star?
Sky
Weather
Fine weather
Storm, hurricane
Wind, breeze
Westerly quarter and wind and
weather associated with it
Blow, of wind or breeze
Wind, strong wind
Dry season of southeast trade winds
Cloud
Rain
Squall, rain
Drizzle, light rain
Light rain, drizzle
Flood
Cease raining
Rainbow
Directionals
East (where the sun rises)
West (where the sun sets)
West, land ``below''
South, south wind
Northerly quarter and wind from
that quarter
Proto
Oceanic
*fetuqu
*Mata-liki
*langit
*apaRat
*angini
*angin
*raki
*qaRoq
*qusan
*timu(R)
*sisi(p)
*tokalau(r)
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
*laqaa
*maa-sina
*fetuqu
*kaniwa
*mata-liki
*fetuqu-qaho
*mele (PNP)
*takulua
*kaweinga
*langi
31
23
22
15
25
9
11
14
9
*laqo®e
*afaa
*sau
*laki
8
18
14
14
3
*angi
*matangi
*laki
*qao
*quha
*timu
*afu-afu
*moti-moti
*lolo
*mao
*nuanua (PNP)
23
29
3
3
34
10
10
9
6
21
17
3
*sasake
*sisifo
*lalo
*tonga
*tokelau
P2
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
PSA
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
The Ancestral Polynesian world
105
Turning to the speci®c items in Table 4.1, a PPN word meaning `land' is
*fanua, a retention from POC *panua, `inhabited land or territory, land' (Blust
1987; Green and Pawley 1998:62). Clearly, *fanua had a double meaning to
the PPN speakers, `land' in the most general sense, but also `placenta,
afterbirth.' This linkage of the two meanings metaphorically suggests the
intimate linkage between people and their natal land, a matter we will
discuss in Chapter 8 with respect to land-holding social groups. PPN *motu
more narrowly indicated an `island' or `islet,' and was probably a retention
from POC. A third term, *nuku, is more dif®cult to ascertain; it may have
referred to a `settled land.'
Given that the tectonically active archipelagos and islands of Ancestral
Polynesia straddle the boundary between the Paci®c and Fijian Plates, a
robust PPN reconstruction for `earthquake,' *mafuike, is not surprising. In at
least ®ve cognates, the term is associated with a deity who either causes
earthquakes, or was the discoverer of ®re. To the PPN speakers, *mafuike
presumably had a double meaning, signifying both the physical phenomenon
of earthquakes, and a supernatural spirit responsible for them.
As Pawley and K. Green (1971) recognized, many PPN words show that
the Ancestral Polynesians were familiar with high islands. These include
PPN *maqunga for `mountain,' and *tuqa-siwi for `mountain ridge.' The latter
is metaphoric, formed of separate PPN words for `back' and `bone.' A
headland or point was called *mata, one of many meanings of this polysemous term. *Pali, `cliff,' invokes Marck's Principle 2, for the term has only
®ve witnesses, but these include FIJ as well as four Eastern Polynesian words
(in HAW, MAO, RAR, and TAH), making it certain the term existed in the
PPN vocabulary. PPN *rano indicated a swamp, lake, or inland body of fresh
water, and was distinguished from *fusi, a swampy area under cultivation
(see Chapter 5). *Toafa referred to deforested or degraded inland areas,
which supported a fernland-type of vegetation. The widespread term *wai
denoted both `fresh water' as well as `stream' or `river,' while the compound
morph *wai-tafe meant `stream' or `¯owing water.' Another compound term,
*wai-puna, designated a spring issuing from the ground.
Other PPN terms refer to inanimate objects such as rocks, earth, sand,
and coral. *Fatu was the general term for `rock,' while *kalaa indicated either
dense basalt (suitable for stone adz production), or possibly obsidian (or
both). `Earth' or `soil' (*kele) was differentiated from calcareous `sand' (*qone).
The many re¯exes of PPN *pela include common references to `dirt' and
`mud' but also to `decaying matter' and `pus,' making the precise meaning of
this word unclear. The Ancestral Polynesians recognized at least three kinds
of coral: *lase for either coral or lime derived from coral, *punga which
certainly referred to `brain coral' (such as Porites spp.), and *feo which
indicated `branch coral' (such as Acropora spp. and related taxa). That the
106
Rediscovering Hawaiki
PPN speakers distinguished between branch and brain coral types is
noteworthy, as both of these were used for different types of abrading tools
(see Chapter 7).
The PPN lexicon was rich in terms for the sea and for marine topography.
PPN speakers distinguished *tahi, the calm inshore waters of the reef ¯at or
lagoon, from *moana, the open sea and realm of the navigator and seamaster. *Loto was polysemous, referring not only to lagoons, but to holes or
depressions in the reef, and in some cases also to lakes or pools. *Hakau
designated the coral reef, which had its ocean side (*tuqa-hakau), as well as
passages or channels (*awa) through which canoes could pass. A separate
term *toka referred to coral heads or coral formations, a not surprising
distinction since ®sh congregate around such formations, as any experienced
tropical ®sherman knows. Finally, there are robust PPN reconstructions for
`wave' (*ngalu), `sea current' (*qau), and `rough sea' (*loka).
Several terms for astronomical phenomena can be robustly reconstructed
(Table 4.1), including `sun' (*laqaa), `moon' (*maa-sina, which also meant a
`month' or lunation), and a general term for `star' (*fetuqu). The Milky Way
(*kaniwa) was also named, as was the star-cluster Pleiades (*Mata-liki ). But we
can reconstruct only three speci®c star names, *fetuqu-qaho (lit. `star-day') for
the Morning Star (or Venus as the morning star), *mele, a star/or planet
(possibly Venus or Antares), and *takulua, most likely Sirius.4 There is an
intriguing PPN lexeme, *kaweinga, which POLLEX glosses as `that which is
steered for (usually a star).' Given the widespread Oceanic practice of using
``star paths'' or guiding stars in inter-island or inter-archipelago navigation
(Lewis 1972), the existence of such a `steering star' term is not surprising.
As farmers, the Ancestral Polynesians must have astutely observed the
weather, monitoring rain essential to the growth of their crops, and heeding
signs of storms or hurricanes which might devastate their orchards. 5 A
subset of PPN terms refers to weather, including those for `®ne weather'
(*laqo®e) and for storm or hurricane (*afaa). There are at least four words for
`wind or breeze,' with the most general being *matangi. PPN *laki probably
indicated both the westerly quarter, and wind and weather which came from
that direction. As a directional, *laki may have formed a trio along with
*tonga and *tokelau.6 The PPN speakers had at least six terms associated with
rain and raining, the cover term being *quha. `Rainbow,' *nuanua, can be
reconstructed back as far as PNP but not, on current evidence, to PPN.
Finally, there is the matter of what Blust (1997) calls ``macro-orientation,''
the directional systems by which individuals order themselves in relation to
the physical world. Such conceptual systems are arguably highly stable or
persistent, and Blust suggests that two fundamental contrast sets can be
reconstructed to Proto Malayo-Polynesian: a ``land±sea'' axis, and a spatiotemporal distinction between the ``west/north-west monsoon'' and the
The Ancestral Polynesian world
107
``east/south-east monsoon'' (1997:39). He suggests that these Austronesian
directional systems were ``adapted to a life on or near the sea, in which the
sailing winds were of basic importance and the land-forms encountered
were small islands.''
Table 4.1 lists some key PPN directionals. *Sasake and *sisifo, referring
respectively to `east' and `west' (where the sun rises and sets) are re¯ected
only in Western Polynesian and Outlier languages, but are probably good
PPN reconstructions, especially since *sisifo is clearly a retention from POC
*sisi(p). These terms were presumably lost in PEP. More important is the
*tonga/*tokelau distinction, widespread not only in Western Polynesia but also
in Eastern Polynesia and the Outliers. To PPN speakers, this contrast set
designated a directional axis with *tonga to the south (where the island of
Tongatapu, `sacred Tonga,' lies) and *tokelau to the north (where the Tokelau
Islands are situated). This axis may also have been associated with winds
from these directions. The term *lalo in general means `down' (and contrasts
with *lunga, `up'), but may also have had a directional sense of `west' since
such a secondary meaning exists in eight widely dispersed Polynesian
languages.
The ``land-sea axis'' described by Blust (1997) for Proto Malayo-Polynesian also persisted into the Polynesian consciousness regarding physical
environments, as anyone who has spent time in Hawai`i or other contemporary Polynesian islands is aware (the distinction has been adopted into
everyday speech in Hawai`i, as the familiar mauka-makai contrast set).7 There
can be no doubt that Proto Polynesian speakers also oriented themselves
according to this ``toward-the-land'' and ``toward-the-sea'' distinction.
Owing to lexical innovations and/or replacements, however, the precise
lexical form which this contrast set took in Proto Polynesian is ambiguous,
although the existence of the semantic contrast set is not. POLLEX lists the
following two Proto Samoic-Outlier terms: *ngaa- as a `locality pre®x'; and,
*ngaa-tai as directional meaning `seaward' (opposed, in many Polynesian
languages, to ngaa-uta, `landward'). What we can infer for PPN is that this
directional contrast set incorporated the words for coastal or inshore waters
(PPN *tahi ) and `inland' or `interior' (*quta), with some form of directional
pre®x, in the form *pre®x-tahi and *pre®x-quta.8
Biogeographical considerations
In crossing the andesite line, the Eastern Lapita peoples moved onto Paci®c
Plate islands with more restricted rock resources (Figure 4.1). But these
geological differences were hardly the only environmental challenge they
faced, for in moving eastwards out of the diverse Fijian archipelago, these
early colonists and their Polynesian descendants encountered an increasingly
Fig. 4.1 The central Paci®c region, showing the location of the Andesite Line. Islands to the north and east of this line are
situated on the Paci®c Plate (after Green 1974b: ®g. 63).
The Ancestral Polynesian world
109
depauperate biotic world. Fiji is much richer in its diversity of plants and
animals than Tonga or Samoa to the east, more similar to the larger
Solomons and Vanuatu archipelagos from which the Lapita peoples had
migrated. For example, while there are about 230 species of ferns and fernallies in Fiji, there are only about 100 in Tonga, and just 53 in the Manu`a
Islands. Similarly, the numbers of vascular plants drops from more than
2,000 in Fiji, to about 750 in Tonga, and only 420 in Manu`a. The same
holds for reptiles (lizards, snakes, and frogs), with 29 species in Fiji, as
opposed to 13 in the main Samoan group, and none in Manu`a. Marine
¯oras and faunas also display similar declines in generic and species-level
diversity from west to east within the Fiji±Western Polynesian region.
These biogeographic differences had real consequences for the Ancestral
Polynesians. Many of the trees, shrubs, herbs, birds, mollusks, ®sh, and other
natural resources they were accustomed to harvest, gather, or exploit ±
whether for food, ®bers, wood, thatch, medicines, feathers, shell, or other
uses or purposes ± were lacking in their new-found environments. Of course,
key economic species such as crop plants and domestic animals could be
transported and transplanted into the new island groups. But others were
presumably absent, and the Ancestral Polynesians adapted by ®nding new
resources, or concentrating on those fewer species still present.
Ancestral Polynesian ethnobiological knowledge
Cognitive anthropologists have synthesized much ethnographic data regarding ``folk'' biological classi®cations, ®nding that virtually all known
systems of ordering the natural world and its creatures adhere to a limited
set of general principles (Berlin 1992:13±35). All such systems of classi®cation exhibit a hierarchical or taxonomic structure, comprised of a limited
number of ranks or levels. Such a system is schematically illustrated in
Figure 4.2. According to Berlin (1992:22), the major taxonomic ranks found
in folk classi®cations are those of: (1) kingdom; (2) life-form; (3) intermediate;
(4) generic; (5) speci®c; and (6) varietal. The ®rst and third categories are
frequently covert (not lexically marked), and must be discovered by careful
ethnographic inquiry and experimentation. The life-form rank is usually
limited to a few categories (< 10), these ``based on the recognition of the
strong correlation of gross morphological structure and ecological adaptation'' (Berlin 1992:24). The generic rank is typically the most numerous in
any folk biological system; ethnographic data suggest ``an upper limit at
about ®ve hundred to six hundred taxa in systems typical of tropical
horticulturalists'' (1992:23). Moreover, the majority of generic-level taxa are
monotypic, with no taxa of lesser rank (i.e., species or varietal levels).
Species-level taxa, when present, further partition folk generic taxa into two
110
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Fig. 4.2
The hierarchical structure typical of folk biological classi®cations (after Berlin
1992: ®g. 1.1).
or more classes, and folk varietals further partition folk species. As Berlin
observes, ``subgeneric taxa are less numerous than folk generics in all
systems examined to date'' (1992:24).
The lexical evidence for PPN folk biology conforms closely to expectations
derived from such world-wide ethnographic comparisons. We can strongly
suggest that the PPN speakers categorized and classi®ed their biological
world into at least three, and probably four, lexically marked taxonomic
ranks, these being life-form, generic, and speci®c, and probably also varietal.
The majority of PPN reconstructions for taxa of plants and animals are of
generic rank, as would be predicted, although we have some indications of
speci®c and even varietal-level taxa as well. Generic level taxa are the most
apt to be temporally stable. Subgeneric taxa were susceptible to lexical
change, as the descendants of the Ancestral Polynesians expanded out of the
Western Polynesian homeland to encounter more biogeographical differences, including both generic-level biotic depauperization and speci®c-level
endemism (here using the terms ``generic'' and ``speci®c'' in their scienti®c
senses).
Life-form terms
Cecil Brown (1981) reviewed both ethnographic and linguistic evidence for
zoological life-form terms from twenty-four Polynesian languages, drawing
upon Biggs et al.'s (1970) initial PPN reconstructions. Brown's interest was
primarily ``evolutionary,'' in that he wished to determine at what stage of
The Ancestral Polynesian world
111
Table 4.2. Proto Polynesian life-form terms
Probable gloss
(PPN interstage)
Proto
Oceanic
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
Tree, plant in general
Grass, herb
Bird
Insect, wug
Earthworm
Snake
Fish
Shell®sh
Crab
*daqan
*raqa-kau
*mahuku
*manu
*manumanu
*kele-mutu
*ngata
*ika
*®ngota
*paka
31
27
33
10
10
10
30
10
19
*manuk
*mwata
*ika(n)
P2
3
3
3
3
PSA
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
development ± along a putative universal sequence of zoological life-form
encoding ± the Polynesians were situated. He concluded that the Polynesians
were ``at Stage 3 in animal life-form growth, having the initial three lifeforms of the encoding sequence'' (1981:104). These forms, according to
Brown, were those for `bird' (PPN *manu), `®sh' (*ika), and `snake' (*ngata), all
robust PPN reconstructions. Brown observed that in Eastern Polynesia the
term for snake was lost (actually, it was transferred in some cases to other
animals, such as worms), not surprising given that snakes were not naturally
distributed beyond Samoa. He also regarded the development of life-form
terms for `worm' and `wug' (a category usually comprising insects plus
spiders, and sometimes other forms such as grubs or worms) as later, postPPN, developments.
Table 4.2 lists all of the probable life-form terms reconstructed for PPN.
There are nine terms overall, seven of these being zoological, a considerable
expansion from Brown's list of three terms. Botanically, the word *raqa-kau
designated the class of trees (and wood), but by semantic extension probably
also included all vascular plants. PPN *mahuku, on the other hand, referred
minimally to grasses, but very likely also included other categories such as
low ferns, herbs, and sedges. Zoologically, terms for `bird' (*manu), `®sh'
(*ika), and `snake' (*ngata) are well attested, as Brown recognized, but we
would add robust reconstructions for `insect' or `wug,' *manumanu; for
`shell®sh' (mollusks and sea-urchins, or perhaps all shell®sh gathered by
112
Rediscovering Hawaiki
women on the reef ), *®ngota; for `crab,' *paka; and, for `earthworm' (or
`wug'?), *kele-mutu.
The category *ngata, `snake,' nicely illustrates changes in Polynesian folk
classi®cation necessitated by biogeographical distributions. In the Paci®c,
snakes are distributed no farther east than Samoa. Zug (1991) indicates that
two species of snake (Ogmodon vitianus and Candoia bibroni ) occur in this
region, with the former found only in Fiji, and with C. bibroni in Fiji, Samoa,
and Tonga. FIJ gata is cognate with TON and SAM ngata, and in all cases
these refer to snakes. In PN languages outside of Western Polynesia,
however, cognates of *ngata were transferred to other animals with elongated
body shapes. Thus in Hawai`i, for example, naka means a sea-creature of
some kind, while in New Zealand ngata refers to a slug or leech.
Two additional terms, PPN *moko and *pili, might be considered life-form
categories. Both of these referred to lizards, but cognates in Polynesian
languages range across taxa in both the gecko and skink families. Fiji has a
rich lizard fauna (twenty-®ve species according to Zug [1991]), whereas this
drops to twelve species in Samoa and Tonga, and even fewer in Eastern
Polynesia. Thus *pili may have been a general (life-form) term for `lizard,'
whereas *moko referred to geckos, especially those commensal species which
typically reside in human dwellings.
Generic and subgeneric taxa
Berlin (1992) argues that the most frequent taxa in any folk classi®cation
system are of generic rank, and this certainly ®ts the lexical evidence for
PPN. There has been no comprehensive attempt to reconstruct the entire
system of PPN terms for the biological world, but Biggs' POLLEX ®le
includes many generic-level reconstructions, Clark (1982) has reconstructed
PPN names for birds, and R. Hooper (1994) deals with PPN ®sh names.9
Hooper's study of ®sh names, along with additional examples for the domain
of reef and inshore invertebrates presented in Table 4.3, provides good
examples of PPN generic-level folk categories.
Table 4.3. Proto Polynesian terms for reef and shoreline invertebrates
Category/probable gloss
(PPN interstage)
Crustacea
General life-form term for crabs
Hermit crab (Paguridae)
Spotted crab (Carpilius sp. ?)
Proto
Oceanic
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
*qumwa9
*paka
*qunga
*tuutuu
18
22
8
3
3
3
P2
PSA
3
The Ancestral Polynesian world
Mangrove crab
Ghost crab (Ocypode sp. ?)
Rock crab (Grapsidae)
Crab sp.
Coconut robber crab (Birgus latro)
Land crab (Cardisoma sp.)
Spiny lobster (Palinurus sp.)
Slipper lobster
Squilla
Mollusca: Gastropods
Turbo spp.
Cowries (Cypraeidae)
Limpets (Patellidae)
Trochidae spp.
Mollusca: Bivalvia
Giant clam (Tridacna spp.)
Pearl oyster (Pinctada spp.)
Asaphidae spp.
Mussel (Mytilidae spp. ?)
Rock oyster
A bivalve mollusk
A bivalve mollusk
*kuka
*qayuyu
*quda9
*qalili9
*mbule
*(b,p)sua
*japi
*kasi
*kuku
*tiRom
Cephalopoda
Octopus
Squid
Echinodermata
Kind of sea-urchin
Sea-urchin with long, thin spines
Kind of sea-urchin
Coelenterates
Sea anemone
Coral, brain coral
Branch coral
(Uncertain)
Venomous sea-worm ?
*(9)kina
*saRawaki
*dr(o,u)mane(e,i)
*pu9a
113
*kuka
*kawiki
*kamakama
*kala-misi
*quuquu
*tupa
*qura
*tapatapa
*walo
3
12
19
11
15
26
33
14
16
3
3
3
3
*qalili
*pule
*pisi
PNP *kali-kao
22
24
11
11
3
3
3
3
*paasua/faasua
*tifa
*kasi
*kuku
*tio
*tofe
*pipi
15
10
22
17
17
10
24
3
3
3
3
3
3
*feke
*nguu-feke
22
14
3
3
3
3
*kina
*wana
*saawaki
10
23
6
3
3
3
*rumane
6
3
3
*punga
*feo
27
13
3
3
3
3
*weli
18
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
114
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Hooper (1994:187) reconstructed 115 PPN names for ®sh, and slightly
more (147 cases) for the later PNP interstage. Of the 115 PPN words, no less
than 112 are primary lexemes, corresponding to generic-level status. One of
the few examples for which both generic- and speci®c-level taxa can be
reconstructed is with the ®sh family Balistidae (trigger®sh). In this case, there
is a generic-level term *sumu, and these are speci®c-level terms *sumulenga
(probably Balistapus sp.) and *sumukaleva (probably Alutera sp.). While the PPN
®sh names are mostly ``generic-level'' this does not mean that they correspond precisely to Western (scienti®c) notions of genus and species. Indeed,
Hooper (1994:189) observes that of the 115 PPN ®sh name reconstructions,
``about a quarter correspond to scienti®c species, about a quarter to genera,
and less than ten to higher level groupings.''
The PPN life-form *ika, while including the 115 reconstructed genericlevel terms discussed by Hooper (1994), probably was not limited to `®shes'
in the Western, scienti®c sense. Comparative ethnography reveals that
virtually all Polynesian cultures also include within the ika category:
cetaceans (PPN *tafu-raqa, `whale'), marine turtles (*fonu, Green Sea Turtle,
and *kea, the Hawksbill Turtle), and cephalopods (*feke, `octopus,' and *nguufeke, `squid').
Table 4.3 provides further examples of PPN generic-level folk taxa for reef
and shoreline invertebrates, with a total of thirty-two PPN reconstructions.
There is no general life-form term corresponding to this scienti®c domain,
and the taxa listed in Table 4.3 would have cross-cut the PPN life-forms of
*ika, *®ngota, and *paka, as well as including several generics that did not fall
under either of these two terms. Again, all of these taxa are of the folkgeneric level, with a complete absence of reconstructable speci®c-level
terms. While some PPN terms correspond to single scienti®c species (such as
*quuquu for the Coconut Robber Crab, Birgus latro), many represent entire
groups of higher-level inclusiveness, such as the terms for cowries (*pule) or
for branch coral (*feo).
In general, PPN folk taxa are heavily biased toward economically useful
or environmentally salient species, a point made by Hooper (1994:188) with
regard to ®sh names.10 She observes that the diversity of butter¯y ®shes
(Chaetodontidae) and damsel®shes (Pomacentridae) were lumped by the
PPN speakers under just two taxa, *ti®ti® and *mutu, respectively. This re¯ects
their relative insigni®cance as food ®shes, whereas various individual species
within such families as jacks (Carangidae), tunas (Scombridae), and groupers
(Serranidae) are individually named. This point applies also to the category
of insects and spiders, a large and highly diverse part of island biotas from
the scienti®c perspective, but one of little interest to Polynesians. There are
only about ten PPN reconstructions for insects or spiders, and half of these
pertain to noxious or commensal taxa, such as ants (*loo), sand¯ies or gnats
The Ancestral Polynesian world
115
(*nono), mosquitoes (*namu), ¯ies (*lango), and cockroaches (*mongamonga). The
diversity of spiders on oceanic islands was reduced in the PPN folk
taxonomic system to a single cover term, *kalewelewe.
In folk systems of biological classi®cation, subgeneric taxa (the speci®c
and varietal levels) are typically most developed for ``cultivated plants that
have been highly modi®ed under domestication'' (Berlin 1992:106). This is
veri®able with ethnobotanically studied Polynesian folk classi®cations, such
as those of Hawai`i (Handy 1940), Tonga (Whistler 1991), and Futuna
(Kirch 1994a), and it is likely to have been so for PPN categories of
domesticated plants. For example, we can reconstruct at least three PPN
varietal-level terms for breadfruit cultivars, these being *aveloa, *puou, and
*maopo. A careful comparison of such varietal-level terms across Polynesian
folk ethnobotanical classi®cations might yield similar PPN reconstructions
for cultivars of key crop plants such as taro, yams, and bananas. We leave the
task to others.
Pawley (1996b:160) discusses the ``extreme instability'' of POC names for
subgeneric taxa of reef and shoreline invertebrates, observing that virtually
all POC reconstructions are at the generic rank. He offers several possible
explanations, including the variability of local species (biogeographical
differences), and the ``wide range of salient characteristics exhibited by many
folk generics and folk species.'' Since many subgeneric categories consist of
compound terms involving a descriptor, these may have been subject to
rapid change:
Speakers can be expected from time to time to change the choice of the
characteristics used to distinguish one taxon terminologically from its sister taxa.
Finally, particular modifying terms may themselves change in meaning and no
longer be semantically appropriate. In some cases the old modi®er may be retained
as part of the term, leaving an opaque or idiomatic binomial; in other cases the old
modi®er will be replaced by a new semantically appropriate one. (1996b:160)
It is beyond our scope to attempt a complete reconstruction of PPN terms
pertaining to the biological world, although efforts in progress will doubtless
produce such an account in due course. When complete, we estimate that
the list of generic-level PPN lexemes for plants and animals will probably
run to roughly 500 or so items, consistent with Berlin's (1992) ®ndings for
folk taxonomic systems worldwide.
``Paradise lost'': natural and anthropogenic changes in
the Polynesian homeland
While archaeology is unlikely to ever tell us anything about PPN folk
biological systematics, archaeological evidence and that derived from inter-
116
Rediscovering Hawaiki
disciplinary studies conducted jointly with paleoecologists (see Kirch and
Hunt, eds., 1997) offer signi®cant insights of a different kind, bringing us
back to the power of the triangulation method in historical anthropology.
Taken on its own, the historical linguistic evidence yields a static portrait,
whereas recent archaeological and paleoenvironmental investigations reveal
that the physical and biotic world in which the Ancestral Polynesians were
enmeshed was highly dynamic. Such dynamism resulted both from natural
environmental processes, and from environmental changes induced by the
Ancestral Polynesians themselves.
One salient natural process of environmental change affecting the world
of the Ancestral Polynesians during the mid to late ®rst millennium BC was
sea level change.11 When Lapita communities were established throughout
the Fiji±Tonga±Samoa region (around 3000±2800 BP), sea level in the
central Paci®c stood approximately 1±1.5 m higher than at present. Because
of this, islands such as Niuatoputapu (Kirch 1988), Tongatapu, and the
Ha`apai group (Dickinson et al. 1994; Burley 1998) were more limited in
land area than they are today. The earliest Lapita settlements often occupy
elevated beach terraces now located some distance inland.
Evidence from the To`aga site on Ofu Island (Kirch 1993a) suggests that
this mid-Holocene high stand began to fall toward its modern level prior to
2000 BP, when a phase of rapid shoreline progradation set in. Toward the
end of the ®rst millennium BC, the Ancestral Polynesians must have
experienced dynamic changes in the reefs, lagoons, and shorelines of their
islands. As sea level fell, reef ¯ats were tidally exposed, inhibiting coral
growth and gradually creating a new source of biogenic sediments, changing
local sediment budgets and initiating shoreline progradation. Whether such
changes occurred fast enough to be noticeable at a human time scale (i.e.,
within the lifetime of an individual) is uncertain, but this is likely, at least for
certain locales. These environmental changes could have been economically
signi®cant, especially on smaller islands, as beach terraces prograded,
increasing the area of exposed land and decreasing areas of resource-rich
reefs and lagoons. On Niuatoputapu the situation was dramatic, with a net
increase in land area of more than 300 percent, and a decrease in the area of
reef-lagoon microenvironments of 50 percent (Kirch 1988:248).
Other environmental and ecological changes resulting from human
actions and land use activities included: (1) the purposive introduction of a
wide range of crop plants and domestic animals; (2) inadvertent introduction
of commensal species, such as the Paci®c Rat (Rattus exulans), some weeds,
garden snails (e.g. Lamellaxis gracilis), and so on; (3) clearance of native
vegetation, for hamlets and villages, for tree crop orchards, and for shifting
cultivations; (4) hunting, collecting, and gathering of wild terrestrial food
and other economic resources, especially birds and certain plant species
The Ancestral Polynesian world
117
(e.g., hardwoods for timber); and, (5) continuous exploitation of reefs and
lagoons by the harvesting of their edible invertebrates and by ®shing. These
activities commenced with the initial Lapita occupation of the region at the
beginning of the ®rst millennium BC, and by the Ancestral Polynesian
period were pervasive. The cumulative effects of such human activities are
re¯ected in the archaeological and paleoenvironmental records from the
Western Polynesian islands, including the direct faunal (and to a lesser extent
¯oral) evidence for introduced species, size reductions in shell®sh species
over time, and geomorphological evidence for increased rates of erosion and
alluvial/colluvial deposition.
Dramatic evidence for human impact on the natural ecosystems of
Western Polynesian islands, during the Lapita and Ancestral Polynesian
periods, concerns the land and sea bird faunas. Steadman (1989, 1993a,
1995, 1997) discusses zooarchaeological evidence from sites in Tonga for
extinction, extirpation, and population reductions in a number of bird
species. At least fourteen bird species went extinct within the ®rst two to
three centuries after human arrival, and were probably already little more
than a memory (possibly encoded in oral traditions) by the Ancestral
Polynesian period. Most sensitive to such human impact (either directly
through hunting, or indirectly through habitat modi®cations) were the
pigeons, megapodes, and rails. But human-induced impacts on terrestrial
faunas were not restricted to birds; fruit bats and lizards, including an
endemic iguana formerly present in Tonga (Pregill and Dye 1989; Koopman
and Steadman 1995), were also extirpated or went extinct. There is also
faunal evidence for signi®cant reductions in the numbers of marine sea
turtles between earliest Lapita and later Ancestral Polynesian phases.
One instance of extinction and extirpation illustrates the power of the
triangulation method we advocate. This concerns the megapode (also called
the ``incubator bird'' or the ``brush turkey''), a ``curious family of fowl-like
birds of the Australian region [which] do not incubate their eggs'' (Mayr
1945:56). Rather, the females deposit their eggs in soil, sand, or hot volcanic
ashes, or, most frequently, in substantial mounds of scratched-together
forest-¯oor litter. Historically, ®ve species of the genus Megapodius are known
from the southwest Paci®c, but only one of these, Megapodius pritchardi (the
Niuafo`ou Incubator Bird) occurs within Western Polynesia, where its
distribution is con®ned to isolated Niuafo`ou Island (Mayr 1945:127). 12 On
Niuafo`ou, the megapode nesting grounds were carefully controlled by the
ruling chief, assuring the continued survival of this population.
Despite the restriction of megapodes to a single locality within Western
Polynesia, a valid PPN reconstruction for this species, *malau, is possible
because in addition to the TON re¯ex (malau), there are cognates from three
Polynesian Outliers (MFA, malau; OJA, malau; TAK, marau), where a closely
118
Rediscovering Hawaiki
related species (Megapodius freycinet) occurs.13 We may ask, however, whether
in Ancestral Polynesian times the megapode was restricted to the single
locality of Niuafo`ou, and whether the Polynesian term malau was later
applied to the closely related species M. freycinet when the Outliers were
settled (or resettled) by Polynesian speakers. Neither historical linguistics, nor
the distributional evidence of historical biogeography, is helpful; we must
turn to zooarchaeology. Recent excavations in Manu`a, Ha`apai (Lifuka),
and `Eua islands have all produced Megapode bones (Steadman 1989, 1993b),
demonstrating that populations of this genus were widespread throughout
Western Polynesia at the time of initial human settlement. The Lifuka and
`Eua bones belong to a distinct (now extinct) species, M. alimentum, while the
limited sample of bones from the To`aga site on Ofu Island represent either
M. freycinet (historically not known east of Vanuatu), or a closely related but
now extinct species.
The megapode demonstrates in a small but concise manner the power of
triangulation. Historical linguistics and comparative ethnography allow us to
reconstruct the PPN name for this bird, but cannot tell us about its original
distribution within the Polynesian homeland. Archaeological evidence ±
mute as to the name given by Polynesians to this curious bird ± proves
essential in demonstrating that megapodes were once a ubiquitous part of
the Ancestral Polynesian environment, and that their extinction was a
consequence of human actions in these vulnerable island ecosystems.
Together, linguistics and archaeology minimize the ``polygon of error'' in
historical reconstruction, enhancing our understanding of the past.
To sum up, when the Early Eastern Lapita ancestors of the Ancestral
Polynesians arrived in Tonga and Samoa and nearby islands, they were the
®rst human beings ± indeed, the ®rst large land vertebrates other than birds
± to intrude into this remote and biotically vulnerable oceanic world.14
Cloaked in rainforest and teeming with land- and seabirds, and with reefs
and lagoons supporting a lush diversity of edible invertebrates and ®shes,
these islands must have seemed a kind of paradise. A millennium later, as
the Proto Polynesian dialect chain was breaking up and the Polynesians
began to expand beyond their homeland, these islands had seen signi®cant
and irreversible transformations, both in their physical landscapes and in
their biotas. Rich avifaunas had been decimated, with some species already
extinct and most others greatly reduced in numbers. Pristine rainforests had
been opened up for gardens, in some places resulting in increased erosion
and alluvial progradation of coastal plains, or in®lling of valley bottoms.
Extensive lowland areas had been planted in orchard gardens of economically important, adventive tree crops, including coconuts, breadfruit, Tahitian chestnut, and other species. All of this was the inevitable result of
permanent settlement by humans, and of the cumulative processes of
The Ancestral Polynesian world
119
resource exploitation and establishment of managed, productive agroecosystems. From the human, cultural perspective, such changes were
essential to transform isolated islands into habitats capable of supporting
large and dense human populations. Yet from a strictly ecological perspective, it was a matter of ``paradise lost.''
Chapter 5
Subsistence
The immediate plant origins of the most important cultigens, the
starch-producing staples . . . demonstrates three major
characteristics of Oceanic agricultures: 1. Their derivative natures
. . . 2. The importance of vegetative reproduction in the plant roster.
3. Arboriculture as a signi®cant part of subsistence patterns.
yen 1973:70
We have seen that the PPN speakers indexed their biotic world with a rich
and complex terminology for plants, birds, shell®sh, ®sh, and other life
forms. On these ecologically varied low and high islands extending along the
Tonga±Samoa lineament, they created distinctive modes of food production
and extraction. How might one reconstruct the subsistence economy of
Ancestral Polynesia, applying the triangulation method? In triangulation it is
not necessary to always privilege linguistic evidence. A well-developed
tradition of ethnobotanical research within Polynesia and Oceania ± one
thinks of Merrill (1954), Barrau (1965a, 1965b), and Yen (1971, 1973, 1991)
± has long sought to reconstruct ancient forms of Oceanic cultivation and
food production. More recently, historical linguists such as French-Wright
(1983), Ross (1996a), and Osmond (1998) have concerned themselves with
the reconstruction of Oceanic crop plant and horticultural terminologies,
although this has been primarily at the POC rather than PPN level.
For ®shing and marine exploitation, a similarly long tradition of comparative ethnography includes the works of Beasley (1928), Anell (1955),
Reinman (1967), and others, supplemented by studies of ®shing gear
incorporated within many of the museum ethnographies of the 1920s±1940s
(e.g., Hiroa 1930, 1944; Beaglehole and Beaglehole 1938). Aside from
reconstructing PCP and PPN ®sh names (Geraghty 1994; Hooper 1994),
and POC reef and shoreline invertebrate terminology (Pawley 1996b),
historical linguists have paid little attention to ®shing strategies and
methods, although Walter (1989) used both archaeological and linguistic
approaches to adduce evidence for Lapita ®shing. Archaeologists, in contrast, have long been concerned with ancient Polynesian and Lapita ®shing
and shell®sh gathering, both from the evidence of material culture and from
120
Subsistence
121
zooarchaeological studies of faunal remains (e.g., Emory et al. 1959;
Reinman 1967; Kirch 1979; Butler 1988).
Subsistence in the preceding Lapita period
Ever since the distinctive Lapita ceramic style began to attract archaeological attention in the 1960s, a debate ensued over whether the Lapita
horizon represented an ``oceanic strandlooper,'' non-horticultural mode of
subsistence or a more typically oceanic mix of food production and wild
resource extraction (Groube 1971; cf. Green 1979a). We will not revisit this
debate, but comment on the currently accepted reconstruction of Lapita
economy as background to our effort to understand Ancestral Polynesian
systems.
Archaeobotanical evidence from Far Western Lapita sites in the Mussau
and Arawe Islands now backs up POC lexical reconstructions for an
extensive range of crop plants (Kirch 1997a:203±12), indicating that, when
Lapita populations expanded into Remote Oceania c. 3200 BP, they
transported a full roster of oceanic crops, including such staples as taro, yam,
bananas, and breadfruit. Indeed, the very ability to transfer such systems of
horticultural production was arguably an essential aspect of the successful
Lapita colonization strategy. Although the numbers of faunal remains of pig,
dog, and chicken are typically low in Lapita sites, this essential triad of
domestic animals was also a part of the Lapita colonists' baggage.
That Lapita populations extensively exploited the reefs, lagoons, and open
sea adjacent to their coastal settlements has never been in doubt, for Lapita
sites typically constitute rich deposits of mollusks and ®shbones (Kirch
1997a:195±203). Inshore species such as parrot®sh, wrasses, surgeon®sh,
jacks, and trigger®sh dominate these ®shbone assemblages, but deep-water
benthic and pelagic taxa are also represented (such as groupers and tunas).
The material culture of ®shing from Lapita sites includes varieties of onepiece angling hooks, typically of Trochus or Turbo shell, and one-piece trolling
lures (Kirch 1997a: pl. 7.2, ®g. 7.1). Lapita colonists, especially in Remote
Oceania, heavily exploited natural resources which were present in abundance prior to the arrival of humans. These included the rich shell®sh and
®sh resources of previously un®shed reefs and seas, but more notably, the
diverse populations of resident landbirds and nesting seabirds.
Zooarchaeological studies of avifaunal remains from early Lapita sites,
including those in Tonga and Samoa (Steadman 1997), indicate that these
islands supported large numbers of land- and seabirds, and that Lapita
colonists extensively used these resources. However, these bird populations
were fragile and subject to rapid depletion ± often leading to local extirpation or extinction ± within a few decades or centuries of human arrival on
122
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Remote Oceanic islands (Burley 1998). In the network of islands occupied by
Ancestral Polynesians, such rich bird resources had been largely depleted by
2500 BP, the time frame of Ancestral Polynesia. While hunting birds
continued to be a minor strategy within the Ancestral Polynesian economy
(as documented below), it no longer had the quantitative importance of the
preceding Early Eastern Lapita phase.
Proto Polynesian crops
Archaeobotanical evidence for crop plants from sites that we associate with
Ancestral Polynesian communities (see Table 5.1) is limited. Carbonized
coconut shell (endocarp) has been recovered from several sites, but no other
paleoethnobotanical remains have been reported. Indirect archaeological
evidence is likewise limited, although signi®cant. Aside from shell scrapers
that may have been used to prepare vegetable foods for cooking (see
Chapter 6), several sites have yielded hammerstones and/or anvil stones,
interpreted on ethnographic analogy as nut-cracking tools (Green
1974a:269, 1974b:150; Kirch 1981; Sand 1993). Two such stones, with
deliberately pecked ®nger grips, from the Tavai site (FU-11) on Futuna, are
illustrated in Figure 5.1. Such scanty archaeological indications offer an
admittedly thin basis on which to reconstruct Ancestral Polynesian horticulture; thus, we turn to the lexical evidence.
POLLEX lists reconstructed PPN terms for at least twenty-seven species
of cultivated/domesticated plants (Table 5.1). These include three species of
aroids (Araceae), ®ve species of yams (Dioscorea spp.), two major kinds of
bananas (Eumusa and Australimusa), breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis), and a wide
range of other tuber, fruit, nut, ®ber, medicinal, narcotic, and economically
useful plants. Two points must be stressed: (1) all of these plants have no wild
relatives or ancestors within the Polynesian region, and are thus adventive,
having been transported there by humans (Yen 1971, 1973); and, (2) the
denotata for the cognates in daughter Polynesian languages agree in virtually
all cases with the speci®c botanical identi®cations given in Table 5.1. This
set of crop terms is thus an extremely robust case of prime semantic agreement
(see Chapter 2); elaborate semantic histories are not required. All of these
taxa were transported by humans into the Polynesian homeland, and the
robust reconstruction of their etyma to the PPN level leaves no doubt that
they were a part of the Ancestral Polynesian plant world.
Nonetheless, a few terms in Table 5.1 bear further discussion. One of
these is the doublet set *mei/*kulu for breadfruit, a matter that has attracted
attention with respect to possible origins of this major Polynesian tree crop
(Langdon 1989; Marck n.d.). Both terms are robust PPN reconstructions,
but their precise meanings are uncertain. According to Marck (n.d.), it is
Subsistence
123
Table 5.1. Proto Polynesian crops
Crop type
name/gloss
Staple starch
Taro, Colocasia esculenta
Giant taro, Alocasia macrorrhiza
Swamp taro, Cyrtosperma chamissonis
Greater yam, Dioscorea alata
Yam variety (prob. D. alata)
Lesser yam, Dioscorea esculenta
Banana (Section Eumusa)
Breadfruit, Artocarpus altilis
Fruits, nuts
Coconut, Cocos nucifera
Tahitian chestnut, Inocarpus fagiferus
Vi apple, Spondias dulcis
Malay apple, Syzygium malaccensis
Pommetia pinnata
Indian almond, Terminalia catappa
Minor food crops
Sugarcane, Saccharum of®cinarum
Cordyline fruticosum
Turmeric, Curcuma longa
Pueraria lobata
Thorned-stem yam, Dioscorea
nummularia
Five-®ngered yam, Dioscorea
pentaphylla
Bitter yam, Dioscorea bulbifera
Sago, Metroxylon spp. (thatch ?)
Banana (Section Australimusa)
Polynesian arrowroot, Tacca
leontopetaloides
Medicinal, narcotic, other uses
Kava, piper methysticum
Morinda citrifolia
Broussonetia papyrifera
Pandanus spp.
Proto
Oceanic
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
*talo(s)
*piRaq
*(m)bulaka
*qupi
*talo
*kape
*pulaka
*qu®
*kasokaso
*qu®-lei
*futi
*kulu
*mei
28
22
15
29
6
5
21
20
13
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
*niuR
*qipil
*quRis
*kapika
*tawan
*talise
*niu
*i®
*wii
*ka®ka
*tawa
*talie
29
19
16
19
14
16
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
*topu
*jiRi
*laqia
*too
*tii
*ango
*aka
*palai
13
23
10
10
10
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
*pilita
8
3
3
*soi
*qato
15
23
3
3
3
*pudi
*kuluR
*Rabia,
*qatop
*joRaga
*kawa
*nonum
*padran
*soaka
*maasoaqa
*kawa
*nonu
*siapo
*fara
3
3
3
3
4
8
24
25
11
30
P2
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
PSA
3
3
3
3
3
POC reconstructions primarily from Ross (1996a). PPN reconstructions from Biggs
(POLLEX).
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
124
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Fig. 5.1
Cobbles with ®nger-grips from site FU-11, Futuna, interpreted as hammers
for opening hard-shelled nuts, such as Canarium (after Kirch 1975: ®g. 26).
unlikely that this pair of terms indicated `tree' and `fruit' respectively, or that
they referred to particular varieties. We think, however, that *kulu was the
generic term.1
Another vexing word is PPN *qato, whose reconstruction depends upon a
small set of cognates con®ned to seven Polynesian languages and a number
of extra-Polynesian witnesses (Dutton 1994:113±14). POLLEX gives the
PPN gloss as `thatch,' and the PNP gloss as `sago palm.' Dutton's larger data
set, however, indicates that the various glosses in Oceanic languages, while
often referring to thatch, also have `sago (Metroxylon spp.)' as a primary
referent. The large leaves of Metroxylon palms are widely used throughout
Melanesia for thatching. For Ancestral Polynesia, the issue is complicated
because Tonga±Samoa represents the easternmost limits of the natural
distribution of Metroxylon palms in the Paci®c (Barrau 1959; Yen 1973:82;
Kirch 1994a:90±91). A semantic history hypothesis is required. We propose
that the PPN term *qato referred both to thatch and to the sago palm whose
leaves had been used as the primary thatching material by the Lapita
peoples.2
Subsistence
125
Further scrutinizing Table 5.1, we can infer some core aspects of Ancestral
Polynesian horticulture. First, the major ®eld crops dominating ethnographically attested Polynesian cultivation systems were all present, including the
two prime starch-staples, taro (Colocasia esculenta) and the greater yam
(Dioscorea alata). The sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is conspicuously absent,
because it almost certainly was introduced from South America into Eastern
Polynesia at a later time (Yen 1974; Hather and Kirch 1991). Aside from
taro and yam, other important ®eld crops include the giant taro (Alocasia
macrorrhiza), and the Eumusa hybrid bananas. Equally notable are the fruitand nut-yielding tree crops. These include breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) ± later
to become a fundamental staple in the subsistence economies of some
Eastern Polynesian archipelagos (e.g., Marquesas, Society Islands) ± as well
as coconut (Cocos nucifera), Tahitian chestnut (Inocarpus fagiferus), vi apple
(Spondias dulcis), Indian almond (Canarium indicum), and others. These tree
crops put Ancestral Polynesian horticulture squarely in line with a widespread Oceanic pattern of arboriculture, which both Yen (1990, 1991) and
Kirch (1997) have argued was a component of early Lapita (and, in Near
Oceania, probably pre-Lapita) subsistence systems. Noteworthy also are the
psychoactive plant Piper methysticum, the medicinally important Morinda
citrifolia, and the paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) which yielded bark
essential for bark cloth (see Chapter 7). Another plant of interest is turmeric,
Curcuma longa, which through a complex process of processing and extraction
from its tuber yields both an orange-colored foodstuff and a bright orangered dye (*renga). The dye has widespread ritual signi®cance in Polynesian
societies; we discuss its possible importance in Ancestral Polynesian societies
in Chapter 9.
PPN crop plant words include those for several taxa that while adventive
± and therefore doubtless purposefully introduced into the Polynesian homeland ± were rarely if ever cultivated in historic times, according to
ethnohistoric and ethnographic sources. These include the vining tuber
plant Pueraria lobata (a New Guinea domesticate), and the minor yam species
Dioscorea pentaphylla and D. bulbifera. Barrau (1965b) listed these in his
enumeration of ``witnesses of the past,'' hypothetical components of former
Oceanic cultivation systems. As Kirch observes for Futuna (1994a:100±1),
these plants are ubiquitous in second growth, suggesting once more extensive
planting by humans. Also occurring with Pueraria and the Dioscorea yams in
second-growth vegetation are the Polynesian arrowroot (Tacca leontopetaloides),
and the ti or ki (Cordyline fruticosum) (ethnographically these two are also
known to have been planted).
The reconstruction of the proto-lexemes for these plants certainly does
not tell us all there is to know regarding their role in the Ancestral Polynesian
cultivation systems of two and one-half millennia ago. In the case of these
126
Rediscovering Hawaiki
``witnesses of the past,'' systemic ethnobotanical patterns of distribution
provide the basis for a hypothesis that these plants ± even though in historic
times con®ned to a peripheral role in Polynesian food production systems (as
essentially wild, famine foods) ± once occupied more important positions as
minor cultigens. This hypothesis may be directly tested as archaeobotanical
methods for studying ancient cropping systems are further developed in the
Paci®c.
Ancestral Polynesian horticulture
The lexical reconstruction of PPN crop plant names provides only a ®rst
step, for an agricultural system consists of far more than the biotic basis of
cultivation. Table 5.2 presents sixteen PPN terms associated with horticultural practices, and their probable meanings. For some of these terms,
semantic reconstruction is unproblematic. Such a case of prime semantic
agreement is PPN *maqala, which we gloss as `garden, cultivated ®eld, or
swidden.' Every one of the thirteen modern witnesses of this term listed in
POLLEX carries a gloss indicating `garden' or `cultivation,' leaving little
doubt that this was also the semantic value of the PPN word. The case for
PPN *talu is less clear-cut, because glosses for cognates range from `weeds
that have been cut and laid on the ground' (RAR) to `land out of cultivation'
(NIU). Given that the meaning `weeds' is at the core of most glosses, we
suggest that the PPN term referred to `weedy growth' or `fallow land,' and as
contrasted with cultivated land (*maqala). This interpretation is bolstered by
the higher-level semantic reconstructions of PMP *talun and POC *talu(n) as
`fallow land' (Osmond 1998:118). The term *mahuku is widely attested in
Polynesian languages, often glossed as `grass' or `sedge.' However, in several
Polynesian languages there is also a common reference to grass that either
grows in a swidden plot, or is used for mulch. Thus for *mahuku, our
hypothesis is that the PPN term had a semantic extension indicating the use
of grasses for mulch on ®eld crops such as taro and yam. A ®nal word
referring to plantings is *qulu, which indicated a grove of trees. That this
term did not simply refer to `forest' is suggested by the contrasting term
*wao, referring to `primary or climax forest,' uncleared by humans. Given
the presence of several species of tree crops in Ancestral Polynesia (e.g.,
breadfruit, coconut, Tahitian Chestnut, and others), *qulu presumably
referred at least in part to planted stands of economic trees.
Table 5.2 also lists words relating to horticultural activities such as
planting and weeding. Comparative ethnography reveals that some form of
dibble stick (sometimes incorrectly referred to as a ``digging'' stick) was the
main agricultural implement throughout Polynesia (e.g., Handy 1940; Kirch
1994a:116, 143±44). Not surprisingly, this wooden artifact is attested by a
Subsistence
127
Table 5.2. Proto Polynesian terms associated with horticulture
Category/probable gloss
(PPN interstage)
Garden/land
Garden, cultivated ®eld, swidden
Fallow land, weeds
Forest, land never cultivated
Grove of trees
Grass (mulch, overgrown swidden)
Gardening activities
Propagation material for root crops
(seed yam, taro)
Mound of earth (for yam,
tuber planting)
Cultivate soil with a digging stick
Dig
Digging stick
To weed, clear land of weeds
To weed
Turn over, lever up, as soil with
stick when weeding
Harvesting
Crop, especially of breadfruit
To harvest
To gather or pick (especially fruit)
Proto
Oceanic
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
*maqala
*talun
*wawo
*maqala
*talu
*wao
*qulu
*mahuku
12
15
26
15
24
3
3
3
3
3
*(m)pula(m)pula
*(m)puki
*pulapula
18
3
*puke
19
3
*langa
*keli
*koso
*qau-talu
*wele
*sua
5
31
19
6
16
*fuata
*utu
*toli
6
7
15
*koso
*sual
P2
PSA
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
PPN reconstructions from Biggs (POLLEX).
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
robust reconstruction of PPN *koso. A term for `dig' is also known (*keli ),
although this may have referred to digging in general, not con®ned solely to
agricultural practices.3 Another term, *langa, is more weakly attested with
re¯exes in ®ve languages (TON and four NP languages), and seems to have
indexed the breaking up of soil for gardening, using a dibble stick.
As Yen (1973) observed, a key aspect of Oceanic agricultural systems is
vegetative propagation. Thus we have PPN *pulapula, with a robust meaning
of `seed yams, seedling propagation material.' Another term, *puke, clearly
has a semantic base referent of `small earth mound,' and the speci®c
128
Rediscovering Hawaiki
reference to yam planting mounds in several Polynesian cognates makes for
a likely semantic history that the PPN term referred to loosened heaps of
earth for the insertion of seed yams, *pulapula. This correlates well with the
lunar calendar and its articulation with a seasonal sequence of yam planting,
and the making of mounds in which to plant yams (*fakaafu), discussed
further in Chapter 9.
In swidden cultivation systems, weeding is a critical and labor-consuming
activity; not surprisingly then, for PPN we have three words referring to
such activity. *Qau-talu is an interesting compound term, incorporating *talu,
which we earlier noted referred to weeds, and probably to `fallow land' as
well; *qau-talu seems to have meant `to weed' or `weeding.' There is also the
robustly attested word *wele, which POLLEX glosses as `weed, clear away
scrub, weeds.'4 The third term is PPN *sua, with roots in POC. The
consistent meaning here is the action of turning over or levering up, but
there is a regularly recurring connotation of gardening and weeding action
as well (as in TON huo, `clear of weeds,' or TIK suua, `clear away brush
wood, weeds').
Finally, a few PPN terms relate to the harvest of crops. A term for the crop
itself, which may have referred primarily (or perhaps exclusively) to breadfruit, is *fuata. *Utu likely referred to the action of harvesting root crops,
especially taro and yams, as these are the meanings of its cognates. In
contrast, *toli has a probable reconstructed gloss of `pick, pluck, or gather,'
as in the case of tree crops, and a forked-pole device for plucking fruit is
reconstructed as PPN *lohu.
The PPN reconstructions given in Tables 5.1 and 5.2 thus greatly extend
our picture of Ancestral Polynesian horticulture. What comes through is
nothing less than a succinct encapsulation of two of the most prevalent
subsystems of Oceanic horticulture: shifting cultivation and arboriculture (Barrau
1965a, 1965b; Yen 1973). Is there any direct archaeological evidence to
support (or, to contradict) this interpretation of Ancestral Polynesian horticulture? Unfortunately, neither shifting cultivation nor arboriculture would
be expected to leave the sorts of material traces ± such as permanent ®eld
boundaries or terraces ± associated with more intensive forms of cultivation.
And we have no hint in the lexical reconstructions of any horticultural tools
that might survive in normal archaeological contexts. Shifting cultivation,
however, may result in alterations to a landscape, especially in steep volcanic
terrain where the removal of forest cover accelerates erosion and leads to
deposition of colluvium or alluvium in valley bottoms. In Futuna, there is
evidence from both the Tavai and Asipani sites for substantial slope erosion
and valley deposition (with sediments incorporating charcoal, indicating
burning) early in the ®rst millennium AD (Kirch 1994a:219±26). On
Tutuila, cultivation of hillslopes in the Aoa Valley led to a similar sequence
Subsistence
129
of alluvial deposition between about 3000 and 2000 BP (Clark
1996:448±49; Clark and Michlovic 1996). While some prehistorians might
consider this weak evidence (e.g., Leach 1999), it is consistent with our
interpretation based on the linguistic data.
A ®nal aspect of Ancestral Polynesian food production is animal husbandry, intimately integrated with agricultural systems throughout Oceania
(Yen 1973). The classic Oceanic triad of domestic animals ± pig, dog, and
chicken (jungle fowl) ± are all well attested for PPN with lexical reconstructions of *puaka, *kulii, and *moa, respectively. What linguistics cannot tell us,
however, is the relative importance of these animals in Ancestral Polynesian
economies, and here archaeology comes to the rescue. Bones of all three
animals are present in at least some Ancestral Polynesian sites. Pig bones
and teeth have been excavated at such sites as Falemoa and Potusa in
Samoa, NT-93 and ±100 on Niuatoputapu, and To.6 on Tongatapu. Dog
bones are less well represented, but based on their presence in NT-90 dogs
were probably present. Chicken bones were particularly well represented at
the To`aga site on Ofu Island (Nagaoka 1993: table 13.20; Steadman
1993b), as well as in the Niuatoputapu and Tongatapu sites. However, the
relatively small numbers of pig bones from Ancestral Polynesian sites (in
contrast, for example, to their presence in some later Polynesian sites)
suggest that pork was not a commonly consumed food at this early time
period. Thus, archaeological evidence quali®es and constrains the range of
potential interpretations of the lexical evidence: while the Ancestral Polynesians were familiar with pigs, dogs, and chickens, these were all minor
aspects of diet, far less important quantitatively than marine foods.
What about variability in Ancestral Polynesian horticultural and food
production systems? As noted in Chapter 3, there was never a single,
uni®ed Ancestral Polynesian society; rather, we envision a network of
related communities dispersed over several islands and archipelagos. Given
linguistic evidence for dialectical variation within PPN (Pawley 1996a), we
anticipate similar variation in other aspects of culture and behavior,
including horticulture. But hard evidence for variation can be dif®cult to
obtain, and at this time we can only point to some possibilities. On the
larger volcanic high islands such as Futuna, `Uvea, and Samoa, we would
predict that Ancestral Polynesian horticulture emphasized shifting cultivation, given ample forested land and rich volcanic soils. In contrast, on the
small coral islands of the Tongan group (as in Ha`apai) the possibilities for
®eld cultivation were more restricted. There, arboriculture (especially of
breadfruit) was more likely to have been essential to the establishment and
maintenance of permanent communities. These are only conjectures, but
we raise them to make explicit our contention that signi®cant variability
must have operated even within the overall systemic economic pattern of
130
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Ancestral Polynesia. Testing these propositions will challenge future
archaeologists.
The question of irrigation and intensi®cation
Those familiar with Polynesian ethnobotany may wonder why we have
made no reference to irrigation, or to water control technology, as part of
Ancestral Polynesian food production; certainly, irrigation and/or drainage
systems are widespread in contact-period Polynesian societies (see Kirch
1984a:168±76, table 19). Indeed, some scholars have argued that irrigation
technology was a part of an ancient set of agricultural practices diffused
from Southeast Asia by the Austronesian-speaking peoples (e.g., Spencer and
Hale 1961; Spriggs 1982, 1990). If their hypothesis is correct, irrigation
should also have been a part of Ancestral Polynesian food production.
This question was taken up by Kirch and Lepofsky (1993), who reviewed
both archaeological and historical linguistic evidence for irrigation in
Polynesia, and to a limited extent elsewhere in tropical Oceania. They found
that archaeological evidence for terracing, canals, or other forms of water
control in several Polynesian islands and archipelagos (Futuna, Samoa,
Hawai`i, Society Islands, Marquesas, and Mangaia) consistently points to the
local elaboration of such systems during the later time periods of island
sequences. In Futuna, for example, irrigation systems (which now dominate
the agricultural landscape in Sigave District) ``did not become a major part
of the agricultural landscape until about the middle of the ®rst millennium
AD,'' 1,500 years after initial human settlement (Kirch and Lepofsky
1993:187). In the Hawaiian Islands, despite limited (and contested) evidence
for some early water control, extensive archaeological evidence con®rms
that large-scale canal-fed, pond®eld irrigation began to develop during the
Expansion Period (after AD 1100) and continued on into the early historic
period (Kirch and Sahlins 1992, vol. 2). Similar scenarios obtain in other
island groups.
The historical linguistic evidence is also compelling. Unlike the case for
shifting cultivation and arboriculture, for which there are many well-attested
lexical reconstructions not only in PPN but also extending back at least to
POC, there are no such terms for irrigation.5 Rather, we have two discrete
geographic sets of irrigation terms, one centered in the Fiji±Western
Polynesian region, and one in Eastern Polynesia. To quote Kirch and
Lepofsky:
Only after the breakup of PPN do we have evidence for the innovation of terms for
`pond®eld' or `wet taro ®eld,' a possible Proto-Samoic-Outlier term *fusi in the
western Polynesian region, and a Proto-Marquesan term *roki in eastern Polynesia.
Such a pattern is consonant with a hypothesis of the independent innovation or
Subsistence
131
development of complex pond®eld irrigation or raised-bed cultivation in these two
regions. (1993:196)6
Thus both archaeological and historical linguistic evidence militates
against the hypothesis that the Ancestral Polynesian cultivators practiced
intensive forms of water control for taro cultivation, although we strongly
suspect that they may well have manipulated swampy environments (by
means of drainage) for taro planting. This is consistent with our view that
landesque capital 7 intensive forms of agricultural production tend to arise in
tandem with the growth of large, dense populations, and in conjunction with
various sociopolitical spurs to surplus production, such as competition
between chie¯y lines (Kirch 1994a). In the small-scale communities that we
infer for Ancestral Polynesia, where sociopolitical structures were heterarchical rather than hierarchical (see Chapter 8), such forms of intensi®cation
would be problematic.
To aver that the Ancestral Polynesian horticulturalists did not practice
landesque capital forms of water control, does not mean that they were
ignorant of such basic ethnobiological knowledge as the propensity of
Colocasia esculenta to thrive in hydromorphic soils. Yen (1973:70) argued that
such basic concepts are ancient, and the Ancestral Polynesians would
presumably have made use of natural swampy environments when these
were present, and at times even modi®ed these through drainage. But the
development of large-scale terracing, canal networks, and the like were
technological elaborations that would accompany much later stages in the
transformation of Polynesian societies.
Fishing and hunting: the archaeological evidence
The triangulation method need not privilege any particular line of evidence.
In the case of Ancestral Polynesian horticulture, we emphasized the PPN
lexical evidence, using comparative ethnobotany to inform our speci®c
semantic histories. Turning to marine exploitation (®shing, littoral gathering)
and hunting ± that is, food extraction rather than production ± we ®nd
substantial archaeological evidence in the form of material culture and faunal
remains. We therefore commence with these archaeological data, turning
thereafter to relevant ethnoarchaeological and comparative ethnographic
evidence for Polynesian ®shing strategies, and only last to the linguistic
evidence as an independent means of cross-checking our interpretations.
All archaeological sites ascribable to the Ancestral Polynesian phase
consist of ``open'' sites (see Table 3.2). The coastal middens typically have
calcareous sediments with excellent preservation of stone, bone, and shell,
but little preservation of vegetative materials unless these were thoroughly
carbonized. However, even a cursory perusal of the Polynesian ethnographic
132
Rediscovering Hawaiki
literature reveals that the majority of material culture items associated with
®shing and hunting were manufactured from wood, ®ber, string, rope, and
other highly perishable materials (see Chapter 7). Only a few items, such as
angling hooks made from shell or bone, or harpoon heads, would be
expected to survive for two millennia or more in open sites in tropical
Polynesia. In the Ancestral Polynesian archaeological record, we have been
dealt a rather poor hand.
One-piece ®shhooks made of shell are hardly ubiquitous, but they have
been recovered from several Ancestral Polynesian sites, in numbers suf®cient
to demonstrate that angling hooks were a regular component of ®shing
technology. The largest and best-documented assemblage comes from
To`aga, on Ofu Island (American Samoa), with twenty-eight whole or
fragmentary hooks (Kirch 1993b:160±62), as well as additional prepared
tabs and manufacture debris. Made from Turbo setosus shell, they are largely
of the ``rotating'' variety, with some variation in shank and head form
(Figure 5.2). More rarely, as at Niuatoputapu (site NT-100; Kirch 1988:204,
®g. 124c), small one-piece hooks were made from pearl shell (Pinctada sp.).
Tools for making hooks, including Acropora branch coral ®les, Porites coral
abraders, and sea-urchin spine ®les (made from the spines of Heterocentrotus
mammillatus) are also known from To`aga and several other Ancestral
Polynesian sites (see Chapter 7).
Far less conclusive is archaeological evidence for other kinds of ®shing
technology, such as trolling or netting. Janetski (1980a: ®g. 43, r) reports a
possible trolling-lure preform made of Conus shell from the Potusa site in
Samoa. Direct evidence of netting is also elusive, as nets were made of
perishable line and wooden ¯oats, with heavy weights as the only materials
likely to survive in archaeological contexts. Some double-perforated Cypraea
shells illustrated by Janetski (1980a: ®g. 44) from the Potusa site may have
functioned as net weights.8 From his Tongatapu sites, Poulsen (1987:190,
table 87) reports numerous ``net sinkers'' of Anadara shell, and a single stone
net sinker from site To.6 (1987: pl. 77.10).9 From Niuatoputapu, Kirch
(1988:204±5) describes large Turbo shells with a perforation in the body
whorl, which could have functioned as net weights.
A ®nal category of archaeologically attested ®shing gear is the compound
octopus lure, which from ethnographic examples combined a stone weight
with ``caps'' of Cypraea-shell dorsa, all lashed to a wooden or ®ber shaft, and
lowered to the ocean ¯oor with a line (Hiroa 1930). Such prepared Cypraeashell caps have been found at Ancestral Polynesian sites, including those on
Tongatapu (Poulsen 1987:188±89, table 87, pl. 67.6), the To`aga site (Kirch
1993b:162), and the Falemoa and Potusa sites ( Janetski 1980a). The ``coffee
bean'' shape of stone sinker (lacking a groove) is evidenced at the Va-1 site in
Samoa (Green 1969:134±35).
Subsistence
Fig. 5.2
133
Turbo shell ®shhooks from the To`aga site (after Kirch 1993b: ®g. 11.2).
In sum, direct archaeological evidence con®rms the presence of small,
one-piece angling ®shhooks made of Turbo setosus and (more rarely) of pearl
shell, but is more tentative for trolling hooks, nets, and the octopus-lure rig.
Not only are sample sizes small, but some archaeological objects may have
had more than one function. With this in view, we turn to the zooarchaeological evidence.
Ancestral Polynesian vertebrate faunal assemblages are dominated by
®shbones.10 At To`aga, for example, ®shbones constitute 94 percent of the
total vertebrate fauna. Marine turtle (Chelonia mydas) bones are also well
represented, but marine mammals (typically porpoise) are rare. Fishbones
typically are dominated by a suite of inshore or reef-dwelling taxa, especially
in the families Scaridae, Lethrinidae, Serranidae, Acanthuridae, Lutjanidae,
134
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Holocentridae, and Diodontidae. Shark teeth and the distinctive vertebrae
of elasmobranchs (sharks and rays) occur in small numbers. Pelagic ®sh,
usually caught by trolling, are extremely rare in the analyzed assemblages,
although Scombridae bones were present at To`aga and Niuatoputapu.
These ®shbone assemblages tell us that Ancestral Polynesian ®shermen
targeted a range of inshore microhabitats including fringing reefs, lagoons,
and the immediate over-reef benthic habitat, but ventured out to the open
sea more rarely.
These faunal assemblages leave no doubt that Ancestral Polynesians
extensively harvested the invertebrate resources of reef and lagoon, independently con®rming a deep knowledge of such marine life suggested by the
many lexical reconstructions for shell®sh (Pawley 1997; see Chapter 4).
Coastal middens with good preservation are all marked by high densities of
gastropod and bivalve mollusks. On Niuatoputapu, molluskan shells in sites
NT-93 and 100 averaged 4.76 and 8.32 kilograms of shell per cubic meter of
deposit (Kirch 1988: table 45), while at To`aga more than 168 kilograms of
shell midden were recovered from thirty 1-meter test units. Among the
commonly gathered taxa were trochids, Tridacna clams, cones, cowries,
muricids, and nerites. Sea-urchins are also well represented in these
Ancestral Polynesian middens.
Faunal evidence for gathering or hunting non-marine food resources is
more limited. Birds, the principal category of terrestrial vertebrates naturally
occurring on Oceanic islands, not surprisingly dominate the non-marine
faunal assemblages. However, most island sequences show a major decline in
the taking of resident landbirds and nesting seabirds from the earliest Lapita
colonization phase to the later Ancestral Polynesian period (Steadman 1989,
1997). Yet wild birds do occur regularly in Ancestral Polynesian sites. At
To`aga, some seabirds (e.g., Puf®nus spp., Pterodroma spp.) are represented,
along with a few landbirds (Steadman 1993b). A similar picture obtains for
Niuatoputapu (Kirch 1988:221). Other wild food resources include indigenous fruit bats (Pteropus spp.), and an iguanid lizard (Brachylophus sp.), both
of which occur rarely in Ancestral Polynesian sites. The lizard, it would
appear, had been hunted to extinction by the end of the Ancestral Polynesian
period.11
In short, direct archaeological evidence indicates that Ancestral Polynesian communities fully exploited the invertebrate and vertebrate resources of
the littoral and inshore zones, including ®shes, marine turtles, sharks and
rays, mollusks, and sea-urchins. The rare appearance of mackerel or tuna
bones (Scombridae) suggests that while Ancestral Polynesians knew how to
capture pelagic ®sh, they rarely did so, preferring to concentrate on the
more abundant and readily obtainable inshore ®shes such as parrot®sh,
jacks, tangs, squirrel®sh, groupers, and the like. They hunted fruit bats and
Subsistence
135
birds (primarily seabirds), but the contribution of these wild, terrestrial foods
to their diet was relatively minor (unlike in the immediately preceding
Lapita period, prior to the extirpation or extinction of many species). As to
the material technology of ®shing and hunting, the archaeological evidence
is more restricted, with angling hooks as the only ®rmly documented artifact
class. Nets, trolling gear, and the octopus rig are more problematically
indicated.
Polynesian ®shing and hunting: comparative
ethnography and ethnoarchaeology
Despite a long tradition of detailed technical studies of Polynesian material
culture used for ®shing (e.g., Beasley 1928; Hiroa 1930; Anell 1955), there
have been few studies of actual ®shing practices within a traditional
ethnographic context, yet such studies are essential for linking material
culture with behavioral practices. As a part of their ®eld research on
Niuatoputapu in 1976, Kirch and Dye (1979; Dye 1983) carried out an
ethnoarchaeological study of ®shing, drawing several important implications
for prehistoric Polynesian ®shing: (1) the reef ¯at and reef edge are by far the
most intensively exploited microhabitats; (2) a mere thirty ®sh taxa ± all reef
®sh ± dominate the catches; (3) ``the greatest elaboration of ®shing methods
occurs in the use of nets and hooks;'' and (4) the two most important
methods, in terms of numbers of ®sh taken, are seine-netting and nightspearing with torch (Kirch and Dye 1979:66±68). They noted that of ®sh
taxa represented in Niuatoputapu archaeological sites, only two (Caranx and
Lutjanus) are regularly taken by angling (Kirch and Dye 1979: table 9). All
other taxa are caught using nets or spears, or by poisoning. Kirch and Dye
concluded that the range of ®sh represented in the Niuatoputapu middens
must have been caught using a range of ®shing strategies as diversi®ed as
those of the contemporary Niuan ®shermen, and certainly including some
kinds of netting, spearing, and poisoning techniques. Based on this ethnoarchaeological study, they argued that angling ± represented by the onepiece ®shhooks recovered archaeologically ± was a relatively minor ®shing
method. This inference would apply equally to other Ancestral Polynesian
sites, based on the range of ®sh species indicated by the faunal remains.
The comparative ethnography of Polynesian ®shing gear and ®shing
strategies reinforces this conclusion. A wide range of angling, trolling,
netting, spearing, trapping, and poisoning and other methods and associated
equipment are documented for virtually every Polynesian society. We will
draw attention to a few examples. In Table 5.3 we plot the distribution of
several kinds of ®shing methods across a representative range of societies
situated within the tropical core of Polynesia. The widespread distribution of
136
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 5.3. Distribution of ®shing methods in tropical Polynesia
Fishing
strategy
Southern
Tonga Samoa Futuna Cooks Pukapuka
Groping
X
Shark
noosing
Spearing
X
CoconutX
frond sweeps
Torch ®shing X
Octopus lure
Poisoning
X
Walled weirs
Woven traps X
Dip nets
X
Scoop nets
X
Casting nets ?
Seine nets
X
Flying-®sh
?
nets
One-piece
X
angling hooks
Trolling lure X
hooks
Tahiti Tuamotu Mangareva
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
?
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
?
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Ethnographic sources: Tonga (Niuatoputapu, Dye 1983); Samoa (Hiroa 1930); Futuna
(Burrows 1936); Southern Cooks (Hiroa 1944); Pukapuka (Beaglehole and Beaglehole 1938);
Tahiti (Handy 1932); Tuamotu (Emory 1975); Mangareva (Hiroa 1938).
many of the techniques listed in Table 5.3, such as groping, spearing,
poisoning, torch ®shing, the use of coconut-leaf sweeps, stone-walled weirs,
seine nets, angling, and trolling, offers compelling evidence that these
methods are not independent adaptations, but rather are shared retentions of an
ancestral set of ®shing strategies. This conclusion is reinforced by detailed
comparisons of the ®shing gear itself (as made for example by Hiroa [1930,
1944] in his classic material culture studies), which display common
technical features. A few methods with more spotty distributions may also be
shared retentions (such as some form of octopus lure ®shing), although in
these cases the possibility of independent invention becomes stronger.
Comparative ethnographic evidence for Polynesian hunting indicates that
this was focused largely on birds and fruit bats, although Burrows (1936:145)
describes the taking of large coconut robber crabs (Birgus latro) on Alo®
Subsistence
137
Island. The Beagleholes described a range of methods for catching birds on
Pukapuka (1938:73±76), including netting, hand catching, striking, use of a
lure (for tropic birds), noosing and snaring, lime catching, and use of a
fowling line; similar methods are documented for many other Polynesian
societies. Steadman (1997) reviews the Polynesian ethnographic literature
pertaining to birds, including hunting methods, and the various uses to
which captured birds were put (for food, feathers, bones, as pets). These
comparative ethnographic data make it clear that the exploitation of birds is
also a basic component of Polynesian subsistence, thus amplifying our
archaeological data of birdbones in Ancestral Polynesian sites.
Applying our methods of triangulation, comparative ethnography and
ethnoarchaeology have allowed us to modify and elaborate the narrow
archaeological reconstruction of Ancestral Polynesian ®shing and hunting.
The wide range of inshore ®sh species represented in the prehistoric
middens must have been taken not only by angling, but by a much broader
range of ®shing strategies. Despite slim direct archaeological evidence for
netting or other techniques, such methods clearly were a part of the
Ancestral Polynesian ®shing repertoire. Angling was practiced, and we know
that simple one-piece hooks were made primarily from Turbo shell. But nets
(seine and other types), traps, sweeps, spears, torches, and other apparatus
made from perishable materials must have been familiar sights in Ancestral
Polynesian communities, given the broad distributions for these items across
the later societies of tropical Polynesia. With such hypotheses and reconstructions independently generated by archaeology and comparative ethnography, we turn lastly to the historical linguistic evidence.
Fishing strategies: the lexical evidence
Table 5.4 lists twenty-six PPN lexical reconstructions and their probable
glosses, all related to ®shing or associated activities and knowledge. The ®rst
subset relates to ®shing strategies, as these would have been known to a
*tautahi, or `sea master.' The glosses in eight Polynesian languages for re¯exes
of this PPN word favor a reconstructed meaning of `master ®sherman,' but
expertise in handling canoes is also indicated (Pawley and Pawley 1994). Of
course, the two kinds of expertise logically go together. A term re¯ected in
almost every Polynesian language, and which can also be reconstructed back
to POC, is *faangota, `to gather seafood on the reef ' (see Clark 1991).
Semantic agreements for re¯exes of *faangota are close, making this a case of
prime semantic agreement. Another is PPN *sii, `to ®sh with a line.'
The PPN word *tili requires a semantic history hypothesis, for its modern
witnesses carry meanings that, while frequently referring to the throwing or
casting of a hand net, also may simply mean `to throw' or `cast.' Eight out of
138
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 5.4. Proto Polynesian terms associated with marine exploitation
Category/probable gloss
(PPN interstage)
Proto
Oceanic
Fishing strategies
Expert in seafaring and associated
skills; master ®sherman
To obtain seafood by ®shing or
*pa9oda
hunting on the reef
To ®sh with a line
To cast, throw, ®sh with a casting net
To ®sh at night with torches; torch *damaR
To catch ®sh by use of poison
To encircle, surround (as in ®shing)
Fishing equipment
Fishhook (angling)
Trolling lure, trolling ®shhook
Fishing rod
Cord, especially ®shing line
Shrub (Pipturus sp.) used to
manufacture cord
Spear
Fish trap
Fishing basket
Nets and netting
Net (generic term)
Mesh of net
Float of a net
Float of a ®shing net
Netting needle or shuttle
Net gauge
Kind of hand net
Kind of net made from coconut
fronds
Fish poison plants
Shrub (Tephrosia purpurea) used for
®sh poison
Creeper used to poison ®sh
Coastal tree (Barringtonia asiatica)
yielding ®sh poison
*paya
*apon
*sao
*kupega
*mata
*qutong
*sika
*putu
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
P2
PSA
3
3
*tau-tahi
8
*faangota
23
3
3
*sii
*tili
*rama
*qau-kawa
*liko
22
18
29
4
8
3
3
3
3
3
*mataqu
*paa
*ma-tila
*afo
*qolongaa
17
19
10
21
10
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
*tao
*fanga
*qora
24
7
5
3
3
3
3
*kupenga
*mata
*uto
*futa
*sika
*qafa
*tili
*rau
25
17
15
2
21
6
5
14
3
3
3
3
*kawa-susu
8
3
3
*kawa-sasa
*futu
4
22
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
PPN reconstructions from Biggs (POLLEX).
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
Subsistence
139
the nineteen recorded witnesses have some reference to ®shing, and these
are widely dispersed geographically. It seems more parsimonious that the
semantic reference to ®shing has been lost in the other cases, rather than to
posit an unlikely conversion of a general term `to throw' on the speci®c
action of throw-netting. We thus concur with POLLEX in the reconstruction
of the PPN meaning of *tili as `cast, throw, ®sh with a casting net.'
One of the most remarkable scenes in traditional Polynesia is night-time
®shing on the reef or sea beyond the reef edge with the use of coconut-frond
torches. Practiced on moonless nights, these torches attract certain ®sh,
especially ¯ying ®sh (Exocoetidae). Comparative ethnographic data suggest
that this widespread method is also ancient, con®rmed by the robust
reconstruction of the PPN term *rama, `®sh at night with torch (typically of
coconut fronds).' The word is re¯ected in no less than twenty-nine Polynesian languages ranging from Tonga east to Easter Island.
Also widespread in Polynesia is the practice of poisoning or stupefying ®sh
with various plant materials (e.g., Barringtonia fruit or the roots of Tephrosia)
and ± we would infer ± this was an ancient method of ®shing. Surprisingly, a
PPN term for the generic action of ®sh poisoning (*qau-kawa) is only weakly
attested on the basis of witnesses in four languages. However, given that
these range from Tonga to Hawai`i in remote Eastern Polynesia, the
reconstruction is probably sound (invoking Marck's second principle, see
Chapter 3). More widely attested words for ®sh-poison plants (*kawa-susu,
referring to Tephrosia purpurea; *kawa-sasa, possibly also Tephrosia) reinforce
this interpretation of poisoning as a lexically indexed Ancestral Polynesian
®shing strategy. The PPN term for the coastal Barringtonia asiatica tree (*futu),
whose fruit and roots are widely used to produce ®sh poison, is a case of
prime semantic agreement.
One last possible PPN ®shing term is *liko, which POLLEX glosses as
`encircle, surround.' While the generic action of encircling is the dominant
meaning in the eight languages in which this term is re¯ected, there are
three cases with a speci®c reference to ®shing (TIK, TON, and TUA). We
therefore propose a semantic history hypothesis that PPN *liko had at least a
secondary meaning of `surround ®shing,' as in certain kinds of netting, or in
the use of coconut-leaf sweeps (see further discussion below).
Another subset of PPN terms refers to ®shing gear and apparatus. The
®rst of these is *mataqu, `®shhook,' re¯ected in seventeen languages. While
glossed everywhere as `®shhook,' the ethnographic literature suggests that
the word referred speci®cally to one-piece angling hooks (whether of shell,
bone, or wood).12 This is reinforced by the contrasting term *paa, `trolling
hook, lure.' Thus the Ancestral Polynesians had distinct terms for two
functionally different sorts of ®shhooks: those for angling, and for open-sea
trolling.
140
Rediscovering Hawaiki
PPN *paa (a retention from POC) deserves further consideration; what
kind of trolling lure was used by Ancestral Polynesian ®shermen? Zooarchaeological evidence supports the occasional taking of mackerel and tuna ®sh
(Scombridae), but only a single possible lure shank (of Conus shell) has been
recovered archaeologically from an Ancestral Polynesian site. However,
excavations in older Lapita sites in Mussau, Tikopia, and the Reef/Santa
Cruz Islands have yielded a kind of one-piece trolling hook manufactured
from Trochus shell (see illustrations in Kirch and Yen 1982: ®g. 97; Kirch
1997: ®g. 7.1). We suggest that POC *paa referred to such a Trochus-shell
trolling rig, in which the point was an integral part of the one-piece hook.
The complication arises in that trolling hooks from post-Ancestral Polynesian archaeological contexts in Eastern Polynesia, and as known ethnographically from throughout Polynesia, typically have a separate shank of pearl
shell, and a point made of bone, turtle shell, pearl shell or other material
which is lashed to the shank (e.g., illustrations in Beasley 1928). The
question, then, is whether this innovation in trolling hooks arose in Ancestral
Polynesian times, or was a later innovation, after the breakup of PPN.13
Lexical evidence provides a signi®cant clue, for while a term for `lure' or
`trolling hook,' *paa, is robustly attested in PPN, a term for a separate point
is not. Our semantic history hypothesis is therefore that the single-piece,
Lapita style of trolling hook continued in use during Ancestral Polynesian
times, and was lexically indexed by the term *paa, as it had been in
preceding POC speech. Moreover, we would posit that the development of
the typical two-piece Polynesian trolling rig (with separate lure and point)
was an adaptation required by the eastward movement of Polynesians out of
the Ancestral Polynesian homeland into the archipelagos of central Eastern
Polynesia. In the latter area, the large Trochus shells needed to manufacture
one-piece trolling hooks no longer occur, whereas there is an ample supply
of pearl shell (Pinctada sp.). The morphology of pearl shell does not permit a
lure and point to be cut out of the same valve, necessitating a technological
innovation. We have perhaps dwelt overly long on the case of PPN *paa, but
it illustrates the kind of speci®c semantic histories which can be constructed,
and which is now over to archaeology to con®rm, modify, or reject.
Returning to PPN terms for ®shing gear (Table 5.4), *ma-tila has a robustly
reconstructed gloss of `®shing rod.' Rods might have been used either with
angling hooks (*mataqu) or with the *paa trolling hook as in bonito ®shing
from canoes. Lines are essential to any ®sherman, and PPN *afo can be
glossed `cord, especially ®shing line.' Witnesses in the twenty-one languages
recorded sometimes refer only generically to `cord,' but in a majority of
cases they have a semantic referent to `®shing line' making this a case of
prime semantic agreement.14 Such lines were probably most frequently
manufactured from the bark of the Pipturus argenteus shrub, PPN *qolongaa.
Subsistence
141
The spear, PPN *tao, is an ancient implement in Oceania, for it can be
reconstructed back to POC (*sao) and beyond, to the Proto MalayoPolynesian interstage (PMP *saet). Of course, spears can be hurled at many
different kinds of targets other than ®sh (including other humans!), so the
term is not unique to ®shing.
Widely distributed throughout Polynesia were walled traps or weirs
constructed on reef ¯ats, permanent ®shing facilities used in conjunction
with the falling tide. PPN *fota indexes such weirs, a very speci®c term with
common semantic agreement across ten languages. Some kind of portable,
wicker, or woven ®sh trap is more likely indicated by PPN *fanga, but the
semantic reconstruction of this term is less robust than for *fota. Finally, a
basket used by ®shermen to carry their catch is indicated by PPN *qora.
Ethnoarchaeological and comparative ethnographic evidence supports
the notion that nets were integral to Ancestral Polynesian ®shing, backed up
by lexical reconstruction of eight different PPN words for nets and netting.
The generic term was *kupenga. The term is also ancient, traceable back to
POC *kup( w)ena (Osmond 1998:213). The mesh of a net is indicated by PPN
*mata, and the ¯oat by *uto. Throughout Polynesia, nets were manufactured
with the aid of a needle or shuttle on which line was wrapped (PPN *sika). A
net gauge, used to keep the mesh consistent in size, is indicated by PPN
*qafa.15 While this word set leaves no doubt about the importance of netting,
what we lack for PPN is a series of terms for different kinds of nets. Aside
from the generic term *kupenga, there is only PPN *tili, re¯ected in ®ve
different languages, and indicating some kind of smaller hand net. 16 PPN
*rau is well attested, and probably had a meaning of `net made of coconut
fronds,' for use in sweeps or encircling ®sh on the reef (see *liko). This *rau,
however, surely was not a woven net. The absence of more speci®c net terms
is puzzling, given the wide variety of net types attested ethnographically.
Concluding remarks
In our reconstruction of Ancestral Polynesian subsistence, we have sought to
demonstrate how the triangulation method variously draws upon available
``strands and cables'' of evidence, not necessarily privileging any one
perspective. While it is true that historical linguistics is perhaps more
uniformly capable of providing insights for any given domain of culture ±
through the method of ``terminological reconstruction'' ± this does not mean
that archaeology or comparative ethnography are inevitably consigned to
play a secondary role. Moreover, we stress that there are de®nite limits to
what ``terminological reconstruction'' (Ross, Pawley, and Osmond 1998) in
and of itself can achieve.
Our point is well illustrated through a consideration of Ancestral
142
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Polynesian diet. Terminological reconstruction tells us that the PPN speakers
had words for `pig,' `dog,' and `chicken,' but beyond this indicates nothing
about the relative food values of these domesticated animals. Indeed,
historical linguists might be tempted to intuit that this triad of adventive
animals ± introduced into Remote Oceania by the initial Lapita colonizers ±
was a primary source of meat and protein. Certainly, comparative ethnographic evidence suggests that pigs, in particular, were consumed in large
quantities in some Polynesian societies, especially for feasts and ritual
occasions. Here the material, quantitative evidence of archaeology is critical,
demonstrating that the place of pigs, dogs, and chickens in the diet of
Ancestral Polynesian peoples was quite minor. Of far greater importance
were marine resources, especially inshore ®shes and invertebrates. This is
information that can be uniquely supplied by archaeology.
On the other hand, were we to restrict our reconstruction of Ancestral
Polynesian horticultural practices to what can be gleaned exclusively from
the archaeological data currently available, we would be left with a distinctly
impoverished portrait (as a reading of Leach [1999] indicates). In this
instance, terminological reconstruction supplies us with a far more robust
picture of the crop plants and agronomic practices that underpinned the
Ancestral Polynesian economy. Of course, as archaeologists, we are convinced that future work on this topic ± bringing to bear new advances in
archaeobotany ± will in time augment our reconstruction with signi®cant
material insights on crop plants and landscape modi®cations. As with the
faunal reconstructions, these in time may re®ne the picture adduced from
the historical linguistic data.
Our point is not to belittle any single evidential approach, but rather to
underscore the importance of utilizing all of the available evidence at hand.
When we con®ne ourselves to just a single line of evidence ± be this
linguistic, archaeological, ethnographic, biological, or otherwise ± we fail to
take advantage of the real power of an integrative, holistic, historical
anthropology. The arbitrary disciplinary boundaries erected by academic
programs and departments too often keep us from reaching out to see what
our colleagues' research has to tell us concerning problems of mutual
interest. Whenever this happens, history, knowledge, and understanding are
the losers.
Chapter 6
Food preparation and cuisine
There is a considerable body of knowledge connected with the art
of cooking in Tikopia . . . a considerable vocabulary of words to
describe the state of foods, as cooked and raw, thick and thin, hard
firth 1936:108
and soft.
The procurement of raw food initiates a chain of activity culminating in a
quintessentially human activity: the meal or ± at times ± the feast. As
anthropologists have long known, the transformation of the ``raw'' into the
``cooked,'' occurs in culturally speci®c ways. Cooked food is the essence of
culture, partitioned into semiotically marked categories rich with social
meaning. Archaeologists usually take their reconstructions of prehistoric
foodways no farther than the analysis of diet, augmented at times by studies
of butchering patterns and more rarely of cooking facilities, falling far short
of a true ``archaeogastronomy.''1 Yet when archaeological evidence can be
augmented and extended through triangulation within a phylogenetic
model, it is possible to go further. How much further we will demonstrate by
sketching a broad reconstruction of Ancestral Polynesian concepts of food
and taste, of cooking techniques, recipes, and storage methods. Again, we
must weave back-and-forth among independent lines of evidence: from
archaeology, comparative ethnography, and historical linguistics.
The comparative ethnography of food is a neglected topic. The classic
museum ethnographies of Polynesia cover the material culture of food
preparation, but give short shrift to food preparation methods and recipes; a
richly nuanced exception is Hiroa's (1930) treatment of Samoan cooking.
Perhaps only in Firth's classic, We, The Tikopia (1936:94±116), is the entire
process from lighting the earth oven to the consumption of the family meal
exquisitely detailed.2 Recently, Di Piazza et al. (1991) produced what may be
the ®rst true Polynesian ``cookbook,'' a study of traditional Futunan cuisine
(who but the French would pioneer this approach!). A pathbreaking
comparative study of the ``Polynesian pudding complex'' by Su`a (1987) also
combines ethnographic with archaeological and linguistic evidence. Barrau
and Peeters (1972), Yen (1975), and Cox (1980) contribute important
perspectives on food processing and food preservation.
143
144
Rediscovering Hawaiki
While historical linguists have reconstructed the names of crop plants,
®sh, and other foodstuffs (see Chapter 5), cooking per se has not received
much scrutiny. The exception is Lichtenberk's (1994) pioneering study of
POC terms for food preparation, extended by Lichtenberk and Osmond
(1998), which, although dealing with a pre-Polynesian time period, have
been of much use to us.
The PPN speakers partitioned food into two fundamental categories.
Food, as well as the act of eating, was indicated by PPN *kai, an ancient
Austronesian term, with cognates in thirty-one Polynesian languages. There
were probably marked and unmarked senses of *kai as well, for at one level it
stood in opposition to PPN *kina, `food eaten with another food as relish.'3
Thus *kai when opposed to *kina meant something like `starch staple.' This
distinction is widely expressed by contemporary Polynesians, such as the
Futunans (Kirch 1994a:191). Hocart (1929:137) observed that in Lau the
starchy ``basis of diet'' was ``commonly spoken of as `food,' or more precisely
`true food' or food `proper.''' Such distinctions ± deeply prevalent
throughout Polynesia ± were doubtless salient aspects of Ancestral Polynesian concepts of food.
The raw and the cooked: a matter of taste
Claude LeÂvi-Strauss proclaimed that the distinction between the ``raw'' and
the ``cooked'' was equivalent to the gulf between ``nature'' and ``culture.''
No doubt this is generally true, but some cultures also highly value the
consumption of certain exquisitely raw/uncooked foods. Among them are
Polynesians, who savor the taste of raw ®sh and shell®sh, marked lexically by
PPN *qota (Table 6.1).4 Indeed, this gastronomic proclivity is not con®ned to
Polynesia, and Lichtenberk (1994:269) reconstructs the word back as far as
POC (*qoda). Anyone who has spent time in traditional Polynesian societies
has experienced this aspect of their cuisine, and the ethnographic literature
con®rms the widespread practice. But in tropical localities, raw seafood just
pulled out of the lagoon can within hours go quite ``off,'' becoming
increasingly dangerous. Not surprising, then, to ®nd PPN *mae, meaning
`smell of stale seafood or ¯esh,' seafood which has gone off.
Not only are certain ¯esh foods good to eat raw, most fruits and certain
other plant foods (e.g., sugarcane, PPN *too) are also best consumed without
cooking. Thus PPN *leu, `ripe fruit,' which as in most of the PPN taste terms,
is a case of prime semantic agreement. Fruits which were green or unripe,
not yet ®t for eating, were demarcated by the contrast term *moto.5 A more
general term for ``green'' things not ready for cooking, or possibly even
under- or inadequately cooked foods, is PPN *mata, best glossed simply as
`raw.'6
Food preparation and cuisine
145
Table 6.1. Proto Polynesian terms for raw, cooked, and taste
Probable gloss
(PPN interstage)
Proto
Oceanic
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
Be raw, eat raw food; especially of
®sh and shell®sh
Ripe, to ripen, of fruit especially
Raw, unripe; especially of fruit or
plant foods
Unripe fruit, green
Cooked food
Taste, ¯avor
Sweet-tasting food
Palatable, sweet
Salty, acid tasting
Bitter tasting (intoxicating, poison)
Smell of stale seafood or ¯esh
(``off '' or ``high'')
Rotten, decayed, especially of fruit
or plant foods
Over-ripe fruit (on tree)
Over-ripe, soft (of breadfruit)
Allow breadfruit to become
over-ripe and soft
*qoda
*qota
20
3
*mataq
*leu
*mata
12
23
3
3
*moto
*moho
*suqa
*suqa-malie
*maangalo
*maqai
*kona
*mae
19
12
9
8
18
12
19
8
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
*pala
26
3
3
3
20
7
3
3
3
3
*maosak
*mpa(l,d)a
*pala-tuqu
*(m)peq(a,e) *peqe
*faka-peqe
P2
PSA
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
PPN reconstructions from Biggs (POLLEX).
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
As with seafoods, fruit or other plant products can go ``off,'' become
rotten, and un®t for eating. Several PPN lexemes cover this semantic
domain. Prime among them is *pala, `over-ripe, rotten, decayed,' re¯ected in
twenty-six Polynesian languages. If one's subsistence depended upon fruit
properly ripening on the tree ± the case especially for Ancestral Polynesian
communities dependent upon seasonal breadfruit harvests ± a speci®c term
for fruit rotting on the tree might be expected; it is evidenced in PPN *palatuqu. Re¯ected in just three Polynesian languages, we might be cautious
about this PPN reconstruction, were it not that the speci®c witnesses are far¯ung TON, TOK, and HAW. We have, moreover, PPN *peqe, `over-ripe'
applied primarily if not exclusively to breadfruit.7 This concern with the
146
Rediscovering Hawaiki
over-ripening of breadfruit comes through in yet another term, *faka-peqe,
`allow breadfruit to become over-ripe and soft,' attested in seven languages,
spanning Western and marginal Eastern Polynesia. One senses that the
Ancestral Polynesians were critically dependent ± at least at certain seasons
± upon the productions of their breadfruit groves and other tree crops. In
Chapter 5, we pointed out that on the smaller islands of the Ancestral
Polynesian homeland, arboriculture would have been a key component of
subsistence. The proliferation of terms relating to rotten and inedible fruit
(especially breadfruit) con®rms this.
As rich as PPN vocabulary was in terms for raw, uncooked, ripe, or rotten
foods, the dominant starch staples which formed the core of the Ancestral
Polynesian diet had to be thoroughly cooked. Taro, swamp taro, giant taro,
yams of various types, certain varieties of bananas, breadfruit, Pueraria,
Cordyline, and other starches are absolutely inedible without cooking. 8 Hence
PPN *moho, `cooked,' a pure-and-simple case of prime semantic agreement.9
Proto Polynesian words for taste do not end with the lexical set for `raw/
rotten/cooked.' An intriguing term is PPN *suqa, which POLLEX glosses as
`taste, ¯avor.' This word raises the question of whether the Ancestral
Polynesians had what we might label a culinary notion of `¯avor.' The term
is re¯ected in nine Polynesian languages, as well as in the YAS dialect of Fiji.
In all cases except EFU, REN, and YAS, it appears in the form of a
compound term, *suqa + malie (`good'). Clearly, there was a root PPN term,
*suqa, but one is hard-pressed to provide a robust semantic history. That in
most cases a modi®er, *malie (`good'), is added suggests that among Ancestral
Polynesian ``gourmands'' the ancient root at least allowed for the possibility
of a negative form. This possibility is attested by just a single semantic
witness, obtained by Bruce Biggs' indefatigable linguistic ®eldwork, where in
Futunan the construction su`a-veli (`bad-tasting') parallels su`a-malie. This,
some will demur, offers slim grounds on which to propose an Ancestral
Polynesian theory of taste; we prefer to believe otherwise.
Indeed, other PPN lexemes have semantic extensions referring to taste
(Table 6.1). One is PPN *maangalo, glossed as `palatable, sweet.' In opposition
to either *maangalo or the compound term *suqa-malie were such terms as
PPN *maqai, `salty or acid.' Particularly well attested is PPN *kona, `bitter
tasting or intoxicating.' Reviewing the nineteen re¯ected Polynesian terms of
*kona and their meanings, `bitter' is without doubt the core meaning, but
there are other references to `acid, sour, poisonous.'10
In the oven-house: cooking facilities and equipment
Archaeologists11 may chafe at our reconstruction of the lexemic bases for a
Polynesian gastronomy. Let us then turn to the material evidence of
Food preparation and cuisine
147
archaeology, which will take us, indeed, to the core of Ancestral Polynesian
cuisine, what Oliver (1989:281) calls the ``most distinctive of Island cooking
methods,'' the earth oven (PPN *qumu). When it comes to Polynesian
``archaeogastronomy,'' the earth oven lies at the intersection between
archaeology and historical linguistics. For, as we shall demonstrate, the
lexical domain of the *qumu is rich indeed. Picking up virtually any
ethnography of a Polynesian society, one ®nds at least a paragraph devoted
to this essential form of Polynesian cooking. But what is more satisfying to
the archaeologist is that *qumu is a lexical category which has many times
been veri®ed in the ground.
Earth ovens have been excavated from many of the sites listed in Table
3.2. For example, at the To.6 site on Tongatapu, Poulsen (1987:39±41)
excavated nine ovens, three of them with associated radiocarbon dates
falling within our period of interest. These ranged in diameter from about
90 cm up to roughly 200 cm. At the NT-100 and 93 sites on Niuatoputapu,
Kirch (1988: tables 9, 10) excavated ovens in the range of 75±80 cm
diameter. At Sasoa`a on Upolu, Green (1974b:111±13, ®g. 55) exposed a
small earth oven in Layer 5, associated with a set of postmolds indicating a
round, or round-ended, structure. In the To`aga site on Ofu, Kirch and
Hunt (1993a:73±75, ®g. 5.23) excavated a circular oven, 80 cm in diameter
and 38 cm deep, ®lled with ®re-cracked volcanic stones, with the oven ®ll
and surrounding deposit thick with the spines of sea-urchins which had been
cooked in the oven's last ®ring. These and similar examples share the
following common features: the ovens are more-or-less circular in plan,
basin-shaped in cross-section, and contain quantities of ®re-cracked or ®realtered stones (Figure 6.1). Charcoal and ash usually line the base of the pit,
and the subsoil is frequently discolored a bright orange-red as a result of
oxidation from the heat of repeated ®rings.
Because most excavations in Ancestral Polynesian sites have been limited
to 1-meter test pits or other small horizontal exposures, we do not have a
clear idea of the kind of structures which sheltered these earth ovens. The
round-ended structure at Sasoa`a, if not interpreted as a dwelling from its
pavement and associated stone adzes (see Chapter 8), could easily have been
a cookhouse; at To`aga the oven in units 20/23 was directly associated with
two large postmolds. A high priority for future archaeological work in
Western Polynesia must be extensive horizontal excavations of sites dating to
the Ancestral Polynesian time period. Only areal excavations will provide
direct evidence of these early households, incorporating both dwelling and
cooking structures, as well as storage, and possibly, ritual components.
The material culture recovered from Ancestral Polynesian sites includes
food preparation equipment. Ubiquitous pottery, with narrow-necked jars,
open bowls, and small cups, is described in Chapter 7. Various sites have
148
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Fig. 6.1
The earth oven, a central feature of Ancestral Polynesian cooking, attested by
archaeological examples, such as this oven at the Lolokoka site (NT-90) on
Niuatoputapu.
yielded one or more kinds of mollusk shell interpreted as ``scrapers'' or
``peelers'' for food preparation. Of particular interest are the Anadara-shell
``paring knives'' described by Poulsen (1987:184, pl. 73, 12) from Tongatapu
(including site To.6); these have a perforation through the body of the shell
as well as usewear along the edge. The perforation raises the possibility, as
noted by Poulsen, that these may have been coconut grater heads lashed to
wooden seats, an interpretation we favor given the PPN lexical evidence.
Other shells, such as the bivalve scrapers described by Kirch (1988:208, ®g.
126, c) from Niuatoputapu, were probably hand-held. As noted in Chapter
5, a distinctive kind of stone hammer with pecked ®nger grips occurs at sites
of the Ancestral Polynesian period in Niuatoputapu (Kirch 1988:209, ®g.
127a), Futuna (Kirch 1981:141, ®g. 13; Sand 1993), and Samoa (Green
1969:134; Jennings and Holmer 1980: ®g. 48). These hammerstones may
have been ``nut-cracking hammers'' for breaking open hard-shelled nuts
such as those of Canarium, Terminalia, and Barringtonia. Many of the amorphous basalt and/or obsidian ¯akes found in Ancestral Polynesian contexts
Food preparation and cuisine
149
could have been used in cookhouses, for tasks such as butchering, scaling
®sh, or scraping tubers.
The rich comparative ethnography of Polynesian cookhouses and their
accouterments aids us in interpreting the archaeological evidence, and in
developing semantic history hypotheses for the terms given in Table 6.2. A
separate cookhouse in which the earth oven was situated is ubiquitous in
Polynesia. In Western Polynesia it is called paito (TON peito), while in Eastern
Polynesia it takes some form of the compound term fale umu, literally `house
oven' (e.g., RAR, MIA `are umu). Hiroa's description of the southern Cook
Islands' cookhouse would stand for many other Polynesian societies:
A cook house (`are umu) was a necessary adjunct to the dwelling house for, though
cooking was usually done in the open, a roof over the oven was a necessity in wet
weather. These houses were small with a framework similar to that of the dwelling
house and with a thatch of coconut-leaf sheets. The sides were without walls.
(1944:41)12
Hiroa's (1930:98±147) detailed account of cookhouse equipment in
Samoa would be accurate, with only minor variations, for most other
tropical or subtropical Polynesian societies. Near any cookhouse a sharpened
stick is thrust into the ground, used to husk coconuts. Among the cookhouse
equipment are tongs for handling hot stones, made from a doubled-over
piece of coconut midrib, or of Pandanus root. Wooden bowls of a wide range
of shapes and sizes, going under the generic term kumete or one of its variants,
are vital for holding liquids (such as expressed coconut cream, or rendered
coconut oil), for pounding starchy pastes, and so on. The cup formed by a
half-shell of coconut is used as a ladle, a drinking cup, and a container for
certain kinds of special cooked puddings.13 Ceramic equivalents of coconut
half-shell cups also occur in Ancestral Polynesian sites (see Chapter 7). Other
kinds of cooking gear, generally made with wood, ®ber, or other perishable
materials, include oven spreaders, breadfruit splitters, strainers or wringers,
mincers, food stirrers, breadfruit pickers, and varied woven baskets.
Of particular importance is the coconut grater, which varies in exact form
in different societies (e.g., Hiroa 1944: ®g. 3), but usually consists of some
kind of stool or seat of wood, with an arm or protrusion on which the head
was lashed. In post-contact times, the head has typically been of metal, but
pre-contact forms used shells, coral, serrated pearl shell, stone, or other
abrasive materials. The meat on the inside of opened coconut shells is grated
on this head, and collected in a bowl, then squeezed through a strainer often
made of Hibiscus bast, to yield coconut cream. The cream can be rendered
into coconut oil by stone boiling in a wooden bowl.
An important regional difference between Western and Eastern Polynesian societies is in the use of pounders for mashing or pounding starchy
150
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 6.2. Proto Polynesian terms associated with the cookhouse, earth oven, and cooking
equipment
Category/probable gloss
(PPN interstage)
Cookhouse, oven terms
Cookhouse, shelter over oven
Earth oven
To cook in earth oven
Firewood
Prepare earth oven for lighting
To light a ®re, burn
Arrange hot stones on bed of the
earth oven
Open up, uncover an earth oven
Open up by removing a cover
(esp. an earth oven)
Cookhouse equipment
Tongs, pincers
Bivalve shell (Asaphidae) used for
scraping tubers or breadfruit
Husk coconuts on a pointed stake
Coconut grater
Butt end of coconut frond midrib
(used for pounding)
Plate, platter, bowl
Wooden bowl
Earthenware cooking pot
Container for liquid/cup
Half-coconut shell container
Proto
Oceanic
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
P2
*paito
*qumu
*taqo
*fa®e
*faka-qafu
*tafu
*uru
6
31
24
22
6
29
10
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
*pukes
*fuke
*suke
25
14
3
3
3
*kapit
*gasi
*hiko-®
*kasi
21
3
*hoka
*tuahi
*palalafa
17
16
7
3
3
*paa
*kumete
*kulo
*ipu
*faangongo
6
27
7
26
9
3
3
*qumun
*taqon
*papie
*kudo(n)
PSA
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
PPN reconstructions from Biggs (POLLEX).
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime Semantic Agreement.
tubers such as taro, and for breadfruit. As discussed by Hiroa (1930:111) and
Burrows (1938a:15±16), formal pounders made of stone or coral are
con®ned to the central and some marginal Eastern Polynesian societies, and
are therefore clearly an innovation within Eastern Polynesia. In certain
Eastern Polynesian societies, such pounders became highly elaborated
(Garanger 1967). In Western Polynesia, pounding is performed using the
Food preparation and cuisine
151
butt end of a coconut frond midrib, sticks, or simply the clenched ®sts (Hiroa
1930:112); we would infer that this was the case in Ancestral Polynesia.
We turn now to the lexical evidence for Ancestral Polynesian cooking,
based on the set of reconstructed PPN terms in Table 6.2. Based on re¯exes
in both TON and six other languages, the PPN term for cookhouse was
*paito.14 What these structures looked like will not be known until more
extensive archaeological excavations are conducted, but the comparative
ethnographic evidence suggests open-sided sheds with thatched roofs; in any
event their central feature was the earth oven, PPN *qumu. This key term is
represented in no less than thirty-one Polynesian languages, a classic case of
prime semantic agreement.
As in the older POC language (Lichtenberk 1994:270±73), the earth oven
complex is represented not just by PPN *qumu, but by a number of associated
words. Another widely re¯ected term is *taqo, meaning to `bake, cook in
earth oven.' Several additional words cover the process of preparing,
igniting, and cooking. `Firewood,' essential to the oven process, is the certain
gloss for PPN *fa®e, while *faka-qafu indicates the action of `preparing the
oven for lighting.'15 *Tafu, a general term for `light a ®re, burn,' probably
applied to other kinds of ®re lighting (as in a hearth) as well, but at least four
of its witnesses include references to ovens. PPN *uru is another term speci®c
to the oven complex, with a probable gloss of `arrange hot stones on the bed
of the earth oven,' a critical part of the cooking procedure if food is to be
well done yet not singed or burnt. After covering and cooking for a suf®cient
time, the oven is opened, an action designated by another broadly re¯ected
PPN term, *fuke.16
Other PPN lexemes refer to the implements and cooking utensils that we
predict ± on comparative ethnographic as well as direct archaeological
evidence ± would have been found in Ancestral Polynesian cookhouses. The
pointed husking stick, ubiquitous around Polynesian cookhouses even today,
was presumably called by the same word used for the pointed digging stick,
*koso (see Table 5.2), while the action of husking coconuts is given by PPN
*hoka. Fire tongs, so important for handling the white-hot oven stones not
only in oven preparation but in stone boiling of liquids such as coconut
cream, are indicated by PPN *hiko-®.
Archaeological evidence for shell scrapers is matched linguistically by
PPN *kasi. Modern re¯exes typically refer to a bivalve shell, often Asaphis
violascens but also other species. Hence POLLEX provides the PPN gloss
`bivalve shell (Asaphidae).' However, noting that several cognates include
reference to the action of scraping with these shells (e.g., ANU, ROT, SAM,
TAK), and given archaeological evidence for shell scrapers, we infer that
PPN *kasi referred both in general to bivalve shells, and speci®cally to shells
used for scraping tubers and breadfruit. Our hypothesis is reinforced by
152
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Lichtenberk's reconstruction of POC *(k/g)asi, with a gloss of ``scrape out/
off, strip off, peel off (takes as its direct object a noun phrase to the stuff
scraped off, e.g., the skin of tubers)'' (1994:280). Again, the archaeological
and lexical evidence are mutually reinforcing.
Comparative ethnography underscores the widespread importance of
coconut graters in Polynesia, re¯ecting the central role of coconut cream
and coconut oil as the primary emollients in Polynesian puddings (see
discussion below). The existence of graters in Ancestral Polynesian times is
strongly attested by PPN *tuahi, meaning `coconut grater.' But what kind of
grater was this? Ethnographic specimens range in form and kind of head
(Figure 6.2), but all incorporate the same basic concept of a wooden base or
support, sometimes in the form of a three-legged stool, to which a shell
grater is lashed. The widespread distribution of this basic object throughout
Polynesia provides good evidence that it has been retained since Ancestral
Polynesian times. However, since the stool or base would have been made of
wood, these are unlikely to be recovered in archaeological contexts, but the
head should be.
Poulsen (1987) described Anadara shells with perforations enabling them to
be lashed to a wooden shaft. Anadara bivalves have a naturally serrated,
curved edge which would be effective as a grater on the concave surface of a
coconut shell. Another possibility on the basaltic high islands is that such
grater heads were made from ¯aked stone. Basalt grater heads are known
from surface archaeological contexts in Samoa (Hiroa 1930:367±68, ®gs.
217, 218), and from the MAN-44 rockshelter site on Mangaia Island in
Eastern Polynesia (Kirch et al. 1995). Whether the stone grater head had
been developed by Ancestral Polynesian times is uncertain, but remains a
possibility that should be archaeologically veri®able. Serrated grater heads
made from pearl shell, recovered from early archaeological contexts in
central Eastern Polynesia (e.g., at the Vaito`otia site, Sinoto 1979), were
certainly a later innovation, and did not exist in Ancestral Polynesia.
We have already drawn attention to the differential distribution ± in the
ethnographic record ± of stone food pounders. That stone pounders were an
innovation in central Eastern Polynesia is strongly supported by the absence
of a PPN term for such implements. Rather, we have the Proto Tahitic term
*penu, meaning `pestle, pounder,' and a second term *reru, `food pounder,'
which may be a Cook Islands innovation (re¯ected only in MKI and RAR).
What can be reconstructed to PPN is the term *palalafa, meaning `butt end
of coconut frond midrib.' This is precisely the ad hoc implement used for
pounding starches in the Western Polynesian region and among Polynesian
Outlier societies. That the butt of a coconut frond should be lexemically
distinguished from other parts of coconut fronds points to some particular
signi®cance for PPN speakers; we suggest that this was its suitability for food
Food preparation and cuisine
Fig. 6.2
153
Ethnographic examples of coconut graters, made up of a stool or other
wooden base to which a shell grater is lashed: (a) Kapingamarangi; (b)
Nukuoro; (c) `Uvea; (d) Ana`a, Tuamotu; (e) Rarotonga; (f ) Mangaia.
pounding, a practice that continued without pause in the western homeland
region, but which was replaced later with formal stone food pounders in
Eastern Polynesia.
Finally, there is lexical evidence for several kinds of food containers or
serving implements in Ancestral Polynesian society (further discussed in
Chapter 7). One well-attested meaning for the polysemous term *paa is that
of `plate, platter, bowl.' Woven serving mats on which food is served were
designated by PPN *laulau. In addition, one function of the open ceramic
bowls ubiquitous in archaeological assemblages could have been food
serving. The presence of wooden bowls is certain, since PPN *kumete is
represented in twenty-seven modern re¯exes, every one of which has the
154
Rediscovering Hawaiki
meaning of `wooden bowl.' Probably there was a range of sizes, shapes, and
particular functions for such *kumete, but we can only guess at these based on
the variability attested in ethnographic examples. Another widely evidenced
term is *ipu, which POLLEX glosses as `container for liquid,' but which we
believe referenced a small cup-shaped container. We base this inference on
the frequent semantic references to coconut shell cups in modern Polynesian
languages. PPN *ipu probably designated such coconut shell cups, but
perhaps also to similar sized cups made of earthenware (see Chapter 7).
There is, moreover, another PPN term, *faangongo, with a semantic value of
`half-coconut shell.' Such empty coconut shells are used to hold liquid food
concoctions for cooking in the earth oven, and this word hints at the practice
in Ancestral Polynesian cooking. Earthenware vessels, we know from the
archaeological record, were a ubiquitous component of Ancestral Polynesian
material culture, and we will discuss them more extensively in Chapter 7.
They are lexically marked by the generic term *kulo.
Food preparation and cooking methods
As we have just seen, triangulation yields a richly textured portrait of the
Ancestral Polynesian cookhouse, with its central earth oven and many food
preparation implements and containers. But what of actual cooking methods
and food preparation processes? Direct archaeological evidence is of little
use here.17 Comparative ethnography, for its part, reveals that Polynesian
cuisine depends on more than just earth oven cooking, despite its centrality.
Kirch (1994a:97±100, table 5), for example, documents the range of cooking
methods applied to speci®c crop plants in traditional Futunan cuisine, which
include roasting over open ®res or in embers, as well as using different
parceling methods for foods placed within the umu; similar methods are
described in the standard ethnographies for most Polynesian cultures. Stone
boiling in wooden bowls is another widespread cooking method. There is no
need, however, to resort to an extensive analysis of the ethnographic
literature, for the PPN vocabulary relating to food preparation and cooking
methods is extensive, with the majority of terms all instances of prime
semantic agreement (Table 6.3).
Given abundant evidence for scrapers and graters in Ancestral Polynesian
cookhouses, it is encouraging to ®nd several PPN lexemes that refer to
scraping or grating. PPN *waru is re¯ected in twenty-nine Polynesian
languages plus FIJ, and seems to have been a generic term for `scrape.' The
lexeme *sisi, however, had a narrower meaning, `to scoop or gouge out
coconut meat,' as virtually all of its re¯exes apply to coconut. PPN *olo has
been glossed by POLLEX as `grate, rub something against something.'18
A subset of terms refers to the process of scraping coconut to extract the
Food preparation and cuisine
155
Table 6.3. Proto Polynesian terms for food preparation and cooking methods
Category/probable gloss
(PPN interstage)
Food preparation terms
To scrape or grate (as with coconut)
Scoop out, gouge out (as meat from
coconut)
Grate (speci®cally taro ?)
Scrape (coconut ?)
Wring out, express (as with
coconut cream)
Dregs, material (as coconut scrapings
from which the cream has been
expressed)
Trash, especially grated coconut ¯esh
Pound
Knead, mix to a pulp
Knead, mix with water
Mix, mingle
Wrap up, covering, parcel (speci®cally
of food)
Cooking methods
Cooked
To cook in earth oven
Heat over ®re to smoke, grill, toast
(food), or render supple (leaves)
Cook on open ®re, roast, grill
Singe, cooked, burnt
Boil food in water
Reheat cooked food
Proto
Oceanic
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
*waru
*sisi
29
12
3
3
3
*sisi
*olo
*saqalo
*tatau
18
20
14
3
3
3
3
*kora
9
3
16
27
8
16
16
15
3
3
*kopu
*penu
*tuki
*lapu
*natu
*®ro
*kofu
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
*maosa
*taqon
*rarag
*ma-oha
*taqo
*rara
24
3
3
28
3
3
*tunu
*sunu
*sakan
*tunu
*sunu
*saka
*faka-fana
28
13
5
9
3
3
3
3
3
3
*tutuk
P2
PSA
3
3
3
*POC terms are generally from Lichtenberk (1994); *PPN terms from POLLEX.
PPN reconstructions from Biggs (POLLEX).
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
156
Rediscovering Hawaiki
¯esh or meat, and to expressing the cream by wringing it with a strainer of
shredded coconut husk or Hibiscus bast. In addition to *sisi (see above), there
is PPN *saqalo, a PCP innovation re¯ected in FIJ as well as twenty Polynesian
languages, meaning `to scrape coconut.' The action of expressing coconut
cream is covered by PPN *tatau, although this verb may also have applied to
other kinds of wringing out, as in kava preparation (see Chapter 9). After the
cream has been wrung from grated coconut meat, the dry shavings generally
have little use (although they are frequently fed to chickens by modern
Polynesians); two words referring to these dregs were PPN *kora and *penu.
In Polynesian cuisine, starchy foods are frequently mixed with each other
and with coconut cream or oil, and several terms refer to pounding,
kneading, and mixing. PPN *tuki is the verb `to pound,' its witnesses in some
cases having a special connotation of food pounding or pounder. PPN *lapu
has a reconstructed meaning of `knead to a pulp,' while *natu indicated
`knead, mix with water.' A more general term for `mix or mingle' is *®ro,
which probably applied to all kinds of materials as well as food.
A comparative ethnography not just of Polynesian, but of Oceanic cuisines
in general, reveals the importance of parceling or bundling foods in leaf
packages. Large, ¯eshy leaves such as those of banana and giant aroids
(Alocasia macrorrhiza and Cyrtosperma chamissonis) are widely used to wrap
puddings and other food concoctions prior to baking. Breadfruit and Cordyline fruticosum leaves may be used to wrap ®sh or other meat for open ®re
roasting. The PPN term for wrapping up or parceling of food was *kofu, a
word Lichtenberk (1994:276±77) traces back to POC (*kopu).
The generic term for `cooked' in PPN was *ma-oha. This would include
food cooked in the earth oven (*taqo) or in several other ways. Aside from
earth oven cooking, heating of foods over a ®re is attested by PPN *rara.19
PPN *tunu reconstructs as `cook on open ®re, roast, grill.' Associated with
*tunu is *sunu, `to singe or be seared.' Boiling is attested by *saka, which is
re¯ected only in six languages (including TON and FIJ), all in the Western
Polynesian±Fijian region. 20 The absence of witnesses of *saka in Eastern
Polynesia is signi®cant, suggesting that in PPN the term referred to boiling
in earthenware pots (see Chapter 7). As pottery was lost in the colonization
of central Eastern Polynesia, the term *saka would have been dropped from
the vocabulary of the early central Eastern peoples. Finally, there is PPN
*faka-fana, `to warm, reheat, or recook food.' In the tropics, where food
quickly starts to spoil, such recooking is a common and necessary practice.
Pounded foods and the ``pudding complex''
In his insightful discussion of Oceanic food processing, Yen (1975:149)
observed that the ``main method'' of preparing food was simple cooking by
Food preparation and cuisine
157
roasting, steaming, or boiling, but drew particular attention to pounded or
``pudding-like'' foods. The greater elaboration and complexity of preparation of such foods (``a sequence after harvest of cooking, dividing and
pounding, and recooking for consumption'') captured Yen's attention. Su`a
(1987) labeled this core of Polynesian cuisine the ``pudding complex,''
drawing attention to a range of foodstuffs that combine one or more kinds of
precooked starchy staples with an emollient, particularly coconut cream or
coconut oil. Firth (1936:103±10) describes this culinary principle as ``the use
of two elements, a base or bulk food, and an emollient or bond which softens
its harshness and at the same time serves to bind its particles together.'' Di
Piazza et al. (1991:73) offer a similar characterization for Futunan cooking,
as does Hiroa (1930) for Samoa. In Eastern Polynesian societies, the pudding
complex was transformed with the development of stone pounders, emphasizing starch staples (usually breadfruit or taro) combined with water as an
emollient.
The importance of coconut in the pudding complex (in Western Polynesia
and presumably also in the Ancestral Polynesian homeland) is evident in the
elaboration of terms for the grating and extraction of coconut meat, cream,
and oil (see above), and in the comparative ethnographic evidence for its use
in a range of recipes. Hiroa's remarks on the role of coconut in Samoan
cuisine could be applied throughout most of the tropical Polynesian core:
The outstanding value of the coconut in cooking is evident. In some form or other it
enters into combination with every vegetable food and most marine ¯esh food
except the larger ®sh . . . But it is the expressed coconut cream that is invaluable in
so many preparations. Cooked with them as fai`ai [PPN *fai-kai ], it enters into 17
different dishes. As the oily niu tolo, it is indispensable to the most important made
up dish, fa`ausi. It provides the only sauce for meat, vegetables, and puddings.
Without the coconut, Samoan cooking would be resolved into its primary elements.
(1930:136)
The signi®cance of coconut cream or oil in Ancestral Polynesian cooking
is strongly indicated by three PPN lexemes (Table 6.4). The ®rst of these is
*lolo, re¯ected in twenty-®ve Polynesian languages, with a core meaning of
`coconut milk/cream or oil.'21 Related to this is the compound lexeme *loloqi, meaning `prepare food with coconut cream or oil.' This second term is
not as broadly represented in modern Polynesian languages (although there
is little doubt of its reconstruction to PPN), and was lost in many of the
languages of Eastern Polynesia, where the pudding complex shifted to an
emphasis on pounded taro or breadfruit pastes. The third coconut-related
term is PPN *pekepeke, `coconut cream sauce.' This is represented by only ®ve
words in Polynesian languages, but with a range from TON to HAW the
PPN reconstruction is sound. Presumably, *pekepeke sauce of expressed cream
158
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 6.4. Proto Polynesian terms associated with the pudding complex
Probable gloss
(PPN interstage)
Proto
Oceanic
Coconut milk or oil
Prepare food with coconut cream
Coconut cream sauce
Pounded starchy food together with a
sauce or gravy
Taro pounded up for food
Food cooked with coconut cream
Grate, mash (type of food mixed with
coconut cream ?)
A kind of pudding made from
Polynesian arrowroot
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
*lolo
*lolo-qi
*pekepeke
*poqoi
25
15
5
12
3
3
3
3
*mafu
*fai-kai
*roqi
9
8
7
3
3
3
*waatia
4
P2
PSA
3
3
3
3
3
3
PPN reconstructions from Biggs (POLLEX).
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
was used as a `dip' for cooked breadfruit, taro, and other starches, as it is
today in Futuna, Samoa, and elsewhere.
Several PPN words refer to the ``pudding complex.'' PPN *mafu is glossed
by POLLEX as `taro pounded up for food.' Of particular note is *fai-kai,
glossed as `food cooked with coconut cream.' Modern witnesses of *faikai
occur mainly in Western Polynesia, but a critical witness is HAW (*hai`ai )
indicating that it is a valid PPN reconstruction, and that its absence
throughout most of Eastern Polynesia was due to loss.22 The etymology of
*fai-kai is notable, a compound term based on PPN *fai, `make, do' and *kai,
the fundamental word for `food.' Perhaps a better gloss, then, is `made food,'
which captures the Polynesian essence of the pudding complex; foods are
`made' through a more complex process of ®rst cooking the starchy base,
then adding the coconut emollient, and often a secondary recooking as
well.23 PPN *roqi is another term that relates to the pudding complex,
although it is dif®cult to provide a precise gloss. POLLEX gives its meaning
as `grate, mash,' but the meanings associated with the eight known witnesses
suggest it might have referenced a kind of *fai-kai. PPN *waatia also refers to
such a category of `made food,' a `pudding made from Polynesian arrowroot
(Tacca leontopetaloides).'
Food preparation and cuisine
159
Formal stone or coral food pounders (PCE *penu) were a technological
innovation in the central Eastern Polynesian region after the breakup of
PPN. Comparative ethnographic evidence supports the notion that pounded
starchy foods (especially breadfruit and taro) supplanted the earlier importance of the pudding complex in this region. Lexical evidence reinforces this
hypothesis, for although *poqoi, meaning `pounded starchy food together
with a sauce or gravy' is a valid PPN reconstruction, it is represented
primarily by re¯exes in Eastern Polynesia (e.g., TAH poi, MQA popo`i, HAW
poi ). Here, the term signi®es cooked breadfruit or taro mixed with a small
quantity of water and pounded with a stone pestle. Such popo`i or poi was the
most frequently consumed starch food in Eastern Polynesia.
Food storage and preservation
In the humid tropics, including both the Polynesian homeland and the Near
Oceanic region from which their Lapita ancestors hailed, storing or
preserving foodstuffs for any duration poses a real challenge. Some crops,
especially yams, can be stored uncooked for a period of months under
proper conditions. Others such as taro, breadfruit, and bananas cannot be
kept for more than a few days without decay setting in. Yet given seasonal
variability in harvests, as well as periodic effects of environmental hazards
such as droughts and cyclones (see Kirch 1984a:127±35), a reserve supply of
stored food is essential. One method for securing a surplus, widely evidenced
throughout Oceania, involves sun-drying or drying/smoking over a ®re
(Barrau and Peeters 1972; Yen 1975). This technique is more appropriate for
certain foods (e.g., ®sh) than others. That the Ancestral Polynesians used
sun-drying is suggested by at least one term, PPN *tau-raki, `dry in air or
sun.'24
Of far greater interest is both lexical and archaeological evidence
indicating that the Ancestral Polynesians were familiar with semi-subterranean fermentation and pit storage of breadfruit, and possibly other starchy
foods as well. Ethnographically, the practice of ensiling breadfruit, taro,
bananas, and sometimes other starches or fruit in leaf-lined pits is well
documented across the tropical core of Polynesia in both its Western and
Eastern sectors (Cox 1980; Kirch 1984a: table 18). In certain islands, this
method took on considerable importance. As Yen (1975:150) observes, the
practice is also known in the Marshall and Caroline Islands of Micronesia,
which indicates that its origins pre-date Ancestral Polynesian times, and are
probably associated with the early Lapita expansion into Remote Oceania
(Kirch 1997a:216).
Lexical evidence for pit fermentation and ensilage consists of three PPN
terms: *mara, *maa, and *masi. *Mara is widely re¯ected throughout Poly-
160
Rediscovering Hawaiki
nesian languages, and from external witnesses can be reconstructed to POC
(*ma[n]da). POLLEX gives the PPN gloss as `food fermented to preserve it,
or to enhance the taste.'25 Although there is some variation in the range of
meanings for the modern re¯exes of *mara throughout Polynesia, consistent
reference to fermentation makes the POLLEX gloss plausible. The second
word, *maa, also meaning `fermented food,' is represented by a smaller
cognate set, and there is some question whether this was merely a dialectical
variant of *mara (see Marck n.d.). A separate PPN term is *masi, glossed by
POLLEX as `sour, acid, fermented (of vegetable food).' Closely examining
the range of cognate meanings in fourteen languages (including FIJ), there is
a recurrent reference to breadfruit, and we would re®ne the gloss with a
semantic history that PPN *masi referred to `fermented breadfruit.' Given
the separate terms *mara and *masi, one might speculate that the ®rst meant
the general method of food fermentation, while the second referred to pitensiled breadfruit.
Direct archaeological evidence backs up the linguistic hypothesis for
fermentation and pit ensilage. Green (1969:121) suggested that ``shallow
rounded pits'' sealed in by later deposits at the Vailele site in Samoa might
have been used for breadfruit fermentation. At Pome`e-Nahau (NT-93) on
Niuatoputapu, Kirch (1988:109, ®g. 64) exposed two large, straight-sided
and ¯at-bottomed pits which showed no evidence of having been used for
cooking, and for which a function of pit fermentation seemed most likely
(Figure 6.3). Numerous other pits which could have served this function
were exposed in Poulsen's excavations in Tongatapu (1987). In short, the
archaeological testimony of appropriately sized and shaped pits in many
Ancestral Polynesian sites, combined with strong linguistic evidence, leaves
little doubt that the fermentation and storage of breadfruit and possibly
other starchy crops was a practice well known to the early Polynesians. Their
descendants in certain islands ± especially the Marquesas ± would later
make *mara/masi a vital component of their subsistence and cuisine.
Food in society
By applying the triangulation method we have reconstructed, in perhaps
unanticipated detail, an ``archaeogastronomy'' of Ancestral Polynesian food:
concepts of taste, cooking methods and techniques, kinds of recipes, and
storage methods. While the immediate goal of cooking is to eat, more than
eating for the sake of survival is involved: to partake of a ``meal,'' a ``repast,''
is a fundamentally social act. Again, the comparative ethnography of
Polynesia and Oceania is rich with regard to the social dimensions of food
(e.g., Bell 1931). It is disappointing, then, that only a handful of PPN
lexemes refer to the place of food in Ancestral Polynesian societies.
Food preparation and cuisine
Fig. 6.3
161
Straight-sided pits, lacking evidence of burning, may have been used as silos
for the fermentation and storage of breadfruit paste; this example was
excavated at the NT-93 site on Niuatoputapu (after Kirch 1988).
One such term is PPN *qinati, which POLLEX glosses as `share' or
`portion.' We will revisit this term later in Chapter 9, noting here only that
the term likely referred to a `food share in a communal feast.' A word whose
original meaning is clear is PPN *maa-kona, `satis®ed or satiated after eating.'
Not only did the Ancestral Polynesians probably use this term to express
their satisfaction at the end of a meal, but they used another term, *mahu, to
refer to `abundant, plentiful food.' Contrasting with *mahu is *samu, `to eat
scraps, or eat only one kind of food.' The semantic essence of *samu was
probably a meal lacking in *kina, or unsatisfying for other reasons, not
resulting in the desirable state of being *maa-kona. The ultimate contrast with
*mahu, however, is *songe, `famine.' Finally, we can also note that when
162
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Ancestral Polynesians went traveling, as on a canoe voyage, they had a
speci®c term for the foodstuffs taken as provisions: *qoho.
Concluding remarks
On the face of things, ``cuisine'' might seem an intractable topic for
historical reconstruction when written texts are lacking. Yet an ``archaeogastronomy'' of Ancestral Polynesia is certainly within our purview, given
the methodology of triangulation. Limited to its own internal evidence,
archaeology alone could not produce an especially detailed reconstruction of
Ancestral Polynesian foodways. Nonetheless, archaeology does provide
signi®cant quantitative evidence for aspects of diet, as well as direct material
evidence for food preparation technology. Comparative ethnography, for its
part, advances many useful hypotheses ± such as the key role of the pudding
complex and the importance of grated coconut as an ingredient and
emollient ± but, lacking support from historical linguistics and archaeology,
it would also fail on its own to produce a clear image of ancestral cooking
practices. Historical linguistics outlines the terminological contours of the
domain of cuisine, the emically marked concepts whereby Proto Polynesian
speakers indexed their foods. Yet only when archaeology and comparative
ethnography are consulted in tandem with lexical evidence, augmented by
detailed semantic-history hypotheses ± that is, through the triangulation
method of historical anthropology ± does our reconstruction of Ancestral
Polynesian foodways truly come into sharp focus.
Chapter 7
Material culture
Although we can look to archaeology to con®rm the hypothesis that
durable artefacts will be found in sites associated with Oceanicspeaking communities, there is little hope of archaeological recovery
of the perishable artefacts in question. Here linguistics adds an extra
dimension to research on the prehistory of Oceania.
osmond 1996:130
Material culture and technology are cultural domains central to archaeology.
Indeed, until the expansion of archaeological interests to incorporate
``ecofacts'' and other non-artifactual evidence, largely associated with the
New Archaeology, the classi®cation and analysis of material culture occupied
the vast majority of archaeologists' time (Lyman et al. 1997:121±205). In
Polynesia, where ceramics were absent in the ethnohistoric record, archaeologists focused their efforts on studying and classifying stone tools,
especially adzes but also a range of other types including pounders (e.g.,
Brigham 1902; Duff 1959; Garanger 1967; see Cleghorn 1984 for a review
of Polynesian adz studies). Later, when stratigraphic excavations began in
Eastern Polynesia, much attention was paid to stylistic variation in ®shhooks
made of bone and shell, for these offered potential as chronological
indicators (e.g., Emory et al. 1959; Suggs 1961). Only when excavations
commenced in the Western Polynesian homeland was it discovered that
ceramics, too, had once been part of the original Polynesian material
culture, providing a critical linkage connecting early stages of Polynesian
culture with the antecedent Lapita cultural complex (Golson 1961; Green
1974a).
Given this long and rich tradition of Polynesian archaeological studies of
portable artifacts, one might suppose that archaeological evidence would
occupy pride of place when applying a triangulation approach to recover the
material basis of Ancestral Polynesian culture. Archaeology does indeed
yield much evidence for some categories of Ancestral Polynesian artifacts,
especially adzes and ceramics, as well as ®shhooks, abrading tools, scrapers,
and a few other types. For these artifact classes, archaeology provides
163
164
Rediscovering Hawaiki
important data on variability within and between Ancestral Polynesian
communities, as well as on technological processes of manufacture and use.
Where archaeology fails ± and this is a point we think insuf®ciently
appreciated by some of our colleagues ± is in providing anything like a
thorough or complete inventory of the material culture of Ancestral Polynesia.
The problem stems from the natural-resource base upon which Polynesian
material cultures were founded, utilizing a wide array of perishable materials: wood, bamboo, bark, ®ber, leaves, cordage, feathers, and so forth. A
perusal of any of the material-culture monographs for Polynesia, such as Te
Rangi Hiroa's masterly Samoan Material Culture (1930), or his Arts and Crafts of
the Cook Islands (1944), reveals the extent to which indigenous Polynesian
technology depended upon the plant world. In any traditional Polynesian
village, one would discover a remarkable variety of objects and impedimenta
made of perishable substances, including: the superstructures of dwellings
and cookhouses; wooden bowls of all shapes; platters and baskets of coconut
leaves, and other baskets made of sennit or Pandanus; a diversity of mats
plaited from coconut, Pandanus, and other leaves; garments of bark cloth and
matting, along with combs, headdresses, ¯y whisks, and fans; woven sandals;
staffs, spears, and other insignia; wooden canoes with mat sails, and sennit
lashing and lines, wooden paddles, and bailers; ®shing gear such as snares,
nooses, torches, sweeps, spears, bow and arrow, traps, nets, poles, and so on,
all of wood and cordage; digging sticks, harvesting poles, coconut husking
sticks, and carrying poles; musical instruments including gongs and drums;
toys and amusements such as tops, kites, darts, pitching discs, and string
®gures; instruments of war such as clubs, slings, and spears; and ®nally,
objects of religious veneration including wooden and woven images. In
Table 7.1, we offer a simple tabulation of the total numbers of object types
ethnographically documented in four representative Polynesian societies,
and estimates of the percentages of perishable versus durable materials.1 On
average, about 82 percent of the range of material objects used in a traditional Polynesian
culture would not be expected to survive in a normal open-site archaeological
context.
True that in exceptional circumstances archaeologists do occasionally
recover a wider range of perishable material culture. The speci®c taphonomic circumstances are either extreme desiccation (such as the lava tubes
of Kalahuipua`a on Hawai`i Island; Kirch 1979), or the anaerobic conditions
of waterlogging (such as the Vaito`otia-Fa`ahia site on Huahine Island;
Sinoto and McCoy 1975). Unfortunately, such site conditions are exceedingly rare in tropical Polynesia, and are not currently known for sites of the
Ancestral Polynesian time period.2 It is questionable whether either a ``wet''
site or an extreme ``dry'' site with conditions favorable to preservation of a
wide range of perishable objects may ever be discovered, given the geoarch-
Material culture
165
Table 7.1. Perishable and durable components of Polynesian material culture inventories
Ethnographic culture
Samoa (Hiroa 1930)
Cook Islands (Hiroa 1944)
Pukapuka (Beaglehole and
Beaglehole 1938)
Tuamotus (Emory 1975)
Total no.
object types
No. of perishable No. of durable
object types1
object types2
Percent
durable
284
147
130
245
120
107
39
27
23
14
18
18
97
74
23
23
1 Objects made from wood, ®ber, bark, leaves, string, cordage, or feathers.
2 Objects made from stone, shell, bone, or coral.
aeological context of most Ancestral Polynesian sites. Not impossible, to be
sure, but in our view unlikely.
The message is clear: while archaeology contributes much valuable and
highly detailed information about certain categories of material culture and
technology, only in exceptional circumstances of preservation will the
archaeological record mirror the diversity revealed in ethnographic collections. But if robust historical reconstruction is our goal, the triangulation
method can aid us. In this chapter, we explore what the complementary
evidence of archaeology, historical linguistics, and comparative ethnography
reveals about Ancestral Polynesian material culture. Archaeology will be
given its due, with respect to pottery, adzes, and some other categories. But
we will show that, even for these materially attested types, archaeology does
not tell us everything there is to know.
Proto Polynesian `things'
Every culture has some general terms to designate `things' in the abstract;
the Proto Polynesian speakers were no exception. There are PPN words
(Table 7.2) both for a general class of items, *meqa, `thing,' and for a category
which included portable objects, PPN *alanga meaning `tool' or `weapon.'
Treasured possessions or material wealth, especially ®ne garments and
perhaps also ®ne mats, were referred to by two PPN words, *ta(a)qonga and
*koloa; we discuss these further in Chapter 8 under the topic of ``exchange.''
We can also reconstruct an extensive descriptive vocabulary for items of
portable material culture. PPN *faqa-si, `part, side, or half,' had other
correlates: PPN *tumutumu, `top,' qaro, `front,' and *tuqa, `back.' Some
portable items had `tips' or `points,' PNP *ti®. If they were sharp pointed
objects, PPN *tala is the appropriate word, and PPN *keo(h,s)o would have
referred to the sharp point. If the objects had holes or perforations in them,
166
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 7.2. Proto Polynesian terms for `things'
Probable gloss
(PPN interstage)
Thing
Limb; tool, weapon
Treasured possession, especially a
garment (or mat?)
Part, side or half of something
Measured part or portion
(extended armspan)
Span, fathom
(Hand)span (measurement)
Proto
Oceanic
*dopa
*zanga
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
P2
*meqa
*alanga
*ta(a)qonga
25
10
11
3
*faqa-si
*ngafa
23
6
3
*rofa
*hanga
12
13
3
3
3
PSA
3
3
3
3
3
3
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
they would have been called *putu; piercing, drilling, or making a hole in
them employed the verb *fohu. Pieces, parts, or fragments from most objects
seem to be covered by *konga. Parts or portions of some things were
measured in *ngafa, something approximating an arm-span. Ethnographically, re¯exes of PPN *rofa imply a span or fathom, and are sometimes
associated with measuring lengths of bark cloth, or the size of sailing canoes
and their parts.3 It is probably related to the customary measurement by
hand-spans (POC *zanga and PPN *hanga). Although the *ngafa re¯ex is not
represented in Eastern Polynesian languages, measurements in arm-span
units are known in Maori, for example (Leach 1976:185±86, 215±17). 4 For
things like tools and weapons, PPN *mata denoted a point, blade, or cutting
edge, and *lipi its sharp or cutting edge. For tools like adzes, the butt end was
called *reke in PNP, a term also likely to have been used by PPN speakers.
Pottery and other containers
Containers in Ancestral Polynesian culture (Table 7.3) may be divided into
durable (pottery) and perishable (plant material) types. PPN *ngaqati apparently referred to an empty container, such as a mollusk shell, coconut
endocarp, or pod of a plant. With a suitable suf®x as modi®er, it also had the
meaning of `skull.' Whether *ngaqati could apply to pottery vessels we do not
know. However, it almost certainly did cover containers made of coconut,
and probably those of wood and basketry as well.
Material culture
167
Table 7.3. Proto Polynesian terms for containers
Probable gloss
(PPN interstage)
Empty container, such as a gourd,
shell, husk, pod, skull
Large wooden bowl
Bowl for kava
Half-coconut shell used as a
drinking cup; container for liquid
Cup-like container
Basket
Bag, basket (also belly)
Small bag or basket, used for
personal effects
Box
Food-serving mat, shallow platter
Earthenware pot; cooking pot
Water jar
Hole at base of tree to hold water
(TON, EUV)
Plate, dish, bowl, basin
Stopper, bung
Mould (clay, etc.) (EFU, REN)
Cook on open ®re (and probably to
®re a pot)
Earth, dirt, soil (and probably also
clay)
To strike or beat (as with paddle
and anvil?)
Proto
Oceanic
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
P2
PSA
*nagqati
8
PCP *kumete *kumete
PCP *tanoxa *taanoqa
*ubi/*ibu
*ipu
27
9
26
3
3
3
3
3
3
*kabu
*katu
PEOC *kete
*tanga
*kapu
*kato
*kete
*tanga
14
8
25
14
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
12
9
6
3
3
*kuron
*pusa
*laulau
*kulo
FIJ saqaa
haka
3
3
3
3
*paa
*qumoti
*puli-puli (?)
*tunu
6
8
2
28
3
3
3
3
27
3
3
*buli
*tunu
3
3
3
3
PCP g(w)ele *kele
*taa
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
Ceramics in Ancestral Polynesia
For years, Polynesians were regarded as a people who had either completely
lost, or never engaged in, the art of pottery making (Brown 1919; Skinner
1951:43; Urban 1964). However, post-World War II archaeology soon
documented that pottery manufacture had been a common cultural practice
168
Rediscovering Hawaiki
throughout the ®rst millennium BC in Tonga, Samoa, `Uvea, and Futuna,
before its manufacture ceased in the initial centuries of the ®rst millennium
AD. Potsherds from imperishable ± but easily broken ± ceramic vessels
dominate in the excavation records from sites assigned to Ancestral Polynesian culture.
Despite various explanations as to why Polynesians ceased making pottery
(Leach 1982; Marshall 1985; Le Moine 1987; Green 1989b), there is no fully
accepted scenario. Environmental reasons, such as the dif®culty of ®nding
suitable clays for making pottery, are not a viable explanation. After all,
early Polynesians, as well as their Eastern Lapita ancestors, made pottery
within their Western Polynesian homeland quite successfully for more than a
thousand years. Most important may have been functional shifts in the
methods of food preparation and cooking, plus changes in the social value of
pottery (manufactured by women?) which became a largely utilitarian
plainware, leading to its eventual replacement by containers made in wood
(manufactured by men?). Pottery manufacture in Polynesia thus ceased
shortly after the break-up of Ancestral Polynesian culture and the movement
of populations into the northern atoll islands of Western Polynesia, the
Outliers, and central Eastern Polynesia. In these areas, despite a few
handfuls of sherds on some islands (Tuvalu, Tokelau, Southern Cooks,
Marquesas), no good evidence for sustained pottery manufacture has ever
been found. The long-term use of pottery vessels in Polynesia is thus
con®ned to the ancestral homeland.
Ancestral Polynesian ceramics represent a continuing pottery tradition
from the preceding Eastern Lapita phase, between c. 2900 and 2600 BP
(Burley 1998). The highly decorated ceramics of the Early Eastern Lapita
cultural complex include a whole range of shouldered jars and a number of
dish-like bowls not found in the later plainwares associated with Ancestral
Polynesian culture (Sand 1992:214) (Fig. 7.1). With the loss of the decorated
vessels around 600 to 700 BC, what remained was a utilitarian plainware,
which continued to be manufactured for some 800 to 900 years, or perhaps
longer.
Archaeology informs us not only of the ubiquitous nature of pottery in
Ancestral Polynesian communities, but of the range of vessel forms and sizes,
and of variability in their distribution within the Ancestral Polynesian
region. There have been three principal attempts to classify the pottery
vessels of the Ancestral Polynesian homeland: (1) Green (1974a:250±53 and
®g. 90) proposed thirteen vessel types for the largely plainware bowl forms of
Samoa; (2) Kirch (1988:156±66) de®ned ten types for Niuatoputapu in
northern Tonga; and (3) Poulsen (1987:86±103, ®gs. 42±53) applied a more
complicated scheme to Tongatapu. Sand (1992) reduced this variation to
nine undecorated vessel forms that commonly occur in both Early Eastern
Material culture
Fig. 7.1
169
Pottery vessel shapes in Ancestral Polynesia (modi®ed after Sand 1992).
Lapita and later Polynesian Plainware contexts, plus nine other decorated
vessel forms, only three of which also occur in the undecorated category
(Figure 7.1).
These vessel forms display important distributional differences. Admittedly, plainware assemblages exhibiting varying numbers of vessel types may
re¯ect no more than functional differences between the areas of the sites
excavated (i.e., sampling error). However, the occurrence of cooking pot and
170
Rediscovering Hawaiki
water jar forms in sites on `Uvea, Futuna, and Tonga ± but not Samoa ± is
signi®cant, as is the dominance of open-bowl forms in Samoa, but not in
`Uvea, Futuna, or Tonga. The key point is that regional differentiation in
pot forms (as in adzes, see below) was already established in Ancestral
Polynesian culture, and can be traced back to the Early Eastern Lapita
period (Kirch 1988:186±88 and table 29). Technological studies of these
ceramic assemblages also reveal that most pottery was made locally and was
not extensively traded or exchanged between communities (e.g., Kirch 1988;
Dickinson et al. 1996).
We now turn to linguistic and ethnographic evidence to expand on this
archaeological picture. Reviewing POC pottery terms, Ross (1996b:69)
observed that it is not evident either from material catalogs of Lapita pottery
forms, or from modern Oceanic speakers' pot forms (May and Tuckson
1982; Green 1990), how these types might have been emically classi®ed by
Proto Oceanic speakers. However, the modern pot-users' terminologies do
offer clues. Indeed, ``most Oceanic languages have a quite simple [pot]
terminology'' (Ross 1996b:69), restricted to three or four main meanings.
There is typically one generic taxon for `pot,' and four speci®c categories:
`cooking pot,' `water jar,' `bowl/dish,' and `frying pan,' with lexical reconstructions for the last being the least secure. A ®fth category of both
imperishable and perishable vessels may have been overlooked: `ladle, dipper,
or cup,' POC *kabu (Lichtenberk 1994:284). Certainly all ®ve categories are
represented in either FIJ or Polynesian, and all are attested archaeologically
as functional pot forms in Ancestral Polynesian assemblages.
The generic taxon for `pot' is PPN *kulo, derived from POC *kuron, which
also carried the speci®c meaning of `earthenware or cooking pot' (Osmond
and Ross 1998:68).5 The FIJ term for a pottery water jar or drinking vessel is
saqaa; it has one known Polynesian cognate in a nominal form in TON6 and
is represented both archaeologically and in the PPN verbal form *saka,
meaning `to boil' (see below). A plate, platter, or bowl/dish form is PPN
*paa, which in FIJ is designated by love or tabula (Geraghty 1996b:428), and
in Eastern FIJ by vulu-vulu (Ross 1996b:69). The FIJ term for a pottery ``fry
pan'' form is i-tavu teke which literally means `roast on embers' as well as
`potsherd put under a pot to support it' preceded by an ``instrument-deriving
morpheme'' (Ross 1996b:79, fn. 3). What is indicated is a broken potsherd
set on a ®re or embers, and used to roast or cook food; this meaning is also
found in some of the extra-Polynesian languages supporting a POC reconstruction, *palanga for ``frying pan'' (Ross 1996b:70).7 There is no PPN re¯ex
for POC *palanga, but both a shallow dish-like form (Ross 1996b:1d) and
large individual potsherds with ®re marks on one side are present in
Ancestral Polynesian ceramic assemblages, and might have functioned in
this way.
Material culture
171
A category not suggested by Ross, but reconstructed as a ``miscellaneous''
form by Lichtenberk (1994:285) is POC *kabu, `ladle, dipper, cup?,' which
Blust (1972) also indicates was a PAN lexeme for `ladle or dipper.' No
equivalent archaeological pottery forms are known to us from early Southeast Asian, Far Western Lapita, or Western Lapita sites, so initially such
objects may have been made in perishable materials. However, cup-like
forms (similar or larger than coconut half-shell, PPN *ipu) have been
recovered as decorated ceramic forms from Early Eastern Lapita sites on
Futuna and Niuatoputapu (Sand 1992: ®g. 3; Kirch 1988:157), and as
plainware versions from sites on several islands in Western Polynesia (Kirch
1988: table 23; Sand 1992: ®g. 3). These ceramic cups continue into the
Polynesian Plainware assemblages of Ancestral Polynesia. We posit that they
were marked by the PPN linguistic category *kapu, for which POLLEX
provides the gloss `cup-like container made from a shell or leaf '; in our view,
they were once also made of pottery. One function for such *kapu seems to
have been as a scoop or ladle.
Linguistic reconstructions tell us little about the actual forms of objects,
and the functions of pottery vessels may have been multiple (Ross 1996b:77).
However, drawing on the known range of plainware vessel shapes for
Western Polynesia as assembled by Kirch (1988:156±67, table 28) and Sand
(1992: ®gs. 3 and 4), we can use ethnography to make some inferences about
likely functions. There are PPN *kapu cup-like containers, sometimes in
pottery, in Tonga, Samoa, and `Uvea, and PPN *ipu perishable containers,
most often in coconut shell. In Samoa, these served as drinking cups for
water and for serving liquid foods, for kava drinking, and for holding dyes
used in bark cloth manufacture (Hiroa 1930:104, 139, 150±51, 306).
Given the potential for interchanging terms and functions between vessels
made of pottery or of wood, one can go further. The two large plainware
restricted-neck globular pot or jar forms known from Tongatapu, `Uvea, and
Futuna (illustrated by Sand 1992: ®g. 3; see our Figure 7.1) can be identi®ed
as the probable material referent for PPN *kulo. These presumably functioned as such pots do today in Fiji, for boiling or steaming foods like taro.
The squat or more globular pot shapes, such as Niuatoputapu types 8A and
8B, were de®nitely present in northern Tonga at this time (Kirch 1988: table
23). POC etyma for boiling and steaming are not easy to distinguish, but
were probably *nasu and *napu; in PPN `to boil food in water' was *saka, as it
is in FIJ and in PCP.8 Plainware pottery jars with handles, known archaeologically from Tonga, `Uvea, and Futuna (Sand 1992: ®g. 3; Kirch 1988:
table 23), were lost from Polynesian material culture over the last two
millennia. They, and perhaps the PPN *kulo form with a restricted mouth,
may have had stoppers or bungs, often of leaves, suggested by PPN *qumoti.9
Morphological variation in unrestricted-mouth bowls of plainware pottery
172
Rediscovering Hawaiki
is attested in Western Samoa (Green 1974b: ®gs. 57, 59, 60), `Uvea (Sand
1992: ®gs. 3, 4), and to some extent in northern Tonga (Kirch 1988:156,
160, table 23). These forms were likely referred to as *paa, whether made
from wood or pottery. Green (1974b:129) drew on Hiroa's ethnography
(1930) for comparable wooden forms, noting that small and medium-sized
vessels of this form were used to hold arrowroot paste, and dyes for
decorating bark cloth, and for preparing various foods. The wooden forms
could also be used to pound cooked breadfruit in, or to cook food by
dropping heated stones into their interiors. Moreover, where heating was
required for paste, dye, or food preparation, the pottery vessels could have
been placed directly on the ®re without resorting to heated stones. Another
possible function noted by Green (1974b) for the medium and large pottery
bowls ± particularly the shallow ones ± was as kava containers, referenced by
PPN *taanoqa (see above; see also Kirch [1988:162] regarding slightly earlier
decorated Lapita bowl forms suggested as serving this purpose).
The last pottery category, a shallow unrestricted earthenware cooking pot,
is rather unsatisfactorily referred to by Ross (1996b:70±71, ®g. 1d) as a
``frying pan.'' This pot shape is known from a single example in Western
Samoa (Green 1974b: ®g. 60d), but is also present among the Eastern Lapita
vessel forms of Tonga (Burley 1998: ®g. 4). However, large broken potsherds
may frequently have been used to roast, grill, or cook over an open ®re, as
suggested by the PPN term *tunu (see Chapter 6). Such cooking on sherds is
a likely but as yet inadequately documented practice, perhaps because
archaeologists have not looked for speci®c evidence pertaining to it. We are
reminded of large body sherds we have seen, in assemblages of this period,
with one or both sides blackened by ®re, that might have served as such
cooking sherds.
Fijian dialects for potting centers provide a rich set of terms for materials,
tools, and processes used in pot production (Geraghty 1996b:425±28). This
is not the case in Polynesia, where, owing to the later loss of ceramics, no
matching ethnography is possible. For example, FIJ qwela, qele, `clay,' has a
much wider meaning in both POC and FIJ as `earth, or dirt.' Similarly, PPN
*kele, with a primary meaning of `earth, dirt or soil' likely had a semantic
extension indexing `potting clay.'10 The PPN verb *keli, `to dig,' may have
extended to `digging clay,' as it does in some places in Fiji (Geraghty
1996b:426). FIJ tara, with the generic meaning `to do or make' is in one
dialect applied to making or shaping pottery, hinting that the PPN verb *taa,
`to strike or beat,' may have also applied to shaping or beating pottery, using
the archaeologically documented paddle-and-anvil process which followed
initial slab construction (Green 1974b:129; Kirch 1988:154±55). One term
with a POC antiquity, *buli, `mold or shape' as of clay, etc. (Ross 1996b:75),
means `to make or shape pottery' in some FIJ dialects (Geraghty 1996b:426).
Material culture
173
We ®nd modern re¯exes of this term in the Polynesian Outlier languages of
EFU and REN as pulipuli, meaning `to fold together or mold' (as of
puddings). On that basis *puli, `to mold or shape clay, etc. as in potting,'
might be attributed to PPN as well. The PMP and POC term for the paddle
used to beat clay into shape, *tapik (Ross 1996b:79) has not been
encountered by us as a Polynesian nominal re¯ex, although it occurs in
FIJ.11 Another PMP and POC lexical form, *tunu, meaning both `to roast in
the ®re' and `to ®re a pot' (Ross 1996b:76), has a speci®c Fijian association
with pottery in a ®ring hearth, dunua, tunua for baking the pots (Geraghty
1996b:426). Thus it is likely the PPN meaning for *tunu extended from `cook
on open ®re, roast, grill,' to baking pots in an open ®re, the usual and
widespread Oceanic method for pottery ®ring (Kirch 1988:155±56).
In sum, starting with archaeologically recovered ceramics from Ancestral
Polynesian sites, we have searched the linguistic and ethnographic evidence
to seek the probable emic, lexical categories by which the PPN speakers
indexed these ubiquitous objects (Figure 7.2). Despite the later loss of
ceramics in all Polynesian cultures, a surprising number of reconstructable
terms exist. These often have transformed meanings in their Polynesian
re¯exes, applying for example to wooden vessels with equivalent shapes.
Nonetheless, drawing upon the range of meanings that have persisted in the
extra-Polynesian witnesses of these terms (which in PPN usually were
retentions from POC), we have made a case for reconstructing a reasonably
extensive PPN pottery vocabulary.
Non-ceramic containers
As Ross (1996b:71) observes, pottery terms may also come to be applied to
non-ceramic vessels of similar shape, and the opposite is probably true as
well. Certain shapes of Ancestral Polynesian pottery containers exhibit
temporal continuity in Samoan wooden vessel counterparts (Green
1974b:129±30). In general, wooden bowls were known in POC as *tabiRa, a
lexical form with this meaning attested only as far east as Eastern Fiji (Ross
1996b:72). The POC lexeme was replaced in PPN by *kumete (wooden bowl),
a term that in FIJ sometimes refers to a wooden kava bowl, as opposed to a
Fijian pottery kava bowl, dare or dari (Geraghty 1996b:428). A specialized
wooden bowl for kava is reconstructible as PPN *taanoqa. This word was later
borrowed into FIJ and ROT, along with the actual wooden bowl form, as
tanoa (Geraghty 1983:374, 382), although the PPN etymon has been
irregularly derived from PCP *tanoxa, taxona12 for `a kind of bowl' (cf. PFJ
*takona), presumably in wood. In addition there was a word for a `box' or
`case' of wood, PPN *pusa. A carrying cord or handle for these items was
designated by PPN *ka(a)wei. No systematic study of Polynesian wooden
174
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Fig. 7.2
Conceptual terms for Proto Polynesian containers, and their realization in
plainware pottery vessels of the Ancestral Polynesian culture.
Material culture
175
food bowls is known to us, and Hiroa (1944:415) merely remarks they were
``used throughout Polynesia [and] vary in shape and in special features such
as legs, handles, lids and carving.''
Other common perishable containers in Polynesia are those made from
coconut shells, or from gourds, as vessels for small quantities of liquids (PPN
*ipu, derived from POC *ubi/i*ibu). This word is one of three POC terms
with similar meanings that Ross (1996b:73) is able to reconstruct, but is the
only one that continues into PN. Ross observes that all three re¯exes never
seem to refer to ceramic vessels, in contrast to frequent references to coconut
shells. Rather, we think that another PPN term, *kapu, referred to a small
ceramic cup shaped like a coconut half-shell.
Utilitarian bamboo containers used as bottles to transport and store ¯uids
or other liquid-based foods, usually with a plug of green leaves for the open
end, are a widespread feature in Polynesian societies except New Zealand
(Linton 1923:355; Hiroa 1930:105). Thus, the perishable bamboo ¯uid
container was likely a common artifact in Ancestral Polynesia. No special
name seems to have attached to them, and the term for bamboo plant, PPN
*kohe (also applied to a bamboo knife), was appropriated for that item.
A third class of perishable containers were manufactured of woven and
wooden materials. These included PPN *kato, `basket,' and *kete, `bag' or
`basket,' both continuations of POC forms, as well as PPN *tanga, `bag.' For
bags and basketry a recent Polynesian-wide survey (Connor 1983) allows one
to infer a number of aspects of the kinds of kit bags and basketry that
probably existed at the Ancestral Polynesian stage. The two main plant
materials from which these perishable containers were made are parts of the
coconut tree, PPN *niu, and the leaves of various species of pandanus, PPN
*fara, especially Pandanus tectorius. Another member of the pandanus family
(Freycinetia sp.), PNP *kiekie,13 stands as the third major plant ®ber used in
basketry and plaited containers (Connor 1983:12±39). From these materials
two kinds of temporary containers, simple rough plaited platters, PPN
*laulau, and kit bags, PPN *kete, were also manufactured (Connor
1983:71±76).
While plaiting is nearly ubiquitous in Polynesia, certain other techniques
of weaving, twining, coiling, and netting are restricted to Western Polynesia,
with only Tonga exhibiting all ®ve, raising the question of whether these
represent innovations, or loss. Twining, a widespread technique in Polynesian ®sh traps and clothing, and which occurs in basketry in Hawaii, Tahiti,
and New Zealand, was almost certainly an Ancestral Polynesian technique
(Connor 1983:93±94). In addition, Connor argues that the highly decorated,
non-utilitarian Tongan kato alu coiled basket, as well as the twined kato mosi
kaka, have their ancestry in the Lapita cultural complex of Western Polynesia
(Connor 1983:162±64), based on the technological evidence, the forms and
176
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 7.4. Proto Polynesian terms for industrial tools
Probable gloss
(PPN interstage)
Proto
Oceanic
Adz, axe
Adz, axe (PNP tattooing chisel)
Adz, axe handle or haft (of wood)
Fragment
File, rasp, saw
Whetstone, grindstone
Abrasive stone, grindstone
*toki
*toki
*matau
*matau
*p(w)aRara *tuukau
*konga
*kiri[-]
*kili
*fuqanga
PNP
*fo(q,o)anga
PEOC *sele *sele
*wiri(t)
*wili
*qola
Knife, cut with a knife
Drill
Wedge
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
30
6
7
7
6
20
13
19
8
7
P2
3
PSA
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
motifs in their decoration, and other comparisons with artifacts in bark
cloth, tattooing, and wood. If so, their presence at the Ancestral Polynesian
level may be inferred.
Industrial tools
Historical linguistic reconstructions and archaeological evidence also intersect in the domain of tools ± largely of stone ± for chopping, cutting, drilling,
and shaping things (Table 7.4), which included adzes or axes, chisels, gouges,
®les, whetstones and grindstones, drills, wedges, and simple basalt, obsidian,
and chert ¯ake tools. Chief among these is the Ancestral Polynesian adz kit
(Green 1971, 1974a) from which the later adz types of both Eastern and
Western Polynesia were derived.
The Ancestral Polynesian adz kit
Starting with nineteenth-century steel adzes in Great Britain, for which
there are extensive listings and illustrations of named adz types and their
illustrations, Leach (1996) derived some principles to assist in the classi®cation of Polynesian stone-headed adzes. Nonetheless, she adopted a negative
Material culture
177
stance that, for prehistoric Polynesia, ``we can never know the indigenous
type concepts (let alone their names)'' (Leach 1996:419). Our view is less
pessimistic, for reasons we hope to demonstrate after reviewing archaeological stone adz head classi®cations.
Leach (1996:416) concludes her discussion of improved Polynesian adz
head classi®cations by observing that functional taxonomies (types of adzes
used for speci®c purposes) are the most useful to archaeologists. Such
taxonomies might focus on: shape or morphology; technology of production;
level of skill in production; stage of use in life cycle of tool; and style or
fashion. She also comments that, in Polynesian-wide classi®cations, morphology ± especially of adz cross-sections ± has proven most effective (Leach
1996:417). This approach has produced thirteen cross-section shape categories (Green 1971: ®g. 2; 1974a: ®g. 92). In Samoa, Green and Davidson
(1969) used shape to reduce the number of types to ten, a large number of
which occur in Ancestral Polynesian contexts (Green 1974a: table 28). We
take the ``early Samoan adz assemblage'' as most representative of the
Ancestral Polynesian kit (Green 1974a:265), because for the Tongan group
(Kirch 1988:192±204), `Uvea, or Futuna (Kirch 1981), data on adzes are
more limited, especially for archaeologically excavated specimens from
plainware ceramic contexts.
How might we reduce this variety of archaeologically recovered adz head
types to its functional essentials at the period of Ancestral Polynesian
culture? Leach (MS)14 does this by revising the Green/Davidson adz
typology based on morphological shape, according to technological principles involved in adz production. Leach's revisions are based on technological studies of the Tatagamatau adz quarry materials from Tutuila Island
(American Samoa), especially the preform blanks and the ways these were
reduced and ®nished to produce the variety of morphological shapes
identi®ed by Green and Davidson. As Leach (MS) states, ``we have reached
the stage now where Samoan adze classi®cation must explicitly incorporate
technological variables as well as those relating to ®nish, function, or shape.''
This yields a concise ®ve-category description of the early Samoan adz kit
(c. 2600±1800 BP), which also best serves as a basis to characterize that for
Ancestral Polynesia. To quote Leach:
In summary, at the end of the ceramic era, the Samoan adze kit was created from a
variety of blank types ranging in size from small thin ¯akes to pieces a little over 65
mm thick and 172 mm long. The adze makers were suf®ciently skilled to produce
blanks amenable to trilateral ¯aking as well as the more common bilateral, bifacial
shaping techniques. At this time they deliberately manufactured:
(1) robust, heavy, bilaterally ¯aked plano-convex adzes with curved cutting edges
(Type Va);
(2) triangular and high plano-convex sectioned adzes with narrow cutting edges,
178
(3)
(4)
(5)
Rediscovering Hawaiki
made from trilaterally ¯aked platforms (Types Vb, VI, VII, and possibly IX),
usually of large size;
small, light rectangular adzes and chisels, usually ¯at-ground (Type III);
light reverse sub-triangular or reverse trapezoidal-sectioned adzes with sharp,
straight cutting edges (Type IV);
a variety of light ¯ake adzes of variable thickness and cross-section, in general of
quadrangular form, with most showing a tendency to have the bevel formed on
the widest face of the adze (Type I/II and possibly Type IX/X). (Leach MS: 36)
Leach's (MS) collapsing of the Samoan Types Vb, VI, and VII into a
single category ± based on a similar trilateral preform technology ± with
variation being limited to the ®nished shapes of their cross-sections, puts the
emphasis on the Samoan technological innovation. By the ®rst millennium AD,
triangular (or triangular, then rounded-by-grinding) cross-section adzes were
no longer just small or experimental forms. This suggests that they had a
longer history of successful manufacture, extending back into the ®rst
millennium BC.15
Within the Ancestral Polynesian homeland, there is marked regional
variation in the distribution of adz types (Figure 7.3). Heavy curved cuttingedge adzes (Type Va) were widely distributed from Manu`a in American
Samoa (Kirch 1993b:158) to Futuna and Niuatoputapu (Kirch 1988:192,
203), and Tongatapu (Green 1974a: ®g. 92). In contrast, light ¯ake adzes of
quadrangular section (Samoa types I/II) occurred only minimally in Tongatapu (Green 1974a: ®g. 91), and not at all in Niuatoputapu (Kirch
1988:192). The larger Samoa types IX/X (dominant later in Niuatoputapu
[Kirch 1988:192±98]) are rare in both regions, and are only indirectly
attributable to the ceramic period in Niuatoputapu. They have not been
found at all in plainware contexts in Tongatapu (Poulsen 1987:164±79). The
small light rectangular-sectioned adzes and chisels (Samoa Type III) are
again uncertainly attributed to ceramic contexts in Niuatoputapu, although
found in Tongatapu. However, only one among the triangular and high
plano-convex category of Samoan adzes ± which constitute a Polynesian
technological innovation ± has been found in plainware contexts in Tonga,
and in Niuatoputapu (Kirch 1988:192; Green 1974a: ®g. 92), where even in
later periods triangular adzes are rare, and often imports. Finally, the light
reverse-subtriangular or trapezoidal adzes are absent from anywhere in
Tonga at this period.
Greater regional differences are found in adz heads manufactured from
shell, only a single example in Cassis sp. shell having been found with
plainware pottery in Samoa, where shell adzes at any time period are
extremely rare (Kirch 1993b:158). In contrast, in both Niuatoputapu (Kirch
1988:198) and Tongatapu (Green 1974a: ®g. 91) ovoid-to-quadrangular
cross-section adzes made from the hinge portion of Tridacna shell are
Material culture
Fig. 7.3
Industrial tools: adzes in Ancestral Polynesian culture (top half, Samoan
types; bottom half, Tongan types).
179
180
Rediscovering Hawaiki
common, and there are also a Terebra shell chisel, and a Conus shell adz, from
Niuatoputapu (Kirch 1988:198). Poulsen (1987:182±83) found a late plainware-period Terebra shell chisel, and some of his Conus shell gouges may date
from this period.
Another category of adz heads absent in Samoa, but known from
plainware contexts in Tongatapu (Green 1974a: ®g. 91), are the planilateral
and circular-to-elliptical sectioned forms made in stone. These re¯ect a
continuity from shell adzes, continuing forms from the preceding Lapita
period. In Samoa, where adz makers had access only to dense oceanic basalt
rocks, and where large Tridacna shells are rare, the new triangular-sectioned
forms were therefore an adaptation. Thus ``when people crossed the andesite
line to settle Samoa and the rest of Polynesia, they found it necessary to
manufacture their entire adze kit from a restricted range of ®ne grained
basalts whose ¯aking properties and strengths differed from those previously
used'' (Green 1974b:144).
It is not currently possible to provide lexical categories that may have
been used by PPN speakers in classifying their adzes. Several factors are at
play. Firsthand information on adz manufacture and use in most Polynesian
societies disappeared early after European contact (see Green 1974a:254).
Because of this, folk taxonomies showing how Polynesians classi®ed adzes
and other stone tools are limited to a few cases. Likewise, indigenous names
for adz types seldom occur in dictionaries or ethnographies, severely limiting
the evidence for reconstruction at any proto-language level within PN. The
POLLEX database provides only the CEP term *koma, for some as yet
undetermined kind of adz.
There is, of course, the PPN etymon *toki, the generic cover term for tools
we call adzes, axes, and chisels (each in English having a different technological de®nition and name). Re¯exes of *toki display stable prime semantic
agreement, meaning `adz' through all stages from PPN down through lowerorder interstages and daughter languages (Table 7.4). Occasionally the
referent is to `axe,' as opposed to `adz,' but often both meanings occur,
hence these are what POLLEX provides for its PPN gloss. As Green
(1994:179) explains, archaeologists would expand the usual meaning of adz
± as this is technically de®ned in English ± to cover axes and chisels within
the generic PPN *toki taxon. This is justi®ed on the grounds that there are
no contrasting reconstructable PPN lexemes with the meaning axe or chisel,
although on occasion other words in some Polynesian languages do mean
chisel or axe. Moreover, we question the meaning `axe' as entirely appropriate for PPN *mata(q)u, although that was its POC meaning (see below).
Also, on archaeological evidence, stone adz heads, while functionally hafted
and employed predominately as adzes in Polynesia, also functioned at times
as axes and chisels (Hiroa 1930:362±64).16
Material culture
Fig. 7.4
181
Industrial tools: saw, ®les, whetstones, grinding stones, stone and coral
abraders, drill points and bow drill.
The POC etymon *toki carried the verbal meaning of `to cut, chop, and
peck,' but not that of an adz, axe or chisel (Ross, Clark, and Osmond
1998:235, 256). Rather, the generic name for `adz or axe' in POC was
*kiRam, while in PCP they were referred to as *kia (Geraghty 1990:62). A
semantic change in the meaning of *toki therefore occurred at PPN level, as
other words took on the meanings of `to cut, chop, and peck'; for instance,
PPN *tongi, *talai, or perhaps even *to®, where an association with the
concept of `adzing' occurs intermittently among the daughter language
re¯exes. Finally, because both the Lapita and Ancestral Polynesian adz kits
included adz heads in shell, as well as stone, and because some Oceanic
re¯exes including one Polynesian witness still mean `shell adz,' ``it is
probable the meaning of *kia (and then *toki ) always covered axe/adzes with
heads in shell as well as those in stone'' (Green 1994:179).
POLLEX lists PPN *mata(q)u with the meaning `axe,' as in the Eastern FIJ
182
Rediscovering Hawaiki
dialects (Geraghty 1996b:425±26). We do not accept this semantic reconstruction, (a) because its re¯exes mean `tattooing chisel' in ®ve of the
Polynesian Outlier dialects critical to the PPN reconstruction; (b) because
the Western FIJ witnesses refer to various tools including a digging stick and
paddle for shaping pottery (Geraghty 1996b), and in Bauan FIJ also `adz'
(Osmond and Ross 1998:89); and (c) because Hiroa (1930:330±31) interpreted its meaning in the name of the important Tutuila adz quarry of
Tataga-matau as the `preform stage of adz manufacture' (see also Leach and
Witter 1987:33), rather than `axe.' We would like to suppose that PPN
*mata(q)u might have indexed a `preform,' but on the available evidence that
is sheer speculation. More likely is the PNP meaning of `tattooing comb' (see
below), or a miniature form of bone or shell comb-like adz for tattooing.
The Polynesian literature often speaks of adz heads simply as ``adzes,'' but
we believe from our experience that the PPN term *toki applied both to the
whole tool with its haft, and to the stone or shell adz/axe/chisel head. The
haft and handle, however, were clearly distinguished from the adz head by
the PNP term *tuukau, which likely also applied at the level of Ancestral
Polynesian culture, even if we cannot reconstruct the etymon to PPN itself.
Wooden adz hafts have been recovered from the Vaito`otia-Fa`ahia wet site
of early Eastern Polynesian age (Sinoto 1982), but not yet from any Ancestral
Polynesian site. On comparative ethnographic evidence, they probably
consisted largely of the toe, or on occasion medium type of haft (Hiroa
1944:443, ®g. 269). In addition, if Leach (MS) is correct, the groove or slot in
the foot of a heel-type haft ± allowing Type IVb Samoan adz heads to be
mortised into it ± would also have been present. Mead (1968, 1971) applied
in-depth comparative ethnological studies to Polynesian adz hafts and their
decorative lashing patterns (by which the adz heads were attached to the
handles). He identi®ed some nine out of thirty-four decorative design units
occurring on adz handles as extending back to the Ancestral Polynesian level
(Mead 1971: table 2).
Other implements and tools
Items for shaping stone, shell, bone, or wood, including saws or ®les,
whetstones and grinding stones, and stone abraders are all archaeologically
evidenced at various Ancestral Polynesian sites (Green 1974a:269,
1974b:149; Poulsen 1987:209±13; Kirch 1988:211±12, 1993b:162), and a
few examples are shown in Figure 7.4. Two categories have corresponding
PPN lexical reconstructions: *kili, for `saw or ®le,' and *fuqanga, for
`whetstone or grindstone' (PNP *foanga referred to abrasive stone or
grindstones). Whetstones or grindstones are associated with the shaping and
®nishing of adzes, as well as sharpening or resharpening their bevels.
Material culture
183
Poulsen's (1987:209±13) list of stone cutters or saws, branch coral ®les, seaurchin ®les, coral grinders, pumice grinders, and stone grinders covers the
principal industrial tools encountered in sites associated with Ancestral
Polynesian culture. Some were certainly used in ®shhook manufacture, but
the remainder served as more general tools for making other objects.
The concept of cutting things ± in the sense of slicing or incising them
with a knife ± is carried by PPN *sele, with a nominal meaning of `knife' that
goes back to PCP. It probably applied to obsidian and chert ¯ake tools
recovered from Ancestral Polynesian contexts in Samoa and Tonga (Green
1974a:146±49, 1974b:268±69; Poulsen 1987:214; Kirch 1988:213±16,
1993b:165; Clark et al. 1997:80). However, obsidian was not abundant in
Tonga or Samoa, with the exception of Niuatoputapu, and in one site in
`Aoa Valley on Tutuila (Clark and Michlovic 1996). Imported chert was
abundant only in early Niuatoputapu sites, and is rare elsewhere. The main
obsidian sources in the core region of Western Polynesia were on Tafahi
Island and adjacent Niuatoputapu (Kirch 1988:215), and somewhere on the
island of Tutuila (Clark et al. 1997:80). The cherts were presumably imports,
but have proved dif®cult to source, although Fiji and Futuna are likely
possibilities (Kirch 1981).
One might suppose that the PPN speakers had a speci®c term for obsidian
or chert, beyond the generic *maka, `stone or rock.' Yet Osmond and Ross
(1998:92±93, 113±14; see also Osmond 1996) could not reconstruct with
certainty such a term for POC, the most likely contender being POC
*nad(r)i, for `¯int or obsidian.' In PPN the same problem applies, with only
PEP *mata-a, based on EAS and MAO re¯exes, plus a probable cognate for
a `kind of stone' in Hawaiian, and a possible re¯ex and cognate for the
`point of a spear' in TOK. Again the suggested meaning covers both
obsidian and other isotropic stones that yield ¯akes with a sharp edge. Given
the related PPN term *mata, `point, blade or cutting edge,' a PNP or even
PPN lexeme may also have taken the form *mata-a. It bears further
investigation.
Many Ancestral Polynesian shell artifacts (especially ®shing gear and
ornaments), as well as compound wooden artifacts such as canoe hulls, had
holes drilled in them. The Polynesian ethnographic literature describes drill
points of slate-pencil sea-urchin spines, worked pieces of coral, basalt and
chert rocks, the tips of long spired shells, sting-ray spines, shark's teeth, and
rat's teeth. One sea-urchin-spine abrader, distally worn to a circularsectioned point, was found in the plainware layers of the To`aga site in
American Samoa, and was interpreted as a drill used to manufacture
associated Turbo-shell ®shhooks (Kirch 1993b:162) (Figure 7.4). A tip of
another such specimen was also found close by. Hiroa (1930:496) records
Samoan ethnographic examples of pump drills with sea-urchin or stone drill
184
Rediscovering Hawaiki
points attached, and a later prehistoric drill point in stone was found in the
Western Samoan site of Lotofaga (Davidson 1969:247). Stone drill points are
one of the formal tool types recognized in ¯ake tool assemblages from
Tutuila (Clark 1998:294). Thus both kinds of drill points recorded for
Samoan pump drills are attested archaeologically. A probable coral example
of a drill point (rather than a ``®le'' under which it is listed) is pictured by
Poulsen (1987: pl. 73/3) and comes from Tongatapu.
Two Polynesian words carry the meaning `to make a hole,' PPN *fohu, `to
enter into, pierce,' and PPN *wili, `to twist or bore.' In some re¯exes, the
same lexeme also covers indigenous types of drills, gimlets, and augers. The
most usual form of a complete drilling rig employing such drill points is
described as a ``pump drill.''17 In TUV and TIK these are referred to not as
vili/viri but as mili and miri respectively.18 In just two cases a bow rather than
a pump drill is mentioned as the rig, and only the Maori possessed a preEuropean type of cord wrapped shaft as their main drilling device (Best
1974:84±91; Hiroa 1962:194±96). On the combined evidence of archaeology, ethnology, and historical linguistics, therefore, the Ancestral Polynesians most likely used a pump drill termed *wili, employing sea-urchin,
coral, and probably stone points (Figure 7.4).
Finally among the list of perishable industrial tools is a wedge in wood,
PNP *qola, for which we have no archaeological examples.
Material culture domains with limited archaeological
support
In contrast with containers or industrial tools, for which both linguistics and
archaeology provide mutually supporting evidence at the Ancestral Polynesian stage, other material culture domains lack strong archaeological
witnesses. The domains in question are: (1) the bark cloth complex; (2)
clothing and decoration for the human body, including tattooing; (3)
weapons; (4) sports and games; (5) musical instruments; (6) houses; (7)
canoes; and (8) cordage. Most of these domains have a few examples of
durable items to which we can point for archaeological support, but in none
is that list extensive. We treat these domains in summary fashion, although
additional ethnological distributional and descriptive evidence might be
adduced to support their reconstruction for the Ancestral Polynesian period.
Bark cloth
Despite the dearth of direct archaeological evidence for the Ancestral
Polynesian bark cloth complex, one can hardly doubt its existence. The
prime evidence is comparative ethnographic, supported by a robust set of
Material culture
185
PPN terms (Table 7.5). Based on this information, combined with the
widespread Paci®c and Southeast Asian occurrence of the bark cloth
complex (and an even greater archaeological antiquity in Southeast Asia),
Green (1979b:16±17) argued that the manufacture and use of bark cloth
was brought into the Fiji±Western Polynesian region by the ®rst Lapita
settlers. He relied on the distributional and ethnographic evidence assembled by Kooijman (1972:430±32), augmented by linguistic evidence, and
demonstrated that many designs on ethnographic bark cloth have close
parallels with those on Eastern Lapita-style pottery, dating to 2900±2600 BP.
Matthews (1996:119) has focused on the ethnobotany of the paper
mulberry plant (Broussonetia papyrifera), the major source of ®ber for Polynesian bark cloth.19 Again, the historical distribution of Broussonetia, ranging
from mainland through Island Southeast Asia and into Melanesia, supports
a Southeast Asian origin of the plant (Matthews 1996: ®g. 2). However, as
Matthews (1996:128) notes:
There is no reason to doubt that tapa was made during the Lapita period, but paper
mulberry was not necessarily used by the makers of Lapita pottery. The plant could
have reached the Paci®c Islands after the Lapita period. Lapita artistic traditions
could have been transmitted indirectly to tapa made from B. papyrifera ± via tapa
made from other plants, or by other media.
Thus the PPN reconstruction of *siapo, meaning both `bark cloth' and the
`paper mulberry plant,' furnishes the most secure linguistic evidence of its
antiquity, although this takes it back only to the plainware stage of Ancestral
Polynesian culture, and not to that of the decorated Eastern Lapita pottery
horizon.
Our view is that many of the pottery designs of the Early Eastern Lapita
horizon continued to be applied in Ancestral Polynesian culture to items of
bark cloth. They may also have occurred as `design patterns' (PPN *kanu) on
adz handles (see above) and other wooden objects, in tattooing (Green
1979b; Gell 1993:95±96, 190), and in mats and basketry (Taylor 1960;
Conner 1983:162±64). Kaeppler (1978b, 1989:234) extends the underlying
design principles to other artistic forms including music, dance, poetry, and
sculpture. They thus constitute what DeBoer (1991:147±48) perceptively
labeled a pervasive mode of decorative organization or art style, i.e., one that
occurs across many kinds of media and on many different materials, as in his
Shipibo case example.20
Archaeological items probably relating to bark cloth decoration, which
occur in a number of sites, include pieces of red ochre carrying ®ne striations
and other signs of modi®cation (Green 1974b:151±52; Poulsen 1987:214;
Kirch 1988:218). Fine particles from rubbing this ochre were used to
enhance the reddish-brown dye made from the bark of the Bischo®a javanica
186
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 7.5. The Proto Polynesian bark cloth complex, clothing, ornaments, and tattooing
Category/probable gloss
(PPN interstage)
Bark cloth complex
Paper mulberry plant (Broussonetia
papyrifera); bark cloth
Bark cloth (not printed or stained)
Used bark cloth
Old mat or bark cloth
(Old) bark cloth or waist garment of
bark cloth
Tree (Bischo®a javanica) from bark of
which a reddish dye for printing
bark cloth is made
Bark cloth beater or mallet
To beat out bark cloth into felt
Board or log on which bark cloth is
beaten
Pattern, design (e.g., on pottery,
tapa, tattooing)
Clothing in general
Clothing or covering for the body
Clothing (n); wrap food in leaves (v)
Item of clothing, loin cloth, skirt
Fine woven garment
Loin cloth garment
Fasten loin cloth or skirt
Skirt or kilt worn for dancing
Head accessories
Head-dress
Garland for head; headband
Eyeshade
Ear-pendant
Ear-pendant
Comb (n); to comb (v)
Fly whisk, fan
Body accessories and decoration
Necklace
Whale tooth; whale ivory
Flower worn as decoration
Ring (for the ®nger)
Sew, thread, pierced objects on a
string (as of beads, etc.)
Proto
Oceanic
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
*m(w)ase
*siapo
11
3
PEOC *taba *tapa
PCP *ngatu *ngatu
*nga®-nga®
*leu-leu
8
7
7
11
3
3
3
PEOC *koka *koka
11
?
*ike
*tutuk
*ike
*tutu
*tutu-a
15
13
11
3
3
3
PCP *kanu
*kanu
7
*kaput
*kopu
PCP *kie
*kiRe
*malo
PCP *sulu
*kafu
*kofu
*kie
*kiekie
*malo
*sulu
*titi
25
5
10
9
23
6
14
*pale
*faqu
PNP taumata
*sau
PNP *faka-kai
*selu
*fue
15
16
7
3
5
22
10
*kasoa
*rei
*sei
*mama
*tui
11
16
19
6
27
PCP *sau
*tuRi
P2
PSA
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
Material culture
Paint, smear, rub oil on body or hair *vani
Needle, tattooing needle (typically *saRum
made from wing bone of ¯ying fox)
Tattoo (of face or body)
Foot accessory
Sandal
187
*pani
*hau
15
12
3
3
3
3
*tatau
13
3
3
*taka
8
3
3
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
tree, PPN *koka. This was applied when printing designs on bark cloth in the
Western Polynesian region (Kooijman 1972: table E), but was only one of
the possible functions for red ochre powder. It supplied a basic ingredient for
the red slip which sometimes occurs on pottery, and could be sprinkled over
a corpse, perhaps wrapped in bark cloth, for burial (Green 1974b:152). Thus
the presence of worked pieces of red ochre furnishes only equivocal support
for inferring decorated bark cloth in Ancestral Polynesian culture. Unfortunately, a PPN term for ochre as robust as that for CEP *karaea has yet to be
reconstructed, although it may have been covered by a semantic extension of
the term for `red clay,' PPN *kele. Our view is that it is more likely to have
had a separate term as it does in TON (`umea) today, and in Eastern
Polynesia, but we cannot reconstruct it at present.
Bodily decoration and tattooing
An extensive set of PPN terms for clothing and decoration of the human
body has been reconstructed (Table 7.5). On ethnographic and distributional
grounds, these occurred as part of Ancestral Polynesian culture (Linton
1923:454). Insightfully, an early commentator on the subject of native
clothing remarked, Polynesians ``have a high notion of decorating the head
and shoulders. The tatoo [sic] is considered the chief adornment for the
body'' (Ella 1899:170). That pattern of dress, it seems, was an ancient one
given the PPN reconstructions we have assembled. Regrettably, except for
tattooing (Gell 1993), we lack modern comparative studies for these domains.
Archaeologically, items of bodily adornment dating to the Ancestral
Polynesian period (Figure 7.5) are limited to narrow shell bracelets, bangles,
or armbands of various kinds, small shell rings, small beads of shell and bone,
stone beads, and long ``circular units'' of shell ( Janetski 1980b; Poulsen
1987:215±17; Kirch 1988:206±207, 1993b:162±63). A number of shell
188
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Fig. 7.5
Ornaments from archaeological sites of the Ancestral Polynesian phase.
species were used, primarily Conus, Trochus, and Tridacna. While these objects
could have been used for various kinds of necklaces, ear rings, arm rings,
and ®nger rings (all ethnographically attested functions), it is certainly the
case that some of the so-called bracelet or armband pieces would never have
®tted on arms, and some of the rings are of insuf®cient size for adult ®ngers.
As Poulsen (1987:198, 202, 204, 205) observes, rings of various sizes and
beads often occur ethnographically in composite items such as necklaces, or
sewn onto pieces of clothing such as belts. Moreover, to sew them on, or
even easily string them into necklaces, would have required needles. Appropriate ®ne birdbone needles have been recovered from a few plainware
assemblages in Tonga (Poulsen 1987:191). A `needle' for a variety of
Material culture
189
purposes comes under the category of PPN *sau, a form and meaning which
derives from POC *saRum, while `to thread pierced objects on a string' (such
as beads) or `to sew' is PPN *tui, derived from POC *tuRi with the meaning
of `stringing things together' such as beads or ®sh, or `to skewer' (e.g.,
candlenuts).
Although many of the items of clothing and body ornamentation reconstructed linguistically for PPN (Table 7.5) have no direct archaeological
correlates, a few of those in shell do. This might apply to beads which could
have been used in `necklaces,' PPN *kasoa, and PPN *mama, `ring for ®nger.'
The main surprise is ®nding no PPN lexeme for a shell bracelet or armband,
nor for a bead.
Archaeologically, the existence of tattooing during the Eastern Lapita
horizon is certain, on the basis of comb-like tattooing chisels found in sites in
Tongatapu (Poulsen 1987:207). An associated pottery cup has been plausibly
interpreted as having held the tattooing pigment.21 A fourth tattooing chisel
came from an early but post-ceramic period pit. Poulsen (1987:107) notes
that an identical set of tattooing chisels was collected in Tonga on the Cook
voyages. This is suf®cient evidence to infer the continuity of these tattooing
instruments ± and therefore tattooing ± throughout the Tongan sequence,
and hence to attribute the practice to Ancestral Polynesian culture.
One therefore expects to discover one or more lexemes for tattooing
instruments at the PPN level, an expectation not entirely met. A reconstruction *usi, for tattooing instruments, exists only at the PEP level, and their
antiquity at the early Eastern Polynesian stage is con®rmed archaeologically
(e.g., Kirch et al. 1995). In Western Polynesia and the Outliers, two
reconstructions are also possible. One, *mataqu, would see the Outlier
instrument as a kind of miniature adz (cf. Linton 1923:417), for which the
®ve re¯exes of matau from ANU, NUK, ONJ, TAK, and TIK carry the
meaning `tattooing instrument,' along with a Samoan form meaning `adz
preform,' and a BAU and Eastern FIJ dialect form designated in the
ethnographic sources as an `adz' or `axe.' The lexeme is therefore of
undoubted PPN, and indeed POC, antiquity (Osmond and Ross 1998:89).
POC in fact probably had two terms, *kiRam and *matau for `adz/axe.' A
more plausible semantic history hypothesis in Polynesia might be that at the
PNP stage *matau came to mean a comb-like tattooing ``adz'' of miniature
size, with a later-stage development in meaning being an adz preform in
Samoa, and a much later to modern one being an axe in some Eastern
Fijian dialects. If so, then the competing form, PPN *hau, based on seven
re¯exes, would have referred to a needle or pen-like form of tattooing
instrument (often made from the wing bone of a ¯ying fox), as might be
expected from the word's prime meaning of `needle' extending back to PMP
*zaRum (Osmond and Ross 1998:87).
190
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Weapons
The domain of war, warfare, and weapons has little archaeologically to
support its existence at the Ancestral Polynesian stage. Even unequivocal
sling stones have not been identi®ed for this period, although they may well
occur among items identi®ed as probable ``hammerstones'' or among other
rounded pebble manuports of appropriate size. Pointed-ended sling stones
occur in Western Lapita sites and there is a POC term (*maga) for them
(Osmond 1996:126, 130). Thus the occurrence of sling stones (and by
inference, the sling) is to be expected at the Ancestral Polynesian stage.
Some support is found in PPN *maka, a continuation of its POC form, for
both a `sling' and `to hurl or to sling.' As for the spear or lance, it is dif®cult,
as Osmond (1996:121) notes, to distinguish between spears for ®shing,
fowling, and ®ghting.
Everything we know ethnographically suggests the bow and arrow
complex belongs not under weapons of warfare, but in the domain of sports
and games, with ®shing and hunting birds being other functions which it
also served (see below). At present, therefore, indications of the practice of
warfare at the Ancestral Polynesian stage are limited to a small set of
linguistic reconstructions (Table 7.6). Because these are not anywhere near
as extensive as the wide range of clubs and weapons attested ethnographically, this suggests perhaps that war and warfare among these small-scale
societies was limited.22 Forti®ed places, too, are probably a later phenomenon in the Fiji±Western Polynesian region (Best 1993), the PPN term *koro
most likely referring to a fenced settlement, or similarly enclosed place.
Games and sports
One Polynesian game, widely documented archaeologically (Skinner 1946),
is that in which shaped discs are bowled between two stakes positioned at
some remove from the bowler. Archaeologists have recognized either
probable or de®nite bowling stones, from plainware contexts in Samoa
(Green 1974a:269) and Tongatapu (Poulsen 1987:208). Hiroa (1930:663)
discusses the game's wide ethnographic distribution including Samoa, the
Cook Islands, Hawai`i, and probably Tonga, where bowling disks were made
of perishable materials in addition to stone. Poulsen (1987:208) con®rms the
name teka for a disc made of Alocasia root in Tonga, while Koch
(1984:176±77) describes bowling stones in Tuvalu, where they go under the
names tika and teka on different islands.
Linguistically (Table 7.6), the domain of games comes under the PNP
category *ta(a)-kalo with the meaning of `to play' or a `game.' PPN *teka in
verb form means `to roll, rotate, or spin,' and the leaf-wrapped spinning disc
Material culture
191
Table 7.6. Proto Polynesian terms for warfare, sports and games, and musical
instruments
Category/probable gloss
(PPN interstage)
Proto
Oceanic
War, warfare, weapons
War, ®ght, make war
War, war party
Courageous, warrior
Strike with a blow
Weapon
Spear, lance
Shaft of a spear
Stone, sling, slingshot; to sling, hurl
Enclosed, fenced, or forti®ed
settlement
*tau
*tauqa
*toqa
*patuk
*patu
*masafu
*sao(t)
*tao
*fuata
*maga
*maka
PEOC *ko(d,r)o *kolo
Sports and games
Cat's cradle, string ®gure games
Whipping or spinning top
Dart, to throw a dart
*tibwa(ng)
Name of game in which a spinning
disc is used; to roll, rotate, spin
Tossing game (like quoits) played
with asymmetrical discs
Disc used in *lafo game
To shoot (with a bow)
*p( w)anaq
Reed, arrow
Bowstring, taut
*lolo(s)
Musical instruments
Drum, to drum, thump
Wooden drum
Bamboo nose ¯ute
Trumpet
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
23
23
21
18
3
23
8
20
17
*fai
*moa
*tika
PCE *teka
*teka
6
6
9
*lafo
5
7
P2
3
3
3
PSA
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
*tupe
*fana
*ngasau
*kalolo
10
25
8
6
3
3
3
*pasu
*nafa
*fangufangu
*pu(q)u
9
10
8
22
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
192
Rediscovering Hawaiki
or bowling stone as well as the game in which it was used were called *teka.
However, later in CEP, a soundshift occurred in the vowel from *i to *e,
giving CEP *tika, an ancestral word also meaning a dart throwing game.
This meant that in Eastern Polynesian and probably in places at the PEC
stage, *tika became *teka, leading to some confusion over the name of these
games given in various sources.
PPN *tika, however, was the original name for a quite different game. Its
practice is described by Hiroa (1930:664) under the rubric ``throwing cord,''
and more fully by Moyle (1970). The characteristically shaped wooden dart
points attached to a reed shaft used in this game have not been recovered
archaeologically in tropical Polynesia, but in New Zealand bone points of
identical shape have been found in early Archaic contexts (Davidson 1984:
®g. 56). Perhaps similar bone examples will one day also be found in
appropriately aged sites of the core area of Western Polynesia. For now, the
game's Ancestral Polynesian status rests on its ethnographic distribution
including Fiji and Rotuma, and the linguistic evidence which extends back
to POC (Osmond and Ross 1998:225±26).
Another Polynesian pastime likely at the PPN stage is *lafo, a pitching
game played with asymmetrically sided discs (*tupe), usually in wood, and
with mats (or other features) as bounded spaces, on which the discs must stay
to score. Other pastimes at the PNP level included *moa, a spinning top
which could easily be found in a suitably shaped coral form, and *fai, string
®gure games.23 Both can be inferred to have been part of Ancestral
Polynesian culture, but only the spinning top is ever likely to be con®rmed
archaeologically.
Although Linton (1923:452) placed the bow (and arrow) as an important
weapon in contact-period Tonga, and stated that it was traditionally believed
to have had such a role in New Zealand, in Tonga, Niue, and Hawai`i it
served for hunting rats, in Tahiti and Tikopia for hunting birds, and in the
Marquesas, Tikopia, and Samoa for some kinds of ®shing. It was also used in
chie¯y sport in the Society Islands, and as a toy in the Marquesas, Hawai`i,
and Samoa. Consequently, we do not believe the bow and arrow ever played
an important role as a weapon in ancient Polynesian society, though it was
certainly present.
Musical instruments
Words for four musical instruments are reconstructed linguistically at the
PPN and PNP levels and are likely to have existed at the Ancestral
Polynesian stage (Table 7.6). Triton shell examples of PNP *puu, `trumpet,'
might in the future be recovered in archaeological excavations in Western
Polynesian sites.24 The trumpet is certainly an item of Polynesian-wide
Material culture
193
distribution, occurs elsewhere archaeologically, and has a ®rm although
different POC lexical reconstruction (Osmond and Ross 1998: 106±7). We
have reconstructed PPN *fangufangu for the bamboo nose ¯ute. It is a
reduplication of PPN *fang(o,u) meaning `to blow the nose,' or `through the
nose.' Archaeologically, supposed nose ¯utes have been found only in New
Zealand (Davidson 1984:93), where they occur in materials other than
bamboo. Different lexical forms attest to ¯utes in POC (Osmond and Ross
1998:107±108), and Blust (1995a:496) reconstructs PAN *tulali, `nose ¯ute.'
All this suggests these instruments are pre-Polynesian in their antiquity, and
of course they are widely attested ethnographically in Polynesia (Moyle
1990).
Houses and community structures
Archaeologists have yet to identify structural elements of Ancestral Polynesian households and settlements, due to the lack of extensive horizontal
excavations. Green (1986:53) summarized the evidence for components of
Ancestral Polynesian households, and while his discussion of the lexical
evidence can now be expanded (Table 7.7), the archaeological evidence is
little changed. The best documentation is for sites dating to around 2100 BP,
especially in Western Samoa, although important data also come from
Tongatapu, Niuatoputapu, Futuna, and American Samoa. In this review, we
use the list of lexical items in Table 7.7 as a guide.
Ethnographic distribution of house forms throughout Polynesia, as well as
archaeological evidence for later prehistoric time periods, suggests that both
straight-sided and rounded-ended dwellings were ancient types. However,
the linguistically indicated change from a rectangular, stilt, or pole-house
dwelling (POC *Rumaq) occupied by Lapita peoples, to the open-sided
dwellings of Polynesia (PPN *fale), reveals that much about the early form
and features of Ancestral Polynesian buildings remains unclear (Green
1998b; Green and Pawley 1998). Holes in which to implant posts of various
sizes (PPN *pou, *tulu, *tia) would have been key structural elements of the
round-ended PPN *fale dwelling form, and are archaeologically evidenced in
Samoa (Green 1974b:111±13; Davidson 1974:232; Kirch and Hunt, eds.,
1993), Niuatoputapu (Kirch 1988), and Tongatapu (Poulsen 1987). One
example where areal exposure revealed more than a single postmold is
Layer 5 in the SU-Sa-3 site at Sasoa`a. In the plan reproduced here as
Figure 7.6, the post holes are clearly adjacent to an exterior stone pavement
(PPN *paepae) on which (and in the area beyond) an adz maker or lithic
specialist (PPN *tufunga) refashioned adzes (Green 1974b:112±13, 137). Just
beyond the pavement another alignment of post holes suggests a wooden
fence (PPN *loto-qaa, or less likely in this case, *paa) possibly demarcating an
194
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 7.7. Proto Polynesian terms relating to household units and their architectural
features
Category
Probable gloss
PPN term
Buildings
Primary dwelling, house
Cookhouse, shed, containing earth oven
Canoe shed
God-house, ritual building
Fenced enclosure, compound
*fale
*paito
*(a)folau
*fale-(qatua)
*loto-qaa
Wall, fence, enclosure
Wall, fence
Earth oven
Storage pit, hole
Wood, timber
*paa
*qaa
*qumu
*lua
*kau
Sennit ®ber, rope, coir
Gravel for paving
Doorway, entrance
*kafa
*kili-kili
*faqi-totoka
Pavement, platform
Peg used for fastening, wooden nail
Storage shelf, platform
Rafter, beam
Rafter, or possibly purlins
Enclosed area or inner room
Thatch
Posts
Ridge pole
Stake, post
Post, staff
Wooden pillow
To cover ¯oor with mats or grass
Mat
*pae-pae
*faqo
*fata
*fatunga
*kaso
*loki
*qato
*pou
*taq(o,u)fufu
*tia
*tulu
*kali
*faaliki
*tapakau,
*takapau
Household
unit features
Construction
materials
Parts of
buildings
Furnishings
PPN reconstructions from Biggs (POLLEX).
Archaeological
evidence
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Material culture
Fig. 7.6
195
Excavation plan of the Sasoa`a site in the Falefa Valley, Samoa, showing the
postmolds, house pavement, and earth oven.
area to one end of the house. In this same vicinity (although not with
complete certainty associated with the period of the house) are a small earth
oven (*qumu) and subterranean storage pits (*lua).
Several Ancestral Polynesian sites evidence sorted gravel spreads of house
¯oors (PPN *kili-kili ), a widespread feature common in later time periods
(Davidson 1974:232). In addition, the earth oven using heated stones
(*qumu), and the informally stone-outlined or simple scoop-basin hearth have
196
Rediscovering Hawaiki
been identi®ed in sites of Ancestral Polynesian age, as have storage pits for
food (see Chapter 6).25
Other PPN lexical reconstructions for parts of the Ancestral Polynesian
*fale are not as yet attested archaeologically (see Table 7.7). The linguistic
evidence, reinforced by the comparative ethnography of Polynesian household units, strongly suggests that dwellings (*fale) were differentiated from
cookhouses (*paito) in Ancestral Polynesian settlements.26 Boundaries or
divisions within a settlement, such as might delineate separate household
units, are suggested by the PPN term *tuqa-(a)-koi, `boundary marker.'
There was most likely a religious or ritual component to at least some
households, even if this cannot be identi®ed archaeologically. These ritual
spaces are discussed in Chapter 9. Linguistically, a communal concept is tied
in semantically with the gloss for PPN *fono, or `deliberative assembly of
persons,' which might have used a building with a stone foundation as its
base. Another term offering some hope of eventual archaeological identi®cation is PPN *qafu, a raised foundation or platform supporting a structure
(domestic or communal), and in the latter case perhaps having some kind of
religious function (see Chapter 9).
Canoes
Polynesian seafaring falls within the broader complex which allowed Austronesian-speaking peoples to settle the Paci®c island world (Irwin 1992;
Pawley and Pawley 1998). Evidence for this canoe complex in antiquity, and
the stages through which voyaging with these vessels developed in the
Paci®c, however, is largely indirect and inferential. An occasional exception
is a wet site like Vaito`otia-Fa`ahia on Huahine in the Society Islands, where
the early East Polynesian assemblage includes several canoe parts, and
accessories such as steering paddles (Sinoto and McCoy 1975; Sinoto 1979).
Yet, to explore this ocean-dominated world, to ®sh its waters, and to
transport goods and people among its myriad islands, all required seaworthy
vessels. The evidence, especially that involving exchanges of several kinds of
items, often over great ocean distances in the Lapita and post-Lapita periods
(Green and Kirch 1997; Kirch 1997a:228±39), persuades us that such craft
not only existed, but were sophisticated.
Haddon and Hornell (Hornell 1936; Haddon 1937; Haddon and Hornell
1938) provided a comprehensive ethnographic corpus of canoes for the
entire Paci®c, from which the kinds of ancestral water-craft likely in
particular regions may be inferred through comparative typology. More
recently, Pawley and Pawley (1994, 1998) have provided historical linguistic
backup to Haddon and Hornell's survey, allowing one to assign to the PPN
stage a rich canoe and seafaring complex, an essential component of
Material culture
197
Ancestral Polynesian culture. Pawley and Pawley (1998:208) show that
upwards of twenty words having to do with water-craft and seafaring can be
reconstructed for Proto Malayo-Polynesian (PMP), and virtually all were
continued into POC and PCP. ``In addition, around ten terms can be
attributed to POC and PCP that have not so far been reconstructed for
PMP.'' A selection among some thirty of these items from POLLEX is set
out in Table 7.8, as they would appear in PPN. Important among them is a
®rm reconstruction for a `double-hulled canoe,' something which remains a
matter of debate for the earlier POC stage.27 In addition, there is support for
the large ocean-going sailing canoe, and the small outrigger or dugout canoe
for inshore use, along with a number of accessory items such as paddles,
bailers, and anchors.28
Cordage
The canoe complex raises the issue of cordage, a key perishable material
whose existence again relies solely on strong inference and indirect arguments, rather than archaeology. Certainly, cordage must have been vital for
joining together canoe parts, as well as for rigging associated with the mast
and sails, and for tethering and anchor ropes. Cordage was also essential in
house construction, and for lashing adz/axe heads to their handles. In all
these cases a set of characteristic Polynesia-wide lashing patterns are
encountered ethnographically, although their descriptions are scattered
through the literature. Other lashing techniques attach ®shhooks to ®shing
lines, and again in the realm of ®shing gear, the use of ®ner-weight cordage
and thread was common, especially in connection with nets and seines.
Inferentially, ®ne cordage or thread of various kinds is implied by the needles
found in sites of this period, as it is by the holes drilled in the range of shell
artifacts. Indeed, a whole range of objects which make up Ancestral
Polynesian culture implies the existence of cordage in a wide variety of
forms, even if its archaeological presence in Ancestral Polynesian culture is
not directly attested.
The historical linguistic evidence reveals some of the common categories
of cordage known to people in Ancestral Polynesian societies. POLLEX lists
at least seventeen PPN verbal reconstructions having to do with various
actions involving the use of cordage and rope. Among the set of reconstructed nominal terms are two for rope (PPN *maea and *taura), one for a
type of cordage or lashing (PPN *lufa), and one for sennit (PPN *kafa), as well
as two for cords. One kind of cord, PPN *uka, probably initially referred
primarily to a bowstring, but then took on the general meaning of cord,
especially for some kind of ®shing line in PNP, while PPN *afo referred to a
kind of ®shing line right from the PPN stage on. Without further ethno-
198
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 7.8. The Proto Polynesian canoe complex a and cordage
Probable gloss (PPN interstage)
Proto
Oceanic
Proto
Polynesian
Canoe complex
Sailing canoe
*waqa
*waka
Sea-going craft, especially a
*f(a,o)ulua
double-hulled canoe
Small outrigger or dugout canoe
*paopao
for inshore use
Plank
*baban
*papa
Strake, probably topstrake of a
*(q)oRa
*oqa
canoe
Base, bottom, keel (or dugout
PCP *takele *takele
underbody to which planking is
added)
Projecting headboard or prow (often *ijung
*isu
with ornately carved decoration)
Outrigger ¯oat
*saman
*hama
Outrigger boom
*kiajo
*kiato
Sail (n)
*layaR
*laa
Mast
PEOC *pana*fanaa
Bailer
*limas
*asu
*tataa
Paddle
*ponse
*fohe
Cordage
Rope
Rope
Sennit (made of coconut ®ber)
Type of cordage or lashing of
coconut ®ber
Bowstring
Cord, ®shing line
Cord, especially ®shing line
Carrying cord, handle
Strand of rope or cord (PPN); single
element in plaiting or weaving
(PNP)
Make a cord by rolling ®bers on
the thigh
Braid (i.e., interlace three or more
¯exible elements), sometimes
called plaiting
NCOG P1
31
6
P2
3
3
8
PSA
3
3
3
3
17
14
3
3
3
3
19
3
3
6
23
28
24
12
18
6
31
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
*maea
*taura
*kafa
*lufa
12
17
27
4
3
3
3
*apon
*uka
PNP *uka
*afo
*ka(a)wei
*fequnu
15
20
8
14
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
*pilo(s)
*®lo
23
3
3
*piri
*®ri
20
3
3
*kapa
*uka
3
Material culture
Prepare ®bers for making string;
prepared ®ber
Rope, cord, plaiting
199
*tali
*amo
9
3
*tali
6
3
3
a
Note that this table provides only a selection of thirteen out of some thirty lexical items in
the Polynesian and Oceanic canoe complex.
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
graphic study, or the recovery of direct archaeological evidence, it is not
possible to distinguish between them. The nominal terms given in Table 7.7
outline the main set of cordage and rope items strongly indicated by the
PPN lexical evidence. In addition, some common means for making cordage
are lexically indicated along lines expected ethnographically: PPN *amo for
preparing the ®bers for string making; PPN *®lo for twisting the ®bers into
cord by rolling on the thigh; and PPN *®ri for braiding or plaiting into
stronger forms of cordage and rope.
Conclusions
Ethnographically, between 100 and 300 types of objects can be expected in
any comprehensive account of material culture on a Polynesian island, with
larger numbers for those societies residing on high islands, and a lesser
number among those inhabiting atolls (Table 7.1). Yet only between about
twenty-®ve and forty such types were suf®ciently durable to be routinely
discovered through archaeological excavation. In Polynesia the perishable
component makes up roughly 80 percent of material culture, archaeologically recoverable only under exceptional taphonomic conditions.
Judging which ethnographically attested objects might be inherited from
Ancestral Polynesian culture therefore poses a vexing methodological
problem, if one relies solely on archaeological data.
Historical linguistics offers a partial solution by yielding extensive terminological sets for various material culture domains at the PPN stage. For
some domains, archaeology con®rms and extends the linguistic evidence,
enabling us to address variability and form within and between the categories
and the communities involved, and details of the technological processes of
manufacture and use. Archaeology occasionally identi®es items for which no
corresponding lexemes have been reconstructed, or for which ethnography
offers little or no justi®cation (pottery, for example).
200
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Ross Clark's 1991 systematically arranged English to PPN Thesaurus
incorporates names for over 100 material objects, most of them portable, a
small part of the approximately 2,300+ PPN words. Still, and without trying
to be exhaustive, we have identi®ed in this chapter seventy-eight such objects
(Tables 7.3 to 7.8), and another ®fteen or so are covered in the chapters on
®shing and food preparation (Chapters 5 and 6). Thus, in the number of
material objects evidenced by historical linguistic reconstructions at the PPN
level, we are coming close to the numbers suggested by ethnographic studies
of atoll societies (Table 7.1).
Archaeologically, the record is perhaps better than many might have
anticipated, and in line with what was expected based on our analysis of four
sample ethnographies. In the domain of containers, for example, where
eight kinds of objects are discussed, only pottery (PPN *kulo) is archaeologically represented, and we were unable to identify a term referring
speci®cally to bamboo tube containers. On the other hand, at least nine
kinds of industrial tools are indicated lexically in PPN, and eight of them (or
parts of them) have been recovered archaeologically. Adzes/axes (PPN *toki )
occur archaeologically in suf®cient numbers, and the technology of their
manufacture is well enough understood, that both variability and methods of
production can be described, as we were able to do for pottery.
In all, a total of twenty durable items archaeologically represented out of
just over 100 indicated through PPN lexical reconstruction closely approaches the 14 to 23 percent of durable items predicted from our
ethnographic case studies. When durable objects such as ®shing gear and
food preparation items discussed in other chapters are added to the
archaeologically recovered corpus, we are comfortably within the ethnographically anticipated range of object types both numerically and in percentage terms for atoll societies (Table 7.1). Our triangulation strategy has
alerted us to the full range of portable material culture to be anticipated for
Ancestral Polynesian culture. It has produced more emic (i.e., lexically
marked) categories than archaeology alone would allow, even in the cases of
pottery and adzes where the archaeological evidence itself is extensive and
informative with respect to variability, technology of production, and aspects
of use, not dependent solely on ethnographic parallels. The lesson is clear: to
recover even the material worlds of ancient peoples requires the holistic
evidence of triangulation.
Chapter 8
Social and political organization
Probably the term ariki was used as a chie¯y title throughout
Polynesia from the earliest times. The character of the oldest form
of the Polynesian ariki chieftainship was perhaps more clearly
sacerdotal. When the same term was later applied to a chief in the
sense of a ruler, it marked a change. In time, a new type of arikiship
koskinen 1960:148
evolved.
Thus far in our program of applying a triangulation method to the
``rediscovery'' of Ancestral Polynesia within the framework of a phylogenetic
model we have dealt with domains all having a material basis: the
environment, subsistence, cuisine, and technology. We now move, however,
largely out of this materialist realm, as we attempt to interpret fundamental
social structures by which the Ancestral Polynesians organized themselves,
as well as the belief systems ± the mentaliteÂs ± that regulated their daily lives.
Archaeology will have only minimal input to these investigations, even
though its contribution could potentially be much greater.1 To return to our
surveying analogy, we are now restricted to ®xing, by triangulation, the
domain of interest from only two independent ``lines of sight.'' We must
consequently depend more heavily on linguistic evidence for cultural (emic)
categories, and will need to be as rigorous as possible in constructing
semantic history hypotheses, informed by intensive ethnographic comparison. Such rugged terrain is not for the faint-hearted among culture
historians. Yet we do not hesitate, for the landscape now within the scope of
our surveying instruments ± hazy though its topography may be ± reveals
the essential contours of ancient Polynesian societies.
House societies
Austronesian scholars have recently found much value in Claude Le viStrauss' notion of socieÂteÂs aÁ maison, ``house societies'' (LeÂvi-Strauss
1982:172±87), rendering the concept more ¯exible than he initially proposed, and extending it ethnographically beyond his initial criteria (e.g., Fox
1993; Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995:21±22, 25, 37; Fox and Sather 1996).
201
202
Rediscovering Hawaiki
We ourselves have applied the ``house society'' construct in Oceanic
archaeological reconstructions (Green and Pawley 1999; Green 1998b;
Kirch 1996, 1997a:183±91, in press), and are convinced of its integrative
value in collaborative research in social anthropology, historical linguistics,
and archaeology. In contrast, older models of Austronesian social organization based on ``descent groups'' and rules of af®liation have proven less
analytically revealing than was once hoped. Moreover, such lineage-based
models are nearly impossible to interpret from the archaeological record.
Kinship and social organization are notoriously dif®cult to reconstruct for
past societies, except perhaps through the application of the triangulation
method within a comparative or phylogenetic model, and even then the
arguments are complex.2
A ``house-based'' approach to society, in contrast, permits and even
encourages, a focus on the architectonic correlates of social organization ± on
the physical dwelling, its spatial structure, and associated buildings and
spaces. Paradoxically, as Carsten and Hugh-Jones observe (1995:12), Le viStrauss' own writings on this topic omitted the most obvious feature of the
House3 concept, its architecture. This they attribute to a general neglect of
architectural signi®cance in anthropological analysis (1995:2). The dif®culty
arises from a failure to join detailed studies of the material aspects of
dwellings and other buildings and spaces, with the social organization of the
people who ± often over long periods ± occupy these structures and spaces,
and act out much of their domestic life within them (1995:4, 37). Pierre
Bourdieu's concept (1977) of the ``habitus,'' the daily exercise of repeated
minutiae through which people's lives are socially and meaningfully renegotiated and recreated, is relevant. In Austronesian societies, the House is
surely the most fundamental structure of the habitus. Archaeologists have
much to contribute to an architecturally informed analysis of social structure, when this is embedded within a more global category of the Housebased society, and speci®cally within a sophisticated notion of House. From
this perspective, the House is seen ``in the round,'' as a multifaceted social
unit in which all of its different aspects are brought together along the lines
initially envisioned by LeÂvi-Strauss (Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995:18, 20,
45).
House societies in the Austronesian world
LeÂvi-Strauss (1982:172±87) suggested that House societies were characteristic of many ethnographic regions including native North America, medieval Europe, ancient Greece, feudal Japan, Indonesia, Melanesia, tropical
Polynesia, New Zealand, Madagascar, and Africa. Since 1983, the applicability of the concept has been tested for some of these regions, and for new
Social and political organization
203
areas such as lowland South America. Yet nowhere has the idea of House
society enjoyed more intensive ethnographic use, than among the Austronesian societies of Island Southeast Asia (e.g., Fox 1993; Fox and Sather 1996;
Grinker 1996:856). As Roxana Waterson, a major contributor to a sophisticated theory of House societies, writes:
In island Southeast Asia, a number of common themes are prominent both in
architectural styles, and in ways of talking about houses and relating to them. The
wide distribution of these features, and the vocabularies used for discussing them,
are strongly suggestive of shared Austronesian origins. (1995:54)
Waterson's seminal book (1990; see also 1995), along with the essays in Fox
(ed., 1993), and six of the chapters in Carsten and Hugh-Jones (eds., 1995),
elaborates this perspective. These works draw, in part, on semantic reconstructions of Austronesian house terms to suggest that the concept has real
antiquity among Austronesian-speaking peoples (Blust 1987; see also Blust
1995a). Moreover, ethnographies or ethnographic analyses written from a
House-society perspective are being extended to many societies in the
Austronesian world.4 Collectively, these studies demonstrate the cogency of a
House-society perspective for the analysis of Austronesian social organization, lending con®dence in its applicability to Ancestral Polynesia, just as it
has proven useful for understanding their Lapita predecessors (Kirch 1997a;
Green 1998b).
Criterial features of House societies
The youthful concept of House society is still under theoretical development,
requiring us to outline key features that contribute to its analytical power.
We have isolated eight characteristics, but have not tried to determine which
among these might be irreducible features, since we agree with Waterson
(1995:48) that not every principle need be at work in every ethnographic (or
archaeological) instance.
1. Throughout the Austronesian world, the House is a salient organizing
category for the people themselves (Waterson 1995:48), an emic category. A
paradigmatic example from Oceania is Tikopia, where the elemental social
group (the kano a paito) takes its name from the term for the house itself
( paito).5 Moreover, such groups aggregate under a larger ``umbrella'' category, called the kainanga, which invariably traces its origins back to the
House of a founding ancestor; we shall encounter these kainanga groups in
detail later. Fundamentally, the House-society concept forwards an indigenous perspective, as it employs emic terms and concepts (Carsten and
Hugh-Jones 1995:22). As such the House-society perspective can draw upon
Oceanic and Polynesian lexical reconstructions, and allows for the development of speci®c semantic-history hypotheses.
204
Rediscovering Hawaiki
2. Several Island Southeast Asian ethnographies ``focus on the importance of the House as a kin group as well as a politico-religious entity''
(Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995:24, 255 fn. 23), while Blust (1980:211)
argued on linguistic evidence that PAN *Rumaq and its many modern
re¯exes in Austronesian languages referred not only to a physical `house,'
but to the low-level genealogical unit de®ned by descent from an apical
ancestor. Kirch argues the importance of the House for Tikopia society
(1996:259), and generally in his analysis of Polynesian temples as ``holy
houses'' (in press). Further, LeÂvi-Strauss stressed that the House as a social
unit endures over time, outlasting any single generation. This it does by
various mechanisms that ensure its continuity beyond that of a continual
replacement of its human resources (Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995:7).
These special mechanisms include:
3. The House comprises a ®xed-property holding unit, something akin to
a landed estate with its residential architecture. This feature appears to be a
prominent, perhaps essential, aspect of House-societies in the Austronesian
region, including Polynesia. We ®nd substantial evidence to support the
reconstruction of an Ancestral Polynesian category that corresponds nearly
precisely with such a landed estate and its social group, the PPN *kaainga.
4. In addition to land, the House group holds signi®cant movable
property, including major capital items like canoes or seine nets, as well as
intangibles such as rights to resources, privileges, and titles, and this extends
even to the ownership of myths, or rights of access to supernatural entities,
especially where these are ancestors linked to House origins (Waterson
1995:50). Throughout Polynesia, the ethnographic literature asserts the
extra-individual nature of such property, not in general, but in terms of
speci®c kinds of corporate groups, which we will argue also ®ts the House
model.
5. The House is a vehicle for the transmission of proper names, both of
physical dwellings (as, for example, in the ethnographically documented
cases of Tikopia, Tokelau, Futuna, Mangareva, or Maori) and of social
groups (as in East Polynesian ngati or `ati names).6
6. Waterson (1995:48±49, 51) questions the pervasiveness of social
hierarchy in House societies, and concludes that a looser de®nition and
more ¯exible approach are desirable. Thus ``societies without marked
strati®cation'' (Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995:10) still meet the continuity
criteria discussed above (points 3±5). Our own view is that some aspects of
ranking are nearly always present in House societies, but range from weakly
developed and unaligned (i.e., heterarchy), to elaborated and aligned (i.e.,
hierarchy). These considerations are germane to the social transformations
that occurred between the earlier Lapita stage, and that of Ancestral
Polynesia.
Social and political organization
205
7. Waterson (1995:48) also asks whether the House society concept helps
to advance the analysis of kinship systems. One goal of LeÂvi-Strauss'
formulation was to understand kinship systems which had been classi®ed
under such rubrics as ``non-unilineal,'' ``ambilineal,'' or ``cognatic'' descent
groups. Here the House-society concept has indeed been liberating, freeing
ethnographers from older lineage models, and allowing a clearer understanding of House recruitment, whether by marriage, by the application of
®ctive kinship rules, or by adoption. Thus the concept of House allows us to
consider, under a single rubric, ``houses and their inhabitants as part of one
process of living'' (Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995:37).
8. The ¯exible approach advocated by Carsten and Hugh-Jones (1995:21)
pays close attention to the architectonic aspects of the House, seeing these as
an integral part of the social processes they help to pattern, an essential
component of the habitus. For the Austronesian world, two studies that have
integrated social and architectural perspectives are Waterson's The Living
House (1990), and Inside Austronesian Houses (Fox, ed., 1993). In Austronesian
societies, ``the literal dominance of the house, as a physical structure and a
grouping of kin, is inescapably obvious'' (Waterson 1995:68). This has a
methodological consequence: whereas historical linguistics provides the key
evidence for emic House categories (see point 1), archaeology offers
empirical evidence of ancient house forms.
Grinker (1996) observes that descent models, concepts of the lineage, and
types of kinship systems have long co-existed and competed with another set
of studies that initially focused on models of houses as residences, their
physical layouts, and their meanings. Now these latter can be extended to
include the House as a social formation. Moreover, in Grinker's view social
organization has proven ``simply too complex to be captured by any single
model'' (1996:858). Arguably, the House-society concept in contrast constitutes a powerful tool for inquiry into the social organization and structure of
the Ancestral Polynesian societies, one that can integrate both kinds of
models of social organization.
Situating Ancestral Polynesian societies
Arguments for the antiquity of House societies in Island Southeast Asia,
largely backed by historical linguistic claims (Blust 1995a:485±87), currently
lack much direct support from archaeology. In Oceania the situation is
different, and Green and Pawley (1998, 1999) reconstructed a full linguistic
set for POC architectural forms and settlement patterns, combining this
with relevant ethnographic and archaeological evidence. The POC reconstructions (dating to 3000±3500 BP) include thirty proto-lexical forms and
their inferred meanings for the dwelling house and its main structural
206
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 8.1. Proto Austronesian (PAN), Proto Malayo-Polynesian (PMP), and Proto
Oceanic (POC) words for settlements and architecture
Category
Probable gloss
PAN
PMP
POC
Buildings
Dwelling house
Open-sided building
Men's house (Blust 1987);
granary shed (Tryon 1995)
Area underneath a raised house
*Rumaq
*Rumaq
*balay
*kamaliR
*Rumaq
*pale
*kamali(R)
Architectural
features
Settlement
patterns
Mound for house site; platform of earth
on which a house is built
Entrance to house; doorway
Thatch of sago palm leaves
*qatep
(Dutton 1994); roof, thatch (Blust n.d.)
Leaf, thatch
Rafter (Dempwolff 1938)
Inhabited territory, including a
community's gardens, houses, and other
possessions (Blust 1987); land (not sea)
Settlement; open space associated with
a house or settlement
Open space in a settlement (used for
ceremonial or ritual purposes?)
Cleared land, land free of encumbrances,
i.e., cleared of vegetation but not built on
or planted
Fallow land, now reverted to wilderness *quCan
(Blust 1989); scrubland, bush (Blust n.d.)
*gabwari
*apu
*kataman
*qatop
*kasaw
*banua
*raun
*kaso
*panua
*pera
*malaqai
*mwalala
*qutan
components and other structures associated with these buildings, and with
settlements (Table 8.1). Green and Pawley conclude that the main architectural components of the Island Southeast Asian House societies were
retained in the dwellings, building components, and settlement patterns of
early Oceania, although often expressed in a distinctive but related set of
physical forms.
In the transition from Lapita to the societies of Ancestral Polynesia, a
signi®cant reorganization of social organization took place, speci®cally in
the Fiji±Western Polynesian region (Green 1998b). Most signi®cant was the
loss of the original Austronesian type of dwelling (POC *Rumaq),7 and of the
men's house (POC *kamaliR ), to be replaced by the newly innovated
Polynesian dwelling taking on a different structural form under the PPN
Social and political organization
207
Table 8.2. Linguistically indicated changes in architectural forms from Proto Oceanic to
Proto Polynesian interstages
POC term POC gloss
PPN term
PPN gloss
*Rumaq
House, primary dwelling
±
*pale
Open-sided building (often with
*fale
specialized function)
Entrance to house, open doorway *faqi-totoka
(probably with wooden framework)
Not present as PPN word or
building type
House, primary dwelling
*kataman
*turu(s)
*bou
Post, most often the main weight- *tulu
bearing post, supporting plate or
ridgepole
Main beams supporting raised
*pou
¯oor or roof structure
Entrance to house (with PPN
*paepae or pavement adjacent to
house on exterior)
Any post, or a staff
House posts, often the main
supporting posts
term *fale. The PPN lexical form *fale, however, derived from the older PMP
term *balay (transformed in POC to *pale), originally meaning an `opensided shed or building' (Blust 1987; Green and Pawley 1998:49). Thus while
the PPN lexeme for dwelling house was a retention from a much earlier
stage of Austronesian, it underwent a signi®cant semantic transformation
between the POC and PPN interstages. These changes also affected speci®c
architectural components of these structures (Table 8.2). For social organization, we also have evidence for the development of new terms, such as PPN
*kainanga and *kaainga, which we argue embody the House concept for
Ancestral Polynesian societies, and a shift in meanings for a term for an elite
Polynesian leader (*qariki ) different from that found in Fiji, or in other
societies further to the west. In short, while there were strong continuities
from older Austronesian structural forms, in key aspects Ancestral Polynesian societies represented a distinctly new form of social organization from
that which went before.
Social groups in Ancestral Polynesia
Strong biological indications of a genetic bottleneck combined with archaeological evidence for a rapid colonization of the Fiji±Western Polynesian
region lead us to infer that the founding Early Eastern Lapita populations
were small (see Chapter 3). That populations in the Ancestral Polynesian
homeland remained small throughout the ®rst half of the ®rst millennium
BC is suggested by surface pottery distributions on Eastern Lapita and
208
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Polynesian Plainware sites, indicating that settlements averaged only
3,000±4,500 square meters in size (Kirch 1990:1230; 1997a:166±67; Burley
1998:350, 363, table 1). Only in the later Polynesian Plainware period is
there evidence of sites beginning to exceed that average (e.g., Kirch and
Hunt, eds., 1993:232). What did change for the Ancestral Polynesian period
is that settlement on the larger islands began to expand inland as well as
along the coasts,8 as attested for Tongatapu (Spennemann 1987:81, ®g. 1;
Burley 1998:363), and for the Falefa Valley of `Upolu, Western Samoa
(Green 1974b). Thus it is likely that overall populations had increased, but
probably not the sizes of individual communities. Instead these had become
more widely distributed over island landscapes (Green 1993:223), as social
groups ®ssioned and established new daughter communities. As the PPN
speakers might have expressed it, the `people of a place,' *kai/*kakai, had
now fully occupied their land, their *fanua.9
Reconstructing POC and PPN social groups
Williamson (1924) devoted many pages of his classic compendium to the
distinctions between ``social and local grouping'' in Polynesia, hinting at the
complexities involved. Burrows (1939), informed by signi®cantly improved
ethnographic data than were available to Williamson, recognized that much
variation in Polynesian social groups could be encapsulated by the terms
``breed and border,'' the ®rst referring to kinship or descent, the latter to land
rights. Burrows observed that ``types of alignment of breed and border in
Polynesia had fairly distinct distributions,'' and from this he hypothesized
that ``coincidence of breed and border was the earlier alignment''
(1939:17±18). That is to say, Burrows inferred that the early form of
Polynesian social grouping consisted of descent groups which occupied and
controlled speci®c territories. He regarded the later dissociation of land
tenure from kinship as a pattern arising independently in various Polynesian
societies as a result of parallel processes, a case of cultural convergence:
Progressive encroachment of border over breed seems to have been the rule in
Polynesia. As territorial units grew larger and stronger, kinship grouping became
simpler or vaguer; for in both areas of intermingled breed and border, complex
rami®ed kinship grouping was either absent, or the larger groups were vague in
conception and limited in function. (1939:20±21)
In short, Burrows saw an ancient system of land-holding kinship groups as
having been transformed ± repeatedly and in various ways ± in many
descendent Polynesian societies.10
In the 1950s and 1960s, ethnographers actively debated kinship and social
groupings in both Polynesian and Micronesian (i.e., Remote Oceanic)
Social and political organization
209
societies, struggling to reconcile advances in unilineal descent-group theory
with the largely non-unilinear or ``cognatic'' nature of Oceanic systems (e.g.,
Goodenough 1955; Firth 1957; Davenport 1959; Howard 1963; see also
Howard and Kirkpatrick 1989:51±60). Goodenough's in¯uential paper on
``a problem in Malayo-Polynesian social organization'' is highly relevant to
our task of reconstructing Ancestral Polynesian social groups. Surveying
evidence from the broad region we now call Remote Oceania, Goodenough
concluded that in ``early Malayo-Polynesian society, there were two types of
group associated with land. One was an unrestricted descent group, while
membership in the other was determined by parental residence'' (1955:82).
Goodenough also invoked linguistic evidence, pointing out that ``the term
kainga, together with its variant kainanga, has a wide distribution in Micronesia and Polynesia'' (1955:77).11 Goodenough knew that the distribution of
these related words ± not to mention the social concepts they indexed ± had
to be shared retentions of an ancient social order, because their ``various forms
show the proper historical sound shifts as loan-words do not'' (1955:78). And
while he acknowledged that ``the meaning of the [kainga/kainanga] term is
not always clear,'' Goodenough recognized that ``it invariably has to do with
land and/or some kind of social group.'' Indeed, Goodenough posed a set of
historical hypotheses that bear repeating:
Clearly there was some kind of descent group associated with land in the society
from which both Polynesian and Micronesian peoples are jointly descended. But
how in the course of history could this ancestral descent group come to be
nonunilinear in some places and unilinear in others? And where it is unilinear, how
could it become patrilineal here and matrilineal there? If we start with the
assumption that this group was originally . . . one in which continuity of membership derived from parental residence where the residence rule was bilocal, then the
answer becomes clear. In those societies shifting to regular patrilocal residence, the
group automatically becomes patrilineal. Where matrilocal residence became the
rule, as in the Carolines, the group became equally automatically matrilineal. And
in each case no one need even be aware that a change had in fact occurred. Where
bilocal residence continued or tendencies to unilocality did not go too far, the kin
group remained nonunilinear. (1955:78)
Goldman's study of Polynesian ``status rivalry'' picked up where Goodenough left off, arguing that ``the earliest Polynesian descent groups may
have been small and localized and concerned primarily with land''
(1970:437). He noted that while the term kainga was ``common to all but
three Polynesian societies,'' only in four cases (Samoa, `Uvea, Futuna,
Tokelau) was this the ``common term for a descent group'' (1970:438).
Admitting his ``frankly speculative reconstruction,'' Goldman interpreted
the kainga as ``an early Polynesian bilateral descent group,'' but went on to
suggest that:
210
Rediscovering Hawaiki
the organization of Polynesian kin groups evolved from two different sources, from
the small and utility-minded land-holding group of bilaterally related persons, the
kainga, and from the comprehensive genealogical networks organized around chie¯y
lines.12 Both systems meshed, and since they were not fully incompatible, the kainga
could retain for long its own character and its relative autonomy. (1970:438)
In this, as in other aspects of his sometimes undervalued work, 13 Goldman
demonstrated his uncanny ability to cut to the quick of Polynesian social
issues.
Koskinen (1960:157±58), although more concerned with leadership, also
commented on ancient Polynesian social groups, and most importantly may
have been among the ®rst to recognize that kaainga and kainanga are separate
terms, with discrete etymologies. Noting its variant meanings in several
Polynesian societies, Koskinen proposed that the original meaning of kaainga
might have been ``applied as a social term to the people who live on the
landed estate of the group, and gain their livelihood from its soil''
(1960:157). Kainanga, in contrast, he thought referred to the ``populace of a
place,'' perhaps with speci®c reference to ``plain people,'' those without
rank.14
In a working paper, only an abridged version of which was later published,
Pawley (1979; see also 1982, 1985) began to explore the deep etymological
roots of the kaainga/kainanga terminology in Proto Oceanic and Proto
Polynesian. He wrote that:
*kai was probably the base for a cluster of complex terms in Proto-Polynesian, at
least some of which may go back to Proto-Oceanic. One of these is *kakai `people of
a place' . . . *kakai was probably in use also as a verb `inhabit' . . . PPN *kaainga may
also contain the same root. *kaainga can be reconstructed with two senses: (1) home,
place where one lives, (2) kin, be related to, from cognates in all major Polynesian
subgroups. An association with *(ka)kai `inhabit' and *-nga `noun derivative suf®x' is
possible, though not free of problems. (1979:6)
Pawley cited several Micronesian as well as Polynesian cognates that would
allow the reconstruction of ``an early Oceanic form *kainanga,'' such as
Trukese kainang, Puluwat yayingang, Woleai gailang, Tikopian kainanga, Tongan
kainanga, and Hawaiian maka`ainana. Without making the basis for his
semantic reconstruction explicit, Pawley claimed that the clearly ancient
term *kainanga was ``evidently a land-holding descent group, under the
authority of a chief '' (1979:6). He further commented that ``in several
Polynesian languages *kainanga normally occurs following the type PPN
*mata, a noun or nominal classi®er denoting a social group, which goes back
to a POC form of similar shape and function'' (1979:7).
Kirch (1984a), in his pioneering effort to delineate the contours of
Ancestral Polynesian society, drew upon the insights of Goodenough (1955)
and Pawley (1979) to propose two main kinds of social grouping, the PPN
Social and political organization
211
*kainanga and *kaainga. The former he regarded as having been a landholding descent group, and the latter ``a minimal descent group or extended
household, together with the lands occupied and cultivated by that group''
(Kirch 1984a:65±66). Kirch further suggested that residence (as opposed to
genealogical descent) would have been a criterion for *kaainga membership.
He also pointed to a third PPN reconstruction, *fono, meaning a `political
assembly of people,' who were responsible for major decision making, and
who may also have invoked ancestral deities, under the guidance of their
priest-chief, the *qariki. These interpretations were brie¯y restated by Kirch
and Green (1987).
Pawley's initial linguistic efforts (Pawley 1979, 1982, 1985) to discuss
meanings for PPN *kainanga and *kaainga have been followed up by Marck
(1996b, 1999a), who observed that *kainanga was an older form, ``because it
retains the Proto Oceanic ®nal consonant and was derived by *-anga rather
than *-nga'' (1999:246). *Kaainga, in contrast, ``developed later, after the loss
of the ®nal consonant, possibly in Proto Polynesian itself.'' After reviewing
the linguistic evidence, but only ethnographically restricted glosses for the
modern re¯exes of these terms, Marck (1999a:241) concluded that *kaainga
had to do with ``agricultural and especially residential land of people
belonging to a social group and dwellings thereon, whereas PPn *kainanga
seems to have had the `social group' meaning for that language''
(1999a:244±45, table 8.4). With regard to a more precise semantic value for
*kainanga, Marck concluded that ``the ravages of time have worn down the
agreements to a point where we cannot offer a more speci®c reconstruction
than Pawley's (1985:96) Proto Polynesian semantic reconstruction of `lineage
or clan''' (1999a:247). To do more, he believes, requires going ``beyond the
linguistic evidence which remains at this time, and must be argued by the
social anthropologists on other grounds'' (1999a:247). This is a challenge we
happily take up through our triangulation method.
PPN *kainanga
As we have seen, at least two PPN terms for social groups have roots in the
more ancient POC idea of `the people,' *kai(n). The ®rst etymon incorporating the older POC root *kai(n) is *kainanga, a word whose extra-Polynesian
witnesses in ROT and several Nuclear Micronesian languages indicate that it
was an innovation at an Eastern Oceanic interstage pre-dating PCP.15 In
order to develop the most robust semantic history hypothesis for *kainanga,
we list all of its known re¯exes in Table 8.3, along with ethnographically
extended glosses. With sixteen re¯exes represented in all major subgroups of
Polynesian, the lexical reconstruction of PPN *kainanga is secure, while the
presence of several extra-Polynesian witnesses indicates that the word was a
212
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 8.3. Re¯exes of Proto Polynesian *kainanga, including extra-Polynesian witnesses
Geographic
region/
language
Cognate
term
Nuclear Micronesia
Trukese
eyinang
Puluwat
Woleai
Lamotrek
yayinang
gailang(a)
hailang
Rotuman
kainaga
Gloss
Sourcea
A clan, matrilineal descent group
Goodenough
and Sugita 1980
Clan
Pawley 1979
Clan, tribe, tribal division
Pawley 1979
A named, exogamous matriclan, the largest Alkire 1965
land-holding unit on an island
Persons related by consanguinity; a personal Howard 1963
or bilateral kindred; those who share
descent from a common ancestor and
therefore have usufruct rights to land
Western Polynesia
TON
kainanga
SAM
NIU
EUV
An alternate word designating commoners, Gifford 1929
people of non-chie¯y rank
ainaga
Attendants and ministers of the aitu; a
child given to the gods or a chief
mata/kainaanga A man's elder brother; male child of a man's Loeb 1926
father's brother, or of his father's sister
kainanga
People not of chie¯y rank
Polynesian Outliers
ANU
kainanga
TIK
kainanga
REN (Bellona) kakai`anga
MAE
na/kainaga
Eastern Polynesia
PUK
keinanga
MRA
mata/keinanga
A patrilineal descent group tracing its
Feinberg 1981
origin back to a named male ancestor;
made up of several patrilateral extended
families (patongia)
Major division of Tikopia society, primarily Firth 1985
on patrilineal descent basis, conventionally
termed `clan'
A subclan, whose members all trace
Monberg 1991
patrilineal ascent to an ancestor of a later
generation than that of the ®rst immigrants
Titled person subordinate to a given person
An exogamous matrilineal sublineage,
having an important economic function
in the control of land, especially taro beds
A large number of people who occupy a
territory de®ned by boundaries, speak a
common dialect, and are governed by one
head
Beaglehole and
Beaglehole 1938
Hiroa 1932
Social and political organization
RAR
mata/keinanga
TAH
mata/eina`a
TUA
keina`a
MQA
mata/`eina`a
MVA
HAW
mata/kainanga
maka/`ainana
213
A settlement, the inhabitants of a district
or neighborhood
Subjects of a chief; a certain tribe, clan, or Oliver 1974
subdivision of the inhabitants
A group, band, body of followers, servants,
people who are united by the same services
or duties; the division of an army; the
female attendants of a chiefess
A `tribe,' the largest social grouping, usually Thomas1990
coterminous with a valley geographic unit
Assembly, a congregation of persons
Commoners, people not of chie¯y rank
a
Ethnographic sources consulted by us for glosses are indicated with citations; all other
glosses are from POLLEX.
shared retention from a pre-Polynesian stage, not an innovation. By the
same token, a perusal of the diversity of glosses given in Table 8.3 leaves no
doubt that there have been major semantic shifts in the meanings of kainanga
and its variants. Can we hope to reconstruct a plausible PPN semantic value
from this data set?
The basic principles of a phylogenetic method ± whether in linguistics,
biology, or culture ± tell us that if a feature is present in all of the main
branches of a phylogeny or cladogram, that feature is likely to be a shared
retention, a homology. This is especially the case for cultural features when
there is no evidence for regular contact or borrowing (horizontal transmission) between two or more such primary branches. Examining the
ethnographically informed glosses for *kainanga terms given in Table 8.3, it is
apparent that, in spite of semantic diversity, a common set of denotata are
shared by at least one case in all three primary subgroups. These core
denotata are: (1) a descent, or perhaps more appropriately in Oceanic
cultural terms, ascent group, tracing back to a founding ancestor; (2)
unilineality; (3) exogamy; and (4) control over land. Cases which re¯ect this
constellation of associated meanings include Truk and Lamotrek in Micronesia, Rotuma, the Polynesian Outliers of Anuta, Tikopia, and Bellona, and
Pukapuka and Manihiki-Rakahanga in Eastern Polynesia. Since there is
virtually no evidence for borrowing between any of these main branches, we
infer that these cases represent conservative societies in which something
reasonably close to the ancient meaning of kainanga has been retained.
We can thus go beyond Marck's (1999a) narrow de®nition, and offer the
semantic history hypothesis that, at the Ancestral Polynesian stage, PPN
*kainanga indexed a `land-holding or controlling group tracing ascent from a
214
Rediscovering Hawaiki
common ancestor.' We also infer that these groups were exogamous, and
that they were likely to have been unilineal, although we cannot say with
certainty whether the principle of ``ascent'' was matrilineal (as in Pukapuka)
or patrilineal (as in Tikopia).16 As we shall argue below, *kainanga were larger
than minimal residential groups and, in fact, incorporated several such
smaller groups (the *kaainga). We will also argue that the leader or titular
head of the *kainanga was the *qariki, the priest-chief.
Our semantic history hypothesis further suggests that while a few Polynesian societies such as Tikopia, Anuta, Pukapuka, and Manihiki-Rakahanga retain something close to the ancestral de®nition of *kainanga, the
term and its associated meanings underwent signi®cant changes in both
Western and Eastern Polynesia after the breakup of the PPN speech
community. In most cases, re¯exes of the word came to refer to a generalized
grouping of people (a ``community''), sometimes with territorial associations
(as in the Society Islands and the Marquesas), at other times signifying
commoners as opposed to people of rank (as in Tonga and Hawai`i). 17
Burrows (1939) was, in our view, correct in tracing such changes to major
con¯icts over land and territory, and to the rise of social strati®cation. By
reconstructing the ancestral *kainanga as precisely as possible, we are able to
throw the degree of subsequent social change in descendent Polynesian
groups into higher relief.
PPN *kaainga
We turn now to the second social group term derived from the POC root
*kai(n), PPN *kaainga. Again, we strive for robust semantic reconstruction,
and so list in Table 8.4 all of the Polynesian cognates of the word, with
ethnographically extended glosses where these are available. With twenty-six
Polynesian re¯exes, but no external witnesses, *kaainga is a particularly
robust PPN lexical reconstruction, presumably an innovation at that stage
(although it may possibly date to the slightly earlier Tokalau±Fijian±
Polynesian interstage).18
The glosses of *kaainga assembled in Table 8.4 exhibit quite a different
range of meanings from those associated with *kainanga. POLLEX assigns to
*kaainga the meaning of `place of residence, home, people of the place,' while
Marck (1999a:243±44, table 8.3) in his revised formal semantic hypothesis
says it would have referred to ``place, premises, house and homestead such
as of a family and the dwellings thereon.''19 However, on the basis of the
data in Table 8.4, and on our close reading of the ethnographic evidence, we
dispute his claim that *kaainga had to do exclusively with land, and not
people.20 As Oliver (1989) indicates, corporate descent groups in Polynesia
(and even more broadly in Oceania) nearly always had to do with land. We
Social and political organization
215
believe that PPN *kaainga referred primarily to people, as much as to their
holdings of both ®xed and moveable property ± speci®cally land and
structures thereon, in particular the primary residence ± over extended
periods of time.
Western Polynesian re¯exes of *kaainga exhibit a kinship meaning in the
sense of `relatives' or `close kin' (i.e., in TON, SAM, and EUV), but in NIU,
SAM, EFU, and TOK there is also the meaning of a social group, often coresidential, occupying and holding rights to an ancestral estate. This
meaning of `social group occupying an estate' is also re¯ected in several
Eastern Polynesian societies, including EAS and PUK, and possibly also in
MIA, MQA, and MVA.
Polynesian Outlier re¯exes listed in Table 8.4 seem to display meanings
associated only with land or residences. However, the concept of a minimal
descent group with its associated estate and dwelling is indisputably present
in several Outliers, where it goes under other names, such as TIK paito, or
ANU patongia (Firth 1936; Feinberg 1981). We would argue that in these
cases the basic structure of a co-residential social group with its landed estate
was retained, but the cover term *kaainga was replaced with lexical innovations.
Just as for the *kainanga ± the PPN term for a more inclusive descent group
± we can now de®ne for *kaainga a core set of denotata shared by all of the
principal branches of the Polynesian phylogeny. These include a primary
reference to land, and more speci®cally to an estate, but also to a social
group that controlled rights to the estate. Moreover, it seems certain that the
estate included a principal dwelling or house site. This original semantic
reference in PPN was later transformed in various Polynesian societies, to
become sometimes a more generalized term for `kin' or `relation,' in other
cases a generalized term for `land' or `property.' In short, a careful
reconstruction of the PPN meaning of *kaainga tells us a great deal about the
nature of subsequent social transformations in the daughter societies that
descended from Ancestral Polynesia.
*Kainanga, *kaainga, and House societies
Returning to the expanded LeÂvi-Straussian concept of the House (socieÂte aÁ
maison), we may bring some heightened understanding to the data just
reviewed. Of the two kinds of social group present in Ancestral Polynesian
societies, the *kainanga was a larger or more extensive grouping, consisting of
the descendants of a common ancestor (or ancestral pair), probably having a
unilinear basis, most likely exogamous, and controlling rights to land. The
second, the *kaainga, was more restricted in scale, consisting of a coresidential group together with a speci®c house site and associated estate. As
216
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 8.4. Re¯exes of Proto Polynesian *kaainga
Geographic
region/
language
Cognate
term
Western Polynesia
TON
kaainga
NIU
kaina
SAM
`aainga
EFU
kainga
EUV
ECE
TOK
kaainga
kaainga
kaainga
Polynesian Outliers
KAP
keina
MAE
kainga
MFA
kainga
NKO
gaainga
PIL
kaena
REN
kaainga
SIK
kaaina
TIK
kaainga
Eastern Polynesia
EAS
kainga
HAW
MAO
MIA
MQA
MVA
`aina
kaainga
kainga
aika
kainga
Gloss
Sourcea
Relation, relative
A named property unit, belonging to a
Loeb 1926
``family''
Relative, kin; more inclusively, a corporate O'Meara 1990;
family group that owns land in the name
see also
of a matai title, and traces descent to a
Meleisea
common ancestor
1995:23
A kin group resident on the same land of
Burrows 1936;
which they have common use; a dominantly Kirch 1994a
agnatic group occupying a named house site
and having rights to an accompanying estate
Parent, ami, allie
Family, also a land-holding unit
Kennedy 1931
A cognatic descent unit or ``stock,''
Huntsman and
comprising all the descendants of an
Hooper 1996
ancestral couple, with exclusive rights to
an estate, which is jointly exploited by
its members
Property, division, section of land
Yard, home
Village, home
Temporary dwelling
Village
Sleeping place, bed
Place
Village; an uncommon word in 1928
known only to some elders
An estate of land jointly worked by a
group of ``brothers'' and their families; a
strip of land extending from the coast
inland
Land, in the general sense
Place of abode, country, home
Home, residence, house and garden
Terre, proprieÂteÂ, domicile, manoir
Lands belonging to the family
Firth 1985
MeÂtraux 1940
Christian 1924
Hiroa 1938
Social and political organization
PEN
PUK
kaainga
kainga
RAR
TAH
kaainga
`ai`a
TUA
kaainga
Home
A paternal lineage, with its own burial
ground; each lineage formerly had
constituted priests who worshiped the
gods of the lineage in religious structures
on lands of the group
Home land which one owns, place
Place where one makes one's abode;
inheritance, portion of land
Homeland, inherited land
217
Beaglehole and
Beaglehole 1938
a
Ethnographic sources consulted by us for glosses are indicated with citations; all other
glosses are from POLLEX.
Goodenough (1955:81±82) pointed out long ago, two such ``types of kin
group associated with land'' are characteristic of many Oceanic societies,
because they are adaptive with regards to ¯uctuations in group size relative
to limited land resources. ``One was an unrestricted descent group, while
membership in the other was determined by parental residence'' (1955:82).
We suggest that this was precisely the case in Ancestral Polynesian societies,
with the *kainanga being the larger (unrestricted) descent (or ascent) group,
and the *kaainga the local residential unit with its linked (and named) estate.
Thus a *kainanga would include several local *kaainga.21
Both kinds of group re¯ect criterial components of House societies. A
House (*kainanga) has trans-generational continuity, and was typically
founded by an eponymous ancestor. However, as a House group expands
over several generations and grows in numbers, it typically ®ssions, resulting
in several subgroups, often dividing the original estate among them. These
were the individual *kaainga groups, in which membership was determined
not only by ascent from the founding ancestor, but also by parental
residence. Moreover, the ``cognatic'' basis for *kaainga af®liation facilitated
recruitment to the House through ®ctive kin ties, adoption, and marriage.
This social group was an enduring unit which also held ®xed property,
especially land (both residential and gardens), dwellings, and associated
residential features. The highest ranked among several *kaainga would have
been that of the senior descent line tracing its origins directly back to the
eponymous ancestor, and it was likely from that ranking *kaainga that leaders
(*qariki ) of the larger *kainanga were recruited; we will discuss this matter
further below. Note also that, if our model is correct, this structure has
inherent in it the basis for differential ranking or heterarchy among several
*kaainga, but not social strati®cation or hierarchy per se.22
In sum, we propose (1) that Ancestral Polynesian societies were House
societies in a similar manner to those evidenced throughout the Austrone-
218
Rediscovering Hawaiki
sian-speaking world, and (2) that the House in Ancestral Polynesian societies
was organizationally structured through two basic social groups, called in
PPN the *kainanga and the *kaainga. These terms embraced the senses both of
kinship (ascent from founding ancestors) and of certain lands, and the
dwellings or other buildings on them, probably including public spaces and
even religious features, along with some moveable property.
Other social groups: *mata and saqa
While the evidence supporting our reconstructions of PPN *kainanga and
*kaainga is quite strong, giving us con®dence that these were the two most
important kinds of social groups in Ancestral Polynesia, there are two other
terms for groups that we cannot ignore. The ®rst of these, PPN *mata, goes
back to POC as well, but is of less help in understanding the social
organization of the Ancestral Polynesian societies because it is polysemous,
with an uncertain number of different meanings (Chowning 1996).23 Moreover, in its reference to associations of people, or social grouping, the
semantic value of *mata is ``somewhat unclear, partly because it usually, if not
always, seems to appear in compounds'' (Chowning 1996:49). 24 In Proto
Central Eastern Polynesian *mata became pre®xed to *kainanga, to form the
compound term *mata-kainanga. Our suspicion is that PPN *mata was a
rather vague or ¯exible term, perhaps one that denoted any collectivity of
persons. Alternatively, it might have indexed the largest social unit, what
Oliver (1989) calls a ``society.''
The other term is PPN *saqa, for which POLLEX provides two different
entries. The more widely re¯ected semantic reconstruction (``saqa.1'' in
POLLEX) is `forbidden, taboo, wrong, bad,' represented by at least sixteen
Polynesian witnesses, plus a number of extra-Polynesian cognates (BGO, FIJ,
SAA). The second meaning given in POLLEX (saqa.2), is `family, clan.' This
semantic variant is re¯ected by eight Polynesian witnesses, from both
Western Polynesia and the Outliers (but without any Eastern Polynesian
re¯exes), as documented in Table 8.5. The extended ethnographic glosses
we provide in Table 8.5 allow for a more precise semantic reconstruction.
Speci®cally, two kinds of denotata seem to us to be central to the ``social
group'' meaning of *saqa: (1) reference to a collectivity of persons, related to
each other in some way or sense (in ECE, EFU, WUV, REN, SAM, TIK,
and TON); and (2) as a pre®x attached to the name of an individual,
speci®cally a leader of those persons (in ECE, EFU, EUV, WUV, REN, and
SAM). Since both of these meanings are so widely shared, we propose the
following semantic reconstruction for PPN *saqa: `a collectivity of people
who were in some way related to, or under the control/in¯uence of, a
person to whose proper name the pre®x *saqa was preposed.'
Social and political organization
219
Table 8.5. Re¯exes of Proto Polynesian *saqa, `social group'
Geographic
region/
language
Cognate
term
Western Polynesia
TON
ha`a
SAM
saa
EFU
sa`a
sa`angongo
Sa`akafu
EUV
ha`a
ECE
haa, saa
Polynesian Outliers
REN
sa`a
TIK
sa
WUV
sa
Gloss
Sourcea
Descendants of kings, people, etc.; race,
Kaeppler 1971
tribe; ``societal divisions that have political
functions''; ``ranking of groups associated
with a title that originated by collateral
segmentation''
A particle used before names of persons
Freeman 1964
signifying `the family.' Collective name
of kin group. ``Samoans often use the
pre®x sa and a personal or title name.''
Group of (e.g., sa`a `a ta`ine liki)
Biggs
(POLLEX)
Title of the chief who used to preside
GreÂzel in
over the district of Pouma
POLLEX
Chie¯y title, in charge of food distributions Burrows 1936
at feasts
Participle preceding the names of
traditional leaders
Family; pre®x added to indicate the family
or associates of a person
Clan. Sa`akaitu`u, the clan of Kaitu`u
Group; collectivity of persons; population;
people, followed by a descriptive term or
proper name
Pre®x marking collective participation
Firth 1985
a
Ethnographic sources consulted by us for glosses are indicated with citations; all other
glosses are from POLLEX.
Exchange in Ancestral Polynesian societies
In his masterful synthesis of Oceanic ethnography, Oliver (1989:501)
distinguishes between external and internal exchange. The former consists of
transactions between two or more communities or societies, and includes
both tangible goods (such as ornaments, pottery, mats, and so forth) and
intangibles (such as labor, ®ghting assistance, or magical formulae). In
contrast, internal exchange takes place within a community or society, most
220
Rediscovering Hawaiki
commonly as transactions associated with marriage and alignments between
particular social groups. Ethnographically, various forms of internal exchange were ubiquitous throughout Polynesia, whereas external exchange
varied considerably from one region to another. Indeed, recent archaeological studies of material evidence for long-distance exchange in Polynesia
suggest that there have been signi®cant changes over time in the extent and
con®guration of interaction networks (Weisler 1997).
That both external and internal exchanges were important aspects of
Ancestral Polynesian societies seems certain, but is it possible to infer
anything more speci®c regarding such exchange systems? A substantial
corpus of archaeological evidence has accumulated since the 1970s documenting the importance of long-distance transfer of material goods between
Lapita communities (Green and Kirch 1997; Kirch 1997a:227±55). Thus in
Early Eastern Lapita sites in Tonga, Samoa, Futuna, and Niuatoputapu
there is evidence for inter-island transfer of materials such as chert, obsidian,
and stone adzes (although little evidence for movement of pottery), and
probably also shell ``exchange valuables.'' Continuing on into the Polynesian
Plainware assemblages of direct relevance to Ancestral Polynesian societies,
there is evidence for movement of stone adzes, but the chert, obsidian, and
shell valuables appear to drop out of the inventory of external exchange. It
seems entirely possible, however, that new items were added to the inventory
of materials transferred between communities, especially woven mats and
decorated bark cloth. These two categories played signi®cant roles in
external exchange in the Western Polynesian region at the time of European
contact (Kirch 1984b:232±42).
Some linguistic evidence supports this interpretation, with several PPN
terms relating to valued goods or possessions, terms whose modern re¯exes
designate categories of ``exchange valuables'' in ethnographically documented exchange systems. In Table 8.6 we list these terms along with a
number of other words related to trade or exchange. PPN *koloa is a widely
re¯ected term that everywhere has a sense of `valued goods' or possessions;
in several cases, however, it also refers to `®ne bark cloth,' and this may have
been a marked sub-category of *koloa for the PPN speakers. Also notable are
the related words *toqonga and *taonga, both of which again refer to `valued
property' or `alienable property.' For many speci®c re¯exes, however, there
is again a speci®c meaning of ®ne mats, or bark cloth, in addition to the
broader semantic value of valued object. Our hypothesis is that in Ancestral
Polynesia these terms indexed a range of valued materials, but applied
especially to ®nely woven mats and to decorated bark cloth, categories of
material culture that were beginning to play signi®cant roles in exchanges,
both internal and external.
Table 8.6 also lists a number of words referring to the act of exchange, or
Social and political organization
221
Table 8.6. Proto Polynesian terms relating to exchange or trade
Proto
Oceanic
Probable gloss
Valuable possessions, objects of
exchange
Valuable, alienable property
Treasured possession, especially
®ne mat or garment
Return gift or services
Exchange, buy, or sell
Give or trade
Exchange, change, replace
Pay, compensate, exchange
Price, payment, cost
*soli
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
*koloa
14
3
*toqonga
*ta(a)qonga
11
11
3
3
*sau
PNP *soko
*soli
*sui
*tauqi
*totongi
4
9
9
14
11
5
3
P2
PSA
3
3
3
3
3
3
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
of making a gift, as well as for trade or other `commercial'' transactions. Of
particular interest is PPN *sau, which POLLEX glosses as `return for services
or to a gift.' The MAO re¯ex for this word is of course the hau made famous
in Marcel Mauss' essay on ``the gift.'' Although there are only four
Polynesian re¯exes, *sau is also re¯ected in FIJ, and, given the distribution of
cognates from TON to MAO, is a valid PPN reconstruction. PPN *soko may
have implied more of a sense of `barter' or `trade' than a formalized
exchange, whereas *soli probably referred to outright `gifting' without
expectation of a return. PPN *tauqi is best glossed as `pay' or `compensate.'
Kinship, status, and role in Ancestral Polynesia
We have already encountered PPN words for `people,' *kai/*kakai, and for
`person,' *tangata (see Chapter 3). Here we turn to linguistically marked
distinctions among such persons in Ancestral Polynesian societies, including
distinctions along kinship lines and those involving status or role. There are
four groups of terms: those for persons in general, those for specialists, those
that deal with kinfolk, and a few terms pertaining to elites. Close study of the
lexical items given in Table 8.7, supported by the kinship terms of reference
in Table 8.8, reveals: (1) a generational structuring of such distinctions;
222
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 8.7. Proto Polynesian terms for persons
Category/probable gloss
Status categories
Ancestor (grandparent)
Commoner, person without rank
Priest-chief, probably the ranking head of
*kainanga
Man of rank
Ruler, high-ranking elite, to have command
or rule over a group of people
Specialists
Expert, craftsperson, ritual specialist (?)
Warrior
Sea expert, navigator
General terms for persons
Young person, unmarried, virgin of
marriageable age
Unmarried person (male or female)
Primiparae, woman who is parturent for ®rst
time or who has borne one child and no more
Child or classi®catory child, especially male (son)
First-born child
Young man
Girl
Child (boy or girl)
Children
Grandchild and collaterals of that generation
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
*tupuna
*tupunga
*taaua?
*tuqa
*taulekaleka
*qariki
7
3
15
28
3
3
*mata-a-pule
*sau
4
11
3
*tufunga
*toa
*tautahi
17
22
10
P2
PSA
3
3
3
3
3
3
*poqou
*tau-poqou
*qalopoqou
*tama
*qulu-matuqa
PNP *taamaloa
*taqahine
*tamaqiti
*tamariki
*m(a,o)kupuna
7
9
15
9
13
6
12
21
23
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
PPN reconstructions from Biggs (POLLEX).
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
Social and political organization
223
Table 8.8. Proto Polynesian kinship terms
Generation
Probable gloss
PPN term
Second ascending
Grandparent (ancestor ?)
*tupuna
First ascending
Parent
Parents
Father, father's brother
Mother
Mother's brother
Father's sister
Parent in-law
Younger sibling, same sex
Older sibling, same sex
Woman's brother
Man's sister
Sibling, cross-sex
Sibling, same-sex
Spouse
Sibling in-law, same sex
*matuqa
*maatuqa
*tama(na)
*tina(na)
*tuqa-tina
*masaki-tanga
*fungawai
*tahina
*tuaka(na)
*tuangaqane
*tuafa®ne
*kawe, *weka
*taqo-kete
*qahawana
*maqa
Man's son
Woman's child, esp. son
Woman's daughter
*fosa
*tama
*qo-fa®ne
*(q)a-fa®ne
*qilamutu
*qulu-matuqa
*fungaona
*makupuna
Ego's generation
First descending
Second descending
Man's sister's child
First-born child
Child in-law
Grandchild
Source: Marck 1996b.
PPN reconstructions from Biggs (POLLEX).
(2) an emphasis on ranking older over younger siblings, where these are of
the same sex; (3) a concern with gender; and (4) marked interest in ®rst-born
children, particularly the ®rst-born male child. Overall, a concept of statusmarking is inherent in this terminological system. To quote Howard and
Kirkpatrick, ``Polynesians carried with them a set of principles for interpreting the world, and organizing their social lives,'' including ``speci®c
notions about kinship, relationships between human beings and ancestral
gods, and a host of related beliefs'' (1989:59).
224
Rediscovering Hawaiki
In this Polynesian world view one begins with ancestors, the base, trunk,
or root from which society ascends (rather than descends as in the social
anthropological concept of ``descent'' and ``descent groups''). One works up,
either to be assigned a place among the less differentiated mass of common
people, or to be singled out as belonging to some special branch of
demarcated rank in society, some of whom are ultimately elevated to the
status of venerated ancestors. Most of the evidence presented in Table 8.6 is
straightforward and its implications have already been summarized.
However, the word for `ancestor' requires additional comment (see also
Chapter 9).
A concern with ancestors, and especially with apical founders of ascent
groups, seems to go back to the PMP stage (Fox 1994, 1995; Blust
1995a:497±98). In Polynesia, the kin-term *tupuna for grandparent also
carries with it nearly everywhere a second meaning of `ancestor.' The
question is, were the two meanings kept distinct at the PPN level, as they are
today in such societies as Tonga, Samoa, `Uvea, Futuna, and Tokelau? In
Western Polynesia, two other terms are typically given, re¯exes of PPN
*tupunga or its doublet *tupuqanga, meaning `source' or `ancestor,' and of
*tupulanga meaning `age set' or `generational group.' Possible explanations
for this diversity of terms include confusion in sources, borrowing among the
core Western Polynesian languages (Marck's preferred solution), or our own
view that the terminological distinction is indeed ancient. Most scholars
agree that there was a Polynesian transformation of an older Austronesian
root (POC *tubuq) ± which meant `to grow' (according to a tree-and-branch
ideological structure; see Fox 1995c; Marck 1996b) ± into words for
`ancestor,' PPN *tupunga or *tupuqanga.25 This transformation was accomplished by the addition of the suf®xes *-qanga or *-nga, and *-langa to the root
*tupu (`to grow'), perhaps literally ``raising up'' grandparents into ancestors.
We propose a semantic history in which PPN had discrete words for
ancestors, for grandparents, and less certainly (only at the PNP interstage)
for age set or generational group. Additional study by linguists might specify
which reconstructed morph applies in each case, and how some irregular
mergers of ng with n have given us the present situation with four tupuwords. For us, the comparative ethnographic evidence strongly establishes
both `ancestors' and `a generational principle' as typical of Ancestral
Polynesian societies. Thus, while Marck (1996b) thinks there may not have
been a distinct word for `ancestor' in PPN (as separate from the same term
for `grandparent'), we suspect for a variety of reasons that there almost
certainly was, despite the lack of clear re¯exes in Outlier or Eastern
Polynesian languages. Our hypothesis is that in these latter languages the
two meanings were merged under the term *tupuna at some early point in
Social and political organization
225
their history, with the distinctions retained only in the core Western
Polynesian homeland. More about ancestors will be said in Chapter 9, when
we take up the topic of Ancestral Polynesian religious beliefs.
Specialists in Ancestral Polynesian societies are embraced by PPN
*tufunga. Only two certain categories of such experts are indicated by discrete
lexemes: warrior (*toa), and sea expert or navigator (*tautahi ). If similar terms
existed for carpenters who constructed buildings, canoe makers, adz makers
or lithic specialists, tattooers of people, basket or mat weavers, bark cloth
experts, or even potters (to name a few of the ethnographically attested
Polynesian specializations), they are not encoded by labels at the PPN level,
or indeed even at later interstages. The one probable exception is PPN
*maatai which, following TcherkeÂzoff (2000), would have referred to specialists involved in constructing things (such as houses or canoes), in other
words an expert craftsperson or builder.26
Turning to kin terms, we have noted the generational structure of the
PPN system of classifying people, and it comes as no surprise that the system
of kin-terms is so organized. The PPN terms of reference (Table 8.8) exhibit
distinctions between elder and younger same-sex siblings, and special terms
for the cross-sex siblings of a female and of a male. The kinship terminologies of later interstages of Polynesian languages evolved from this early
model largely through simpli®cation. Thus the history of kinship terms in
Polynesian initially stems from one of so-called ``Hawaiian'' type, recalling
Murdock's (1960) conclusions on the topic. In regard to our suggestion that
the *kainanga was a unilineal group, it is signi®cant that PPN lexically
distinguished `father and father's brother' (*tama[na]) from `mother's
brother' (*tuaqa-tina), because cross-culturally such ``bifurcate merging''
terminologies are associated with either patrilineal or matrilineal descent
(Hage 1998b).
Other kin-terms that deserve further highlighting are the elder/younger
distinction among same-sex siblings, on which the conical clan concept and
the ranking of descent lines ± and in later societies the ranking of chiefs ± are
founded (Kirch 1984a:31±37). The relevant PPN terms here are *tahina and
*tuaka(na), for older and younger same-sex siblings, as reconstructed by
Marck (1999a:262±72; see also Marshall 1984).27 Cross-sex siblings, in
contrast, were distinguished on the basis of sex, as *tuafa®ne (`man's sister')
and *tuangaqane (`woman's brother'). Kirch (1984a:63) pointed out that this
sibling terminology with its senior/junior distinction ``was fundamental to
the Polynesian ideology of rank,'' and observed that while the older pattern
was later simpli®ed in some Polynesian societies, it was ``retained by all of
the more highly strati®ed chiefdoms.'' Recently, Bellwood (1996b) has drawn
attention to the pervasive ``founder ideology'' in Austronesian societies, and
226
Rediscovering Hawaiki
we suggest that the PPN kinship system re¯ected this overriding concern
with rank based on birth order.
Rank and leadership
If one goal of reconstructing Ancestral Polynesian societies is to provide a
®rm basis for understanding sociopolitical transformations in descendent
cultural traditions, then, along with the nature of early social groups,
nothing could be more critical than the forms of ranking and leadership that
prevailed in ``Hawaiki.'' The founder of the modern comparative ethnographic genre in Polynesia, Williamson, devoted the atypically short concluding chapter of his three-volume opus to ``the head of the social group,''
remarking that ``this of®ce was one of the fundamental features of the social
and political systems of Polynesia'' (1924, 3:396). Among what we might call
pervasive ``systemic cultural patterns'' with respect to chiefship, Williamson
noted that this social group head was ``the holder of . . . the recognized title
or name of the group''; that he was ``invested with a degree of sanctity''; that
he ``was the natural high priest of the group''; that he was elected by
members of his own social group; that he ``occupied the place of honour'' at
group assemblies; that ``the land of the group was regarded as being vested
in him''; that he had some role in relation to harvests and food supply; and
that he had a certain right to ®rst-fruits (1924, 3:396±400). Williamson
modestly concluded by stating that he hoped ``to show hereafter that the
chiefs also took the leading part or the position of importance, in feasts, kava
parties, and other social functions and ceremonies,'' but deferred this to
another work. We think that he correctly distilled the essence of Polynesian
chiefship, and will argue that the above list would comprise an excellent
extended gloss for the PPN term *qariki.
Koskinen (1960), picking up where Williamson left off and having the
advantage of a vastly improved ethnographic corpus, devoted a pathbreaking monograph to a comparative study of Polynesian chiefship, and
while historical reconstruction was not foremost among his aims, he
advanced a few propositions regarding the ancient form of chiefship. In
particular, Koskinen drew attention to the ``magico-religious role of the ariki
chiefs,'' and speculated that ``the oldest form of the Polynesian ariki chieftainship was perhaps more clearly sacerdotal'' (1960:140, 148). Again, we
concur.
Kirch (1984a:63±64) drew not only on Williamson (1924) and Koskinen
(1960), but on Pawley's (1979) linguistic reconstructions of the POC terms
*qa-lapas, `chief,' and *qa-diki, `®rst-born son of chief,' and PPN *qariki,
`chief,' advancing the proposition that ``Ancestral Polynesian Society had
already developed the institution of hereditary chieftainship.'' In a strict
Social and political organization
227
sense, Kirch was correct in this interpretation, but his argument was
insuf®ciently documented through a full application of the triangulation
method; the simple gloss ``hereditary chieftainship'' was too ambiguous,
subject to multiple interpretations, and thus open to subsequent critiques
(e.g., Sutton 1990, 1996; cf. Green 1994).
Pawley (1982) and Lichtenberk (1986) have tackled the linguistic problems
of reconstructing words for social group leaders at the POC level. Pawley
adduced evidence for two terms, POC *qalapa(s) and *qadiki, for which he
provided glosses of `chief,' and `®rst-born son of chief,' respectively
(1982:41). The PPN term *qariki was, of course, derived from POC *qadiki.
Pawley went on to propose the hypothesis that, at an early stage of Oceanic,
the *kainanga ``denoted a higher-order descent group whose formal leader
was its *qalapa(s) `chief,' a term which has been lost in most Polynesian
[languages], where it was replaced by *qariki, and in the Nuclear Micronesian languages, where various noncognate words for categories of chief or
leader have developed'' (1982:44). Lichtenberk marshaled a greater array of
linguistic evidence, requiring some revision of Pawley's reconstructions.
Instead of *qalapa(s), Lichtenberk proposed POC *tala(m)pat, with a literal
meaning of `big, great person,' and *adiki, which ``took the personal/proper
article *qa,'' and had a meaning of `oldest child' (1986:344). These POC
reconstructions are signi®cant in being consistent with the principles of
ranking discussed above, and with the notion that in early Oceanic societies
leaders were drawn from the senior branches of a lineage, an aspect of what
Bellwood (1996b) calls ``founder ideology.'' That the `oldest child' should be
lexically marked hints at the origins of the later Polynesian practice of
patrilineal descent for chiefs.
PPN *qariki, head of the *kainanga
The institution of chiefship is pervasive among Polynesian societies (Sahlins
1963; Marcus 1989), marked nearly everywhere by cognates of PPN *qariki,
such as TIK ariki, TON `eiki, or HAW ali`i. POLLEX lists twenty-nine
Polynesian witnesses, glossing virtually all of them as `chief ' (although in
NKO and KAP there is also the meaning of `priest'). At ®rst glance this is an
undisputed case of prime semantic agreement. One might think that there is
little to argue about, and con®dently aver ± as did Kirch ± that ``Ancestral
Polynesian Society had already developed the institution of hereditary
chieftainship'' (1984a:64). This interpretation, however, was strongly critiqued by Sutton (1990:668), who maintained that one could not ``assume
that the status or kin categories identi®ed in lexical reconstructions have
operationally speci®c meanings.'' Sutton (1990:669) argued that `chief ' ``will
mean different things in different social and cultural contexts,'' rendering
228
Rediscovering Hawaiki
any precise semantic reconstruction impossible. Dye (1987b:445±46) similarly noted that the ``semantic value assigned [*qariki ] is modeled on the
rights, duties, and modes of succession associated with chiefs of contact-era
societies in full land situations,'' and questioned whether these ``could have
been the rights and duties of an *`ariki in a `propagule' of fewer than 100
persons on an island covered with virgin forest.'' Sutton's and Dye's points
are well taken; we certainly agree that a naive projection of the ``ethnographic present'' onto the distant past hardly constitutes a valid methodology (see Green 1994). Indeed, we have been at pains to develop speci®c
semantic history hypotheses that take account of shifts in the meanings of
terms over time, in different branches of a cultural phylogeny. With this in
mind, let us closely examine the lexical and ethnographically extended
semantic values for PPN *qariki.
Table 8.9 lists thirty-two re¯exes of PPN *qariki, organized by major
geographic regions of Polynesia, and includes extended glosses where
available. These latter we have obtained through a close reading of the
relevant ethnographic sources indicated in the last column of the table,
paying attention to such matters as the mode of inheritance of a chie¯y title,
the functions of a chief, and the nature of the social group headed by that
chief. Since the lexical reconstruction of *qariki itself is not in dispute, it is
these glosses that command our attention in an effort to develop a rigorous
semantic history hypothesis for what, to some, has been an enigmatic
concept.
Perusing Table 8.9, we can extract (as we did for the social group terms), a
bundled set of denotata that go beyond a simplistic gloss of `chief,' and
which are represented in all of the major branches of the Polynesian
phylogeny. (1) These include not only the pervasive secular leadership role,
but in numerous cases a primary sacred role, as the principal priest or
religious leader (e.g., EFU and TOK in Western Polynesia, ANU, TIK, KAP,
and REN in the Outliers, and at least MIA and TUA in Eastern Polynesia).
(2) Another widespread association is between ariki and (``descent'') ascent
groups (e.g., EFU, SAM, TOK, ANU, TIK, EAS, MAO, MQA, MRA,
PUK, TUA). In at least four cases, ariki were the leaders of a kainanga-type
group (ANU, TIK, MQA, and MRA), and in three cases of a kaainga-type
group (SAM, TOK, PUK). (3) Another pervasive pattern is hereditary
succession to ariki titles, usually through primogeniture in the patrilineal line.
(4) Holders of ariki titles were typically male, and if female, often lexically
marked as such (e.g., ali`i wahine in HAW). (5) Finally our reading of the
literature convinces us that ariki were everywhere regarded in some degree
as `sacred' (tapu), the conveyors or possessors of `supernatural power' (mana).
The features enumerated above, while not necessarily present in all cases
(and we lack good ethnographic sources for many of these), are widespread
Social and political organization
229
Table 8.9. Re¯exes of Proto Polynesian *qariki
Geographic
region/
language
Cognate
term
Western Polynesia
ECE
aliki
EFU
`aliki
EUV
`aliki
NIU
SAM
(patu)-iki
ali`i
TON
`eiki
TOK
aliki
Polynesian Outliers
ANU
ariki
KAP
ariki
MAE
MFA
NKO
NKR
OJA
REN
ariki
ariki
aligi
ariki
`ali`i
`angiki
SIK
TAK
TIK
aliki
ariki
ariki
WFU
WEV
ariki
aliki
Gloss
Sourcea
Hereditary chiefs, including the paramount
chief (aliki sau) and village chiefs (aliki fenua)
Inheritance is patrilineal within kutunga
descent groups. In pre-Christian times, the
aliki were also the main priests.
Hereditary chiefs, particularly of certain
high-ranking family lines
`King' or paramount chief
Chief, one of two main kinds of leader (matai)
of lineage or family groups (`ainga)
Members of a hereditary class of chiefs, often
titled, who were the leaders of speci®c
territorial units.
A sacred leader, priest of the supreme god Tui
Tokelau; descendant of the founding lineage;
membership in the kaainga aliki was
exclusively through agnatic links
Burrows 1936;
Kirch 1994a,
1994b
Hereditary chiefs, of which there are two, each
associated with a particular kainanga group.
In pre-Christian times, the ariki were also the
principal priests
Hereditary chief-priests, principal religious
leaders in the pre-Christian religion
Chief
Chief
Priest of cult
Chief
Chief
A particular kind of priest-chief, associated
with harvest rituals
Chief
Chief, chie¯y
Chief, clan head. The ariki is the head of the
kainanga (clan), functioning as both secular
(political) and religious leader. Succession to
the title is patrilineal.
Chief
Chief
Burrows 1937
Loeb 1926
Gifford 1929
Huntsman and
Hooper 1996
Feinberg 1981
Emory 1965
Monberg 1991
Firth 1936,
1985
Cont . . .
230
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 8.9. (cont. )
Geographic
region/
language
Cognate
term
Eastern Polynesia
EAS
ariki
HAW
ali`i
MAO
ariki
MIA
ariki
MQA
haka`iki
MRA
ariki
MVA
akariki
PEN
PUK
ariki
aliki
RAR
TAH
ariki
ariki
TUA
ariki
Gloss
Sourcea
Chief, king, lord, headman in general. The
Churchill 1912;
paramount chief or `king' was termed the
MeÂtraux 1940
ariki-mau. The ariki-mau was `divine,' and
descended from the founding ancestor
Hotu Matu`a.
Member of the chie¯y class, which included
at least nine ranked grades. Succession was
typically by primogeniture, but usurpation
was not infrequent.
High-born chief, descendant of ®rst-born
Firth 1959
children in a continuous elder line; the
hereditary leaders of hapu social groups
Hereditary titles, speci®cally the Inland
Hiroa 1934
High Priest (ariki-pa-uta), Shore High Priest
(ariki-pa-tai), and the Ruler of Food (te ariki i
te ua i te tapora kai), each of®ciating at
particular temples (marae)
Hereditary chiefs, the genealogically senior
Handy 1923;
and sacred leaders of the `tribe' or mata`eina`a
Thomas 1990
The senior male member (matahiapo) of a
Hiroa 1932
number of family groups which have
branched out from the original family (the
matakeinanga). The term ariki is regarded as a title.
Nobles who ruled over the separate islands
Hiroa 1938
or large districts. Heirs had to be born on a
particular temple (marae), and were tapu.
Succession was by primogeniture.
Chief
Chief, hereditary leader of a paternal lineage
Beaglehole and
(kainga). All the major chiefs were priests by
Beaglehole 1938
virtue of rank.
Chief
A term of address and reference for the
Oliver 1974
sovereign ruler of each tribal unit; persons
holding high-grade of®ces in certain
kin-congregations
Hereditary leaders of a descent group (ngati),
Emory 1947
who in pre-Christian times were also usually the
priests who of®ciated at the group's temple (marae)
a
Ethnographic sources consulted by us for glosses are indicated with citations; all other
glosses are from POLLEX.
Social and political organization
231
and represented in all of the main branches of the Polynesian phylogeny. Thus they
are unlikely to be the result of borrowing or diffusion (horizontal transmission); neither is independent invention (convergence) a parsimonious
explanation. Rather, we have isolated a set of features pertaining to chiefship
which must be shared retentions of the Ancestral Polynesian pattern. Thus we
would now offer an extended ethnographic gloss on the meaning of PPN
*qariki: `the senior, male, titled leader of a social group, probably the
*kainanga, who typically inherited his position patrilineally within the senior
ranked line of this group, and who acted as the group's secular as well as
ritual leader.' (The role of the *qariki as priest will be explored in greater
detail in Chapter 9.)
This enhanced semantic de®nition of an Ancestral Polynesian priest-chief
once again allows the possibility of tracing, in some detail, transformations
that have occurred in particular societies after the breakup of the PPN
speech community. In more conservative societies, ariki retained both their
secular and sacred roles, and continued to be closely associated with ascent
groups such as the kainanga and kainga; examples are Tikopia, Pukapuka, and
Tokelau. In many societies, however, a functional separation between
secular and sacred roles developed. This was particularly so in Eastern
Polynesia, corresponding to the widespread importance of a priestly class
(tahunga), and of oracles and inspirational priests (taura, tau`a). Yet another
kind of transformation accompanied the breakdown of the ancient *kainangatype social groups, and their replacement with strictly territorial groupings,
in which ariki became the leaders of such land units; Hawai`i and Tonga
both exemplify this kind of change.
In short, we hope to have now answered our critics such as Sutton (1990)
and Dye (1987b), by demonstrating that it is possible to reconstruct, with
some precision, the nature of Ancestral Polynesian chiefship. Rather than a
naive projection of the ethnographic present back into the past, this requires
a closely argued, ethnographically based semantic history, taking into
account widespread features of chieftainship that can only be shared
retentions. Essential to such a semantic history hypothesis is a body of
ethnographically informed semantic extensions for the relevant lexical
witnesses. Such is the advantage of the triangulation method, working within
an explicitly phylogenetic model.
PPN *fatu, leader of the *kaainga
Some of the most challenging problems in semantic reconstruction involve
polysemous words, such as PPN *mata. Another word with a diversity of
meanings is *fatu, for which POLLEX provides reconstructed glosses
ranging from `weave,' `stone,' `kidney,' `to fold,' and `viscous, clotted.' But
232
Rediscovering Hawaiki
POLLEX also offers a compound lexical reconstruction involving *qariki,
which should alert us to the possibility that here we have another kind of
leadership category: PPN *fatu-qariki. The POLLEX entry gives just four
witnesses (MFA, NIU, NKO, and WFU), with a dubious semantic reconstruction of `high chief.' Pursuing the lead to a wider array of ethnographic
sources, however, we can amplify not just the compound construction *fatuqariki, but another primary meaning for *fatu itself. The data are provided in
Table 8.10.
At ®rst glance, the various glosses for cognates of *fatu having something
to do with leadership or social position seem wildly varied; closer study,
however, reveals that the sense of an informal, mature leader of some kind is
represented in all of the primary branches of Polynesian (e.g., in TO, NP,
EC, EP, MQ , and TA subgroups). This suggests that at the PPN stage, *fatu
had a semantic value centered around the notion of an `elder' of some kind.
But of what kind of social group? We know it cannot have been the *kainanga,
because the evidence that *kainanga leaders were called *qariki is very sound.
Could it have been that *fatu were the heads of individual *kaainga? While
not conclusive, some evidence supports this interpretation. Speci®cally, we
note the following shared denotata, evidence for constructing such a
semantic history hypothesis: (1) a shared meaning of `ancestor' or `®rst
parent' in several Eastern Polynesian languages (MAO, EAS, MVA); (2) a
widespread meaning of `master, lord' or the proprietor of resources,
especially those that would pertain to a kaainga group and its estate (EAS,
HAW, MQA, NIU, RAR, TAH, TUA); (3) an explicit lexical link to kaainga
resources and issues (ECE, HAW, RAR, and TOK); and (4) reference to a
mature individual who possesses *qariki rank (NIU, NKO, WFU, MFA).
While the data are admittedly messy, our overall deduction is that PPN *fatu
is the most likely candidate for the category of `*kaainga leader,' one who
oversaw the use and allocation of the *kaainga's land and resources. When
that particular *kaainga happened to be highly ranked, its *fatu may also have
been the *qariki of the larger *kainanga. This might explain the origin of the
compound term *fatu-qariki.
Our interpretation of PPN *fatu is bolstered by a consideration of
systematic patterns revealed by many Polynesian ethnographies, for a
linguistically marked category of men who served as leaders of family-based
kin groupings, and thus held standing in the community at large. Structurally, such leadership roles are exempli®ed by the patu of Niue (Ryan
1977:127±32), the tuupele of Pukapuka (Hecht 1977:197), the pule kainga of
Futuna (Burrows 1936; Kirch 1994a), the matai of Samoa (Meleisea 1995;
TcherkeÂzoff 2000), the ra`atira of the Society Islands (Oliver 1974:769±71),
and the rangatira of New Zealand (Salmond 1997:473; Ballara 1998:203±6,
269). In all of these cases, the society recognized a more formal and
Social and political organization
233
Table 8.10. Re¯exes of Proto Polynesian *fatu, leader of the *kaainga
Geographic
region/
language
Cognate
term
Western Polynesia
ECE
fatu kainga
EFU
fatu tangata
SAM
latu
NIU
patu
TON
TOK(1)
fatu tangata
fatu fa®ne
fatu paepae
TOK(2)
fatukaainga
Polynesian Outliers
MFA
®tooriki
NKO
hodooligi
WFU
faturaki/nga
Eastern Polynesia
EAS(1)
hatu
EAS(2)
Hotu Matu`a
HAW(1)
HAW(2)
HAW(3)
MAO
MQA
MVA
haku
tu`u haku
haku-`aina
whaatua
fatu
`atu motua
RAR
TAH
TUA
`atuu
fatu
fatu
a
Gloss
Sourcea
To be a married person
Man who has arrived at mature age
Person in charge of an undertaking (e.g., a
head house builder)
Chief, head of family, elder; a lowly ranked Loeb 1926
chief (not an iki) and a head of a family
Ryan 1977
group called mangafaoa, or at times fangai
Middle-aged man
Middle-aged woman
(n. paving stone), but also a senior woman
who lives in a family (kaainga) house and who
is relied upon to share out the food gathered
from the family members
The obligation of caring for one's family
(kaainga) in the traditional way, said of both
men and women
Chiefs (collective)
Chief of island
Game of king of the mountain
Lord (in certain oral traditions about past S. Fischer
ancestors)
(pers. comm.)
The primary founding ancestor of the
Me traux 1940
island
Lord, master, overseer, possessor, proprietor
Chief addressed as ``my master''
A land owner, land overseer
Ancestor, ®rst parent
Master, owner of an animal
A founding ancestor in Mangarevan
traditional history
Lord, master, owner, landlord
Lord, master, owner
Lord, master, proprietor
Ethnographic sources consulted by us for glosses are indicated by citations; other glosses are
from POLLEX or the Tokelau dictionary.
234
Rediscovering Hawaiki
hereditary category of ariki, who occupied a higher level of chie¯y rank. For
the Eastern Polynesian societies, this structural position ± head of the family
group ± came to be lexically indicated by the term rangatira or its variants, an
innovation that can be linguistically traced to the PCE interstage. For
Western Polynesia, in contrast, the linguistic evidence permits a claim for
the *fatu term marking this leadership category, back to the PPN level. The
case of Niue, in Western Polynesia, offers an ethnographic example which,
we would argue, preserved to a large degree the original nature of the *fatu
category (Ryan 1977, and pers. comm., 1998), and perhaps deserves closer
scrutiny.
PPN *sau, secular ruler
The formulation of detailed semantic glosses for PPN *qariki and *fatu does
not exhaust our analysis of political leadership in Ancestral Polynesian
societies, for there is yet another term, *sau, to be considered.28 Ethnographically, the word is best known from Western Polynesia, where it appears in
such forms as TON hau, `secular paramount leader,' EFU sau, `paramount
chief,' EUV hau, `rule or ruler,' and also in FIJ as sau, `high chief.' In
addition, however, there are at least seven Eastern Polynesian witnesses,
including MQA hau, `rule, ruler,' MIA `au, `alternate term for the paramount
war chief,' TAH hau, `government, peace,' and TUA hau, `government.' We
are aware of one Outlier witness, REN sau, `abundance of gifts from the
gods.' In all, the fourteen available cognates are suf®cient to lexically
reconstruct PCP *sau, and the term may even have an older origin in POC.
Taumoefolau (1996:387), in her fascinating article on the origins of the
name Hawaiki, suggests that this was derived from a compound term in PPN,
*sau qariki, which she glosses as `chie¯y/ancestral/traditional ruler(s).' This
compound form is re¯ected in several later Polynesian languages as TON
(hou `eiki, `title for aristocracy'), SAM (sauali`i, `honori®c for aitu' ), TOK
(haualiki, `demi-god'), TAH (hauari`i, `kingly government'), and HAW (auali`i,
`royal, chie¯y'), making the PPN reconstruction of the compound term solid.
Its meaning, however, is dif®cult to determine, and Taumoefolau does not
offer a robust semantic history hypothesis, being more concerned with the
transformation of PPN *sau qariki to PNP *Hawaiki as a name for the
`ancestral homeland.'
The considerable disparity in ethnographic glosses for sau/hau terms
makes development of a semantic history hypothesis far more dif®cult than
for *qariki. As a paramount chief, particularly a secular leader, this usage of
sau/hau is largely con®ned to the Fiji±Western Polynesian region, raising the
possibility of a parallel semantic transformation due to continued interaction.29 We also know that PPN *sau cannot have been the head of the
Social and political organization
235
*kainanga group, for this surely was the role of the *qariki. We suggest, but
cannot strongly con®rm, the following hypothesis: that at the PCP interstage
*sau had emerged as the common word for a leader or person of rank,
replacing POC *tala(m)pat, apparently a term for leader (or big man?;
Lichtenberk 1986). At the time of the Lapita colonization of Remote
Oceania, it is likely that the PCP re¯ex of POC *adiki still meant `son of the
leader' whether called *tala(m)pat or *sau. However, by the later interstages of
PPN and Proto Fijian, semantic shifts in old words provided terms for new
forms of leaders, under the lexemes *qariki and *tuquranga.30 Over time (well
after the PPN stage), these leadership positions came to the fore, slowly
displacing the authority of the *sau, leaving the latter to secular affairs as in
the Lau/Tongan examples. One possibility ± and it is nothing more than a
hunch at this time ± is that the *sau position may have corresponded to the
broader term *mata, which we suspect indexed the larger ``society'' in
Oliver's (1989) sense. This would make the *sau something like the ranking
or most senior of a set of *qariki (each presiding over a *kainanga), and could
explain the lexical marking of such an individual by the compound term *sau
qariki as reconstructed by Taumoefolau (1996). This is our current semantic
history hypothesis for a topic that has proven puzzling. It introduces a strong
role in Ancestral Polynesian times for the persons occupying the title of *sau,
a matter largely ignored in earlier discussions. Since the Ancestral Polynesian societies represent a critical formative stage for the many varieties of
chiefship that developed later throughout Polynesia, further analysis of this
matter may prove rewarding.
Conclusion
Prior constructions of Ancestral Polynesian social organization may have
had their ``unreal'' aspects, as Sutton (1996) avers. Yet Goldman (1970),
drawing largely on synchronic ethnography, recognized that from the
beginning Polynesian societies incorporated concepts of rank, and possessed
leaders who engaged in status rivalry. Our analysis supports many of Goldman's deductions, but it goes much further. Drawing upon LeÂvi-Strauss'
concept of House, elaborated in recent years by Austronesian scholars, we
identify three kinds of PPN social groups: an encompassing one, the *mata,
and three speci®c forms (Figure 8.1). The ®rst speci®c unit, PPN *kainanga,
was a unilineal ascent group led by an elite (the *qariki ), while the second
was a residentially oriented social group, the *kaainga. These groups ®t well
with the concept of the House as developed in recent years by Austronesian
ethnographers.31 Within *kainanga as we reconstruct these for Ancestral
Polynesian societies, there were several *kaainga, each corresponding to a
household unit, with a range of PPN words for its dwellings and architec-
236
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Fig. 8.1
Social groups and leadership roles in Ancestral Polynesian societies.
tonic features (Table 8.2). Chief among these were the principal dwelling,
*fale, and separate cookhouse, *paito. The third speci®c unit, PPN *saqa,
seems to have designated a collectivity of persons related to (or under the
leadership of ) some individual, possibly the *sau.
PPN words for people (*kai/*kakai ) of different kinds display a similarly
wide range. We need not repeat all of these, but note only that they
distinguished commoners from one another along lines of different generations, as well as separating off a few experts or specialists, generally known as
*tufunga, and two kinds of people of rank, *sau and *qariki, the latter being the
leaders of the *kainanga. We also have another term, *fatu, which most likely
referred to the heads of individual *kaainga groups. In distinguishing between
elder and younger same-sex siblings, the *tuaka(na)-*tahina contrast lays a
vital basis for subsequent ideas about how hierarchy might be constructed
historically in Polynesia, while the cross-sex sibling distinctions played a
similar role in gender relations.
Chapter 9
Gods, ancestors, seasons,
and rituals
The ®rst process involved in building up Polynesian religion was the
dei®cation of ancestors . . . The souls of the Polynesian ancestors
lived on in the spirit land of Hawaiki. Their descendants called upon
them for assistance in the problems of this life. They wished for a
continuity of help and so dei®ed speci®c ancestors as gods who could
be consulted when occasion demanded. Thus man created his gods.
hiroa 1939:9, 31
In this, our ®nal analytical chapter, we turn to a domain that prehistorians
have always approached with caution, as in Hawkes' famous ``ladder of
inference'' (Hawkes 1954). Cosmogony, religious beliefs, and the ritual
practices of ancient societies may be inferred by archaeologists on the basis
of textual or visual materials where these are available (usually only fully in
the case of ``state'' level societies, and minimally in visual terms for the
upper Palaeolithic), or from the remains of ceremonial or ritual facilities and
precincts (temples, shrines, funerary remains, and so forth). For Ancestral
Polynesia we have no such witnesses; the evidence of archaeology is for the
present entirely mute. There are no extant Ancestral Polynesian temples or
shrines, nor do we have funerary remains that might yield clues to ritual
practice. No transparently sacred or ritual paraphernalia have been excavated from sites of this period. If asked to attempt a reconstruction of
Ancestral Polynesian religion strictly on the basis of archaeological indications, we should have to reply that the task is currently impossible, and likely
to remain intractable. However, triangulation allows us to apply the evidence
of lexical reconstruction conjoined with semantic histories derived from
comparative ethnology, even when archaeological data are wholly absent. It
is this tack we shall take in constructing an outline ± however skeletalized ±
of the spiritual world of the Ancestral Polynesians, and of how these people
organized their seasonal round, lunar calendar, and ritual cycle in relation to
that spirit world.
237
238
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Polynesian religions: ethnographic sources
One of the problems of studying Polynesian religions is that virtually all of
the indigenous ritual systems were replaced by various Christian sects
through the proselytizations of missionaries in the early to mid-nineteenth
century. Thus primary information on Polynesian belief systems and ritual
practices depends largely on accounts obtained by Westerners after the
demise of the ritual systems themselves. Such accounts vary widely in their
comprehensiveness and accuracy, and in some cases they incorporate
changes made as a result of the conversion to Christianity (e.g., BarreÁ re 1967;
see also Marck 1996a:222±23, 231). The standard museum ethnographies of
the 1920s and 1930s used these early sources ± sometimes uncritically ±
along with such memories and recollections of ancient practice (and the
occasional persistence of certain rituals or beliefs) held by their informants,
to reconstruct the ``ethnographic present'' of religion in their respective
societies. There is much that remains useful in these accounts, but one must
exercise caution. What are sorely needed are more critically informed
historical ethnographies of traditional Polynesian religions, such as that of
Valeri (1985) for Hawai`i, and Oliver (1974) and Babadzan (1993) for Tahiti.
Even long-neglected missionary documents, when subjected to critical
analysis, can yield signi®cant information on ritual systems at the time of
initial proselytization, as Kirch (1994b) has shown in the case of Futuna.
One marvelous exception to the demise of traditional religions prior to
modern ethnographic study is Tikopia, whose ritual cycle and religious
belief system Raymond Firth was able to document using classic ``participant-observation'' methods during 1928±29, and which he elucidated in a
unique series of monographs (Firth 1967a, 1967b, 1970). Gordon MacGregor (1943) was likewise privileged to spend two weeks on Rennell Island
in 1933, while the traditional religious system was still in force, and he
witnessed the annual harvest/®rst fruits ceremony, as well as other rites. And
for Bellona Island, Monberg (1991) offers an exquisitely detailed ethnography of belief and ritual among a Polynesian Outlier people who had been
Christianized only two decades before his study commenced. Monberg's
study is similar in that respect to Emory's earlier work in the Tuamotus
(1947), and on Kapingamarangi (1965), where informants had participated
directly in the traditional religion.
The comparative study of Polynesian religions ± with and without efforts
at deep historical reconstruction ± has a long scholarly tradition. Handy's
Polynesian Religion (1927) initiated the modern genre, but its historical
hypotheses were ¯awed due to reliance on early twentieth-century Kulturkriese
methodology. R. W. Williamson was less concerned with historical issues,
and his massive compendium, Religious and Cosmic Beliefs of Central Polynesia
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
239
(1933), followed by Religion and Social Organization in Central Polynesia (1937),
still provides essential starting points for comparative analyses. Burrows
(1938a) only brie¯y considered religion in his study of cultural differentiation
within Polynesia. Hiroa (1939) drew upon his vast personal knowledge of
Polynesian ethnography in a slim but insightful volume, Anthropology and
Religion, a synthesis of what had been learned from the museum ethnographic studies of the 1920s and 1930s. Interest in such comparative
syntheses waned after World War II, but recently Jeff Marck (1996a, 1996d,
1999a) has reopened the ®eld with a brilliant analysis of the ``®rst order
anthropomorphic gods of Polynesia,'' and his study of early Polynesian
concepts of a ``sky father,'' using an approach essentially identical to ours.
In this chapter we build from fundamental Polynesian concepts of spiritual
power and sacredness, to the evidence for kinds of spiritual beings: ancestors,
spirits, gods. We then turn to the kinds of ritual practitioners who of®ciated
in Ancestral Polynesian societies, and the ritual spaces and objects they used,
including the psychoactive plant kava. From this we move to the seasonal
cycle and lunar calendar, recognizing that all Polynesian ritual systems were
intimately linked with the annual calendric round. This allows us to discuss
the outlines of an Ancestral Polynesian ritual cycle. We conclude with a few
remarks on some fundamental transformations in ritual practice that developed in central Eastern Polynesia, after the breakup of the PPN speech
community.
Mana, tapu, and noa
Nothing could be more fundamental to an understanding of Polynesian
conceptualizations of the sacred than mana and tapu.1 We drew upon Shore's
(1989) comprehensive and thoughtful review to summarize a few salient
aspects of mana and tapu. One must ®rst ask whether these words existed in
the vocabulary of the PPN speakers, and whether their meanings were
within the range understood for ethnographically documented Polynesian
societies. This poses little dif®culty, for both *mana and *tapu, along with the
related term *noa, are instances of prime semantic agreement, robustly
attested across many languages (Table 9.1). PPN *tapu has re¯exes in thirtyone Polynesian languages (thirty-four including extra-Polynesian FIJ, ROT,
and YAS witnesses), and in all of these has a core meaning of `prohibited,
sacred, or under ritual restriction.' Moreover, the word has a deep antiquity
in Oceania, for it can be reconstructed to POC (*tabu, `sacred, forbidden')
and even farther back to Proto Eastern Malayo Polynesian (*tabus, `sacred')
(see Blust 1995a). PPN *mana is also well attested, with re¯exes in twenty-one
Polynesian languages (as well as FIJ, ROT, and YAS), and its core meaning is
just as ®rmly centered around a gloss of `power, supernatural force.'2 Like
240
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 9.1. Proto Polynesian terms relating to gods, spirits, and ancestors
Category/probable gloss
Proto
Polynesian NCOG P1
P2
PSA
Sacredness
Prohibited, under ritual restriction, taboo
*tapu
Supernatural power, effectiveness, prestige, thunder *mana
Common, ordinary, free from taboo
*noa
31
23
19
3
3
3
3
3
3
Spirit world
Sky, heavens
Abode of the gods
*langi
*pulotu
32
3
3
3
3
*qatua
*Taangaloa
*Maaui
23
19
15
3
3
3
3
*qaitu
*tupuqa
*tupuna
*tupunga
14
26
3
3
3
Gods, spirits, ancestors
Deity
Name of a ®rst-order anthropomorphic god
Name of a culture hero or ®rst-order
anthropomorphic god
Ghost, spirit of dead person
Supernatural being, demon, spirit
Ancestor, grandparent
3
3
3
PPN reconstructions from Biggs (POLLEX).
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
*tapu, *mana has a deep history, and can be reconstructed to POC (*mana)
although there its meaning may have been more focused on `thunder' (Blust,
pers. comm. 1999). Finally, there is PPN *noa, less well reported in the
anthropological literature, but well understood by Polynesian specialists as
paired with ± and standing in opposition to ± *tapu. PPN *noa is re¯ected in
nineteen Polynesian languages, although not in FIJ or ROT, and thus is
probably a PPN innovation. It can be glossed as `ordinary,' or `worthless,'
but also more precisely as `that which is unrestricted, free from *tapu.'
The historical linguistic evidence leaves no doubt that all three terms ±
*mana, *tapu, and *noa ± were a part of the PPN vocabulary pertaining to the
sacerdotal. As cases of prime semantic agreement, their core meanings have
not undergone major shifts over the past two and a half millennia. To brie¯y
summarize the signi®cance of these concepts as core foundations of
Polynesian cosmology and theology, we will therefore paraphrase Shore's
excellent synthesis (1989).
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
241
According to Shore (1989:164), ``mana manifests the power of the gods in
the human world,'' yet because the relationship between humans and the
spirit world is always ambiguous, it is necessary to attempt to control these
relations through ritual activity. Mana is intimately ``linked to organic
generativity and thus to all forces of growth and vitality,'' but as ``life-giving
and death-dealing powers are transformations of each other,'' mana occurs at
both poles. Polynesian religious practices and beliefs are thus focused on
``ritual transformations of mana.'' ``The arc through which power can be
ritually transformed'' is represented by the polar states of tapu and noa. A
state of contact between the divine and the secular is that of tapu, whereas
noa ``represents an unbounded state of separation from the divine.'' In
Polynesian ritual activity, people or objects are rendered tapu through speci®c
rites of ``binding, tying, and containing.'' ``Such rites channeled divine
potency for human ends and rendered phenomena intelligible by providing
an encompassing and transcendent form, but also were acts of human
submission to the divine.''
Shore (1989:165) goes on to observe that because mana is linked with
``generative potency,'' the concept has speci®c and special relationships to
the primary sources of human life: food and sex. However, the speci®c ways
in which the bipolar qualities of power were mapped onto social structure
differed between Western and Eastern Polynesian societies. In Western
Polynesia, these were ``mapped onto the brother-sister relationship, or a
diarchic kingship, and thereby desexualized,'' whereas in Eastern Polynesia
these were ``mapped onto the sexualized relationship of husband and wife
rather than brother and sister.'' These differences thus pose a problem in
historical reconstruction with regard to the relationship between tapu/noa
polarity and sexual relations in Ancestral Polynesian societies. That some
complex relationship existed seems certain; we are inclined to think that the
Western Polynesian structures have retained the original Ancestral Polynesian model, because the gendered kin-relationships seem to have been
fundamental (see Chapter 8). This problem, however, is a challenge we
would urge the comparative ethnographers to tackle anew.
Gods, spirits, and ancestors
If mana and tapu were well-established concepts in Ancestral Polynesian
culture, there must also have been a conceptualization of the `divine,' the
supernatural sources of power. Indeed, PPN *qatua, widely re¯ected
throughout Polynesian languages, can be con®dently glossed as `deity.' A
second PPN word, *qaitu, is not so well evidenced, although it occurs in
many Polynesian languages in Outlier, Western Polynesian, and Eastern
Polynesian branches.3 Re¯exes of *qaitu generally convey some reference to
242
Rediscovering Hawaiki
`spirit' or `ghost' (sometimes malevolent) rather than to a deity per se.
POLLEX glosses *qaitu as `ghost, spirit of dead person,' with which we
concur. Yet a third term, PPN *tupuqa, is widely spread throughout Polynesia,
and has a semantic range that overlaps with *qaitu but is even broader.
Re¯exes of *tupuqa all refer to supernatural beings, but have frequent
connotations of `demon,' `monster,' or `bogey-man.' 4 While *qaitu and
*tupuqa may have been accorded supernatural powers, it was probably *qatua
that were the sources of mana ± generative power ± and hence the normal
foci of ritual activity.5
For the supernatural realm, there are two terms of possible signi®cance.
The ®rst, widely attested and a case of prime semantic agreement, is PPN
*langi, which referred to the `sky' or `heavens.' This may have been more of a
physical referent than an indication of a spirit world. The second term is
*pulotu, which POLLEX glosses as `abode of the gods,' and which Geraghty
(1993) suggests was the PCP term (*burotu) for a `homeland' to which the
spirits of the dead returned. However, while *pulotu satis®es the minimal
linguistic requirements for reconstruction to PPN, it is re¯ected only in
TON, SAM, and EFU, in Western Polynesia, along with FIJ. Hence it may
be a loan word, and suggests that the concept of Pulotu as the `underworld
and abode of the gods' developed in this region (possibly in Fiji?) after the
breakup of PPN. We urge caution in its reconstruction as a part of the
theology of Ancestral Polynesian culture.
Given a well-attested term for `deity,' *qatua, what evidence is there for the
nature of such supernatural beings? Polynesian ethnography is rich in the
names and attributes of a great many major and lesser gods, and in Eastern
Polynesia these include the familiar Tu, Tane, Tiki, Rongo, and Tangaloa,
or their local variants. However, only Tangaloa can be con®dently reconstructed to the PPN interstage. PPN *Taangaloa is attested in nineteen
Polynesian languages as well as FIJ, and while there is a considerable range
in semantic values, there is a core meaning focused on the notion of a
principal god.
In a brilliant example of comparative ethnology paired with historical
linguistics, Marck (1996a) examines the complex of ``®rst-order anthropomorphic gods'' of Polynesia, and ®nds that the group of siblings including
*Taane, *Tuu, and *Rongo are largely PCE innovations. *Taangaloa, however,
is the one ®rst-order sibling whose name clearly was in existence in Ancestral
Polynesian times (Marck 1996a:247).6 In Tonga and Samoa, *Taangaloa is
the senior anthropomorphic god, possibly, though not certainly, a retention of
his original status.
Marck draws attention to the persistent cosmological theme of a ``Primordial Pair,'' involving complementary male and female elements. The names
for the Primordial Pair vary throughout Polynesia, and although it is not
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
243
possible to reconstruct secure PPN names for them, such a concept must
have existed in Ancestral Polynesian societies. In most Polynesian societies,
the Primordial Pair represent female (earth) and male (sky) elements. As
Marck writes, ``the primordial condition involved a sky that was hugging
close to the earth and one of the early acts of the early gods was to raise the
sky to create space for standing upright, the brightness of day and other
modern conveniences'' (1996a:225). The PNP terms for the Primordial Pair
were *Papa-adjective and *Papa-adjective (as in SAM Papa-Tuu and Papa`Ele), and it seems plausible that these may also have been the PPN forms,
although the rules of lexical reconstruction do not permit us to state this
formally.7
One other robust PPN reconstruction is *Maaui, which, rather than being
a god or deity in the strict sense, is probably more properly glossed as the
name of a `legendary hero' or `culture hero' (Loumala 1940, 1949, 1955).
*Maaui is re¯ected in ®fteen Polynesian languages, a case of prime semantic
agreement with respect to the gloss just given.8 For many Polynesians, Maui
was an ancestor, ``the ®rst man, the father of the ®rst human being in an
island'' (Loumala 1949:106). He is widely credited with being the originator
of much that de®nes culture as opposed to nature, such as ®re. In some
accounts, *Maaui ®shed up the islands from the sea with his magic ®shhook,
or snared the sun and forced it to slow its progression through the sky so that
humans could farm. While all of these attributes impart a supernatural
quality to *Maaui, he was not a deity in the same way as *Taangaloa. As
Luomala remarks, ``To Maui, Polynesians give proper credit ± but no
worship, priests, or temples ± for many blessings'' (1955:89).
Thus, the Ancestral Polynesians had a speci®c term for deity (*qatua), and
at least one such named deity, *Taangaloa, who may have been the ®rst or
senior anthropomorphic god born of the Primordial Pair. They also had
terms for two other kinds of supernatural beings, *qaitu and *tupuqa, which
were not deities, but rather ghosts, spirits, or demons. The second term may
be closely related, etymologically, to other PPN words, *tupuna and *tupunga.
Re¯exes of *tupuna appear widely throughout Polynesian societies as terms
for `ancestor' or `grandparent.'9 Witnesses of *tupunga (or the doublet tupu`anga) are restricted to Western Polynesia (TON, SAM, EUV, EFU, TOK)
and refer speci®cally to `ancestor.' As Marck (1996b:18) observes, this leaves
unresolved the question of whether PPN actually had two separate terms
(*tupuna and *tupunga), one meaning `grandparent' and one meaning `ancestor,' or whether *tupuna was the single term for both (see our discussion of
kin-terms in Chapter 8). For our purposes, it makes no substantial difference,
because it is certain that there was a term for `ancestor.'10
All three PPN words ± *tupuqa, *tupuna, and *tupunga ± are arguably part of
a deeper complex involving ancestors that goes back at least to POC and
244
Rediscovering Hawaiki
probably to the PMP interstage (Blust 1980). 11 Moreover, all three words are
bimorphemic, with a common root in PPN *tupu, `to grow, sprout, originate.'
PPN *tupu is re¯ected in more than thirty languages, including FIJ and YAS,
and has been further reconstructed as PMP *tu(m)buq and POC *tupuq. As
Marck (1996b:18) writes, ``since at least POC times, *tupu has been
polysemous, meaning both `grandparent' and `grow,' and there seems a
tendency in Polynesian languages to develop new forms around one or the
other sense and apply them to growth, generations, ancestry, and the like.''
To understand why terms for `ancestor' and for `spirit' should be based on
the root *tupu, it is necessary to consider what James Fox (1995, 1996) calls
``origin structures'' in Austronesian societies, including those of Polynesia.
Contrary to anthropological notions of ``descent,'' most Austronesian societies view the origins of their social groups the other way around, in terms of
growth from a source or origin point.12 Very frequently among Austronesian-speakers, origin structures are metaphorically described in botanical
terms, as in a tree with its ``base'' and ``trunk'' and later ``branches.'' 13 Fox
suggests that this is an ancient and fundamental aspect of Austronesian
social organization:
It is possible also to identify re¯exes of other origin categories that can be traced
back to and reconstructed as proto-Malayo-Polynesian. Besides [PMP] *puqun [`tree,
trunk, base, source'], re¯exes of *t-u(m)pu (or *epu), `ancestor, master, second
generation relative,' and *tu(m)buq, `growth,' ®gure prominently in metaphoric
statements about origins. Together these re¯exes interrelate the notions of origin as
`trunk,' as `ancestor' and as `growth' . . . In the Paci®c, re¯exes of *tu(m)buq and *tu(m)pu combine, in various forms, to create a semantics of origins. (1996:6±7)
This, indeed, is precisely what we are suggesting for the PPN word set
including *tupuna, *tupunga, *tupuqa, and *tupu, that these were etymologically
and semantically linked. To the Ancestral Polynesians, their grandparents
(*tupuna) and ancestors (*tupunga) were the source of growth (*tupu) of their
social groups, and also in a more direct sense the supernatural transmitters
of *mana, the generative power essential for life itself. The exact meaning of
*tupuqa is less clear, but may have indicated the spirits of ancestors when
these were ritually marked in worship.14
Fox (1995:45±47) draws upon the ethnographic cases of Tikopia and
Anuta to illustrate further this model of origin structures, noting that Firth
(1985:555±56) also documents the lexical connection between tupu and
tupuna in Tikopian language. Feinberg makes these relationships even more
explicit for Anuta:
Ultimately, manuu [the Anutan re¯ex of *mana] is inherited through a line of males
from the line's founding ancestor, a person known as the tapito `source,' `base,'
`cause,' `basis,' or `reason.' This individual, as is true of all ancestors from the
grandparental generation back, is also known as his descendant's tupuna which is,
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
245
itself, a modi®cation of the word tupu `grow,' and implies that the founding ancestor
is the source of `growing' or `growth.' In our terms, ``power'' and ``intelligence'' and
their corollary, ``knowledge,'' are passed down from the ancestors. (Feinberg
1978:134)
A comparative review of Polynesian religions reveals that the dei®cation
and ritual supplication of ancestors was virtually universal. Hiroa recognized
this when he wrote that ``the ®rst process involved in building up Polynesian
religion was the dei®cation of ancestors'' (1939:9). Handy observes that ``the
souls of the departed who had been of some consequence in life, after they
had reached their ultimate abode usually became what may be called
ancestral spirit-gods'' (1927:89). In religions for which we have ®rst-hand or
close to ®rst-hand ethnographic accounts (e.g., Tikopia, Bellona, Rennell,
Kapingamarangi, Tuamotus), it is clear that rituals directed to ancestors
made up a large part of religious practice.15 In Bellona, for example,
Monberg (1991:125) includes the following among a list of ``types of relationships to worshipped ancestors'': rituals and presentation of offerings at
graves; offerings during homestead rituals; prayers for giving birth; requests
for protection to one's house; ``assumption of the role of an ancestor as
assistant to a priest-chief during the cycle of harvest ± or other ± rituals'';
consecration of gardens, canoes, nets, and other property to ancestors;
invocation of the ancestral name during sudden danger; and communication
via dreams and through possession by mediums. Firth's monographs on
Tikopia religion reveal a similar range of direct involvement of ancestors in
the ``Work of the Gods'' (Firth 1967a, 1967b, 1970).16 Even in those
Polynesian societies which had elaborated a pantheon of ``state-level'' deities,
such as Hawai`i (Valeri 1985), commoners continued to direct most of their
daily ritual practice to the collective ancestors (in Hawai`i, to the `aumakua).17
Given the pervasive and hence presumably ancient emphasis on ancestors
and origin structures among Austronesian-speaking peoples, combined with
the comparative ethnographic evidence for ancestor-worship as a focal
aspect of speci®cally Polynesian ritual practice, we suggest that in Ancestral
Polynesia, named *tupunga, and perhaps also *tupuna, as well as *atua (such as
*Taangaloa), were at the core of the ritual system. The elaborate pantheon of
major gods that has often captured the attention of ethnographers was, as
Marck (1996a) demonstrates, a later development in central Eastern Polynesia, and cannot have been a part of Ancestral Polynesian religion. Rather,
we envision a theology in which dei®ed ancestors ± the ``base'' or ``origin''
from whom the living had ``ascended'' and which continued to be the source
of ``growth'' (tupu) through the transference of mana ± were the most
signi®cant supernatural entities. Our hypothesis doubtless could be elaborated further, through the kind of careful comparative work pioneered by
Marck (1996a).
246
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 9.2. Proto Polynesian terms relating to ritual practitioners and spaces
Category/probable gloss
Proto
Polynesian
Ritual practitioners
Expert (priest?)
Priest, medium, shaman
Medium or bodily abode of a god
*tufunga
*taaula
*waka
16
17
6
3
3
3
*malaqe
25
3
*pou
27
*tapakau, takapau 19
*qafu
20
3
3
3
Ritual spaces
Open, cleared space used as a ceremonial place
or meeting place
Post
Coconut-leaf mat, used at times in rituals
Raised space, house foundation
NCOG P1
P2
PSA
3
3
PPN reconstructions from Biggs (POLLEX).
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
Ritual practitioners
Leaving the domain of theology and cosmology, and turning our historical
gaze toward ritual practice, we ®rst ask who it was, speci®cally, within
Ancestral Polynesian societies that directed and led ritual activity. We ®nd
three PPN words that might apply to such individuals (Table 9.2). The ®rst
candidate is PPN *tufunga, a strong lexical reconstruction, though certainly
not a case of prime semantic agreement. POLLEX offers a PPN gloss of
`expert, priest,' but careful examination of the geographical distribution of
cognates shows that all referents to `priest' are con®ned to Eastern Polynesia.18 Other semantic values for re¯exes of this term, both in Eastern and
Western Polynesia, include `skilled person,' `craftsman,' and `expert' in
general. We are thus persuaded not to attribute to PPN *tufunga any
particular meaning with regard to religion or ritual practice, although that
possibility is not entirely excluded by the evidence. Our interpretation is that
PPN *tufunga marked a broad status category demarcating any individual
with particular knowledge, expertise, or skills, as we suggested in Chapter 8.
The second term, PPN *taaula, unlike *tufunga, is restricted to the ritual
realm. Cognates are found in seventeen Polynesian languages, in all cases
meaning some form of `priest, spirit medium, shaman, sorcerer, or prophet,'
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
247
someone whose role is to mediate between the supernatural and the secular.
POLLEX gives a PPN gloss of `priest, medium, shaman,' which is a reasonable summation of the evidence available. Handy (1927:159±66) interpreted
the *taaula as `prophet,' distinct from the role of priest, but he sensed the
critical Western/Eastern Polynesian distinction here when he noted that ``in
Samoa and Tonga, the inspired diviners [*taaula] formed a de®nite class that
played a prominent part in the cult'' (1927:159). (For Handy, of course, the
`priest' was the tahunga, but here he revealed the strong Eastern Polynesian
bias in his personal ethnographic experience.)
One further PPN term might apply to the role of ritual practitioner:
*waka, a polysemous word, of which the primary meaning is `canoe,' or
`vessel.' In six Polynesian languages, this word also refers to the `medium or
embodiment of a god,' prompting the POLLEX reconstruction of `medium
or bodily abode of a god' as original PPN semantic extensions.19 We agree
with this semantic reconstruction, since it includes not only TON and ®ve
NP languages, but also MAO in Eastern Polynesia (invoking Marck's
Principle 2). However, the term likely applied in special circumstances to
individuals who were possessed by gods or spirits, and not necessarily to ritual
leaders in the normal sense.
*Qariki: the Ancestral Polynesian chief-priest
We now revisit a word that we have already discussed in Chapter 8, under
the topic of social organization. The lexeme in question is PPN *qariki,
which POLLEX glosses simply as `chief,' but which we have argued may be
better described as the ranking or senior member of a ``House'' or lineage
segment (PPN *kainanga) by virtue of hereditary descent (or in properly
Polynesian cognitive terms, ascent) from an eponymous ancestor. But even
this extended gloss does not adequately cover the range of responsibilities,
duties, and privileges of an Ancestral Polynesian *qariki, as we shall argue. In
further examining this important PPN lexeme, we underscore a critical
methodological point: that anthropologically informed semantic or terminological reconstruction (as opposed to strictly lexical reconstruction) must
ceaselessly explore the subtle and frequently nuanced extensions of core
semantic values, or prime agreements in meaning.
PPN *qariki is robustly attested by re¯exes in thirty-two Polynesian
languages. For twenty-four of these, POLLEX gives the gloss as `chief,'
making the term appear to be a simple case of prime semantic agreement.
Yet in three cases (KAP, NKR, and WFU) POLLEX indicates an alternative
meaning of `priest,' `priest of cult,' or `god, spirits.' This information alone
should make the investigator suspicious that PPN *qariki may have had a
broader meaning than simply that of a wholly secular `chief.' When one
248
Rediscovering Hawaiki
pursues in depth the ethnographic literature on the roles of chiefs as priests
or cult leaders, it becomes clear that many more of the cognates listed in
POLLEX should have their glosses amended to include ritual duties (see
Table 8.8). The case of Tikopia is especially informative, and Firth tells us
that ``the Tikopia head priests were not simply the representatives of the
people in the religious sphere, they were also the leaders in economic and
political affairs ± they were the chiefs [ariki ] as well '' (1970:34, emphasis added).
So also in Bellona, where Monberg (1991:187) informs us that the ``priestchief '' was the ``highest religious of®cial, and the leader of rituals.''20 In
Kapingamarangi, ariki were both secular leaders and priests, the ``high
priest'' and keeper of the central cult house denoted by the term ti ariki
(Emory 1965:223). In Rennell, MacGregor (1943) describes the key rituals
that were performed by the chief-priests. For Tokelau, A. Hooper (1994:307)
likewise indicates that the aliki was the ``prime worshipper and voice of the
god Tui Tokelau.'' Huntsman and Hooper (1996:155) report that in
Tokelau, the aliki title referred to ``the priest of the supreme god.''
Evidence for chiefs as priests is not limited to the Polynesian Outliers. In
Futuna, chiefs (aliki ) served as the main ritual leaders, and the paramount
chief was at times regarded as the embodiment of the great deity Faka-velikeli (Kirch 1994b:262). Emory (1947:56±58) describes how in the Tuamotu
Archipelago the priests who of®ciated at marae ceremonies were of ariki class.
In Mangaia, the dual high priests of the god Rongo and a third hereditary
title called the ``Ruler of Food'' were all called ariki (Hiroa 1934:112±19).21
Although the pre-contact religion of Rapa Nui is only scantily known, there
also ritual was primarily in the hands of chief-priests: ``the sacredness of
kingship and nobility linked the ariki very closely with ceremonial life''
(MeÂtraux 1940:324). Geisler (Ayres 1995:67) elaborates: ``Earlier when the
kings [ariki ] still had signi®cant powers and commanded respect, they
functioned as priests who conducted and led religious celebrations.''
Thus, the dual role of priest-chief is well attested in ethnographic accounts
in all the major phylogenetic branches of Polynesia: in the Outliers, in
Western Polynesia, and in Eastern Polynesia. Where a separate functional
class of priests developed, this was largely in hierarchically elaborated
societies, with marked strati®cation. In Hawai`i, for example, there were
hereditary ranks of priests (kahuna, cf. PPN *tufunga) who specialized in the
rituals associated with particular deities (Valeri 1985). Nonetheless, these
kahuna were frequently junior siblings of ruling chiefs, or were drawn from
the ranks of chie¯y (ali`i ) families. In Tonga, another society that had
undergone substantial sociopolitical evolution prior to European contact, a
chie¯y diarchy had evolved with the senior line (the Tu`i Tonga lineage)
reserving for itself control over the key rituals of the chiefdom (Gifford 1929;
Kirch 1984a:224±25). Thus even in those Polynesian societies where there
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
249
was functional differentiation between secular and sacred power, the linkages
between chiefship and priesthood were still evident.
Koskinen (1960) was also convinced that major changes had occurred
over time with the role of ariki. While he did not attempt a full reconstruction
of the original Polynesian ariki-ship, Koskinen clearly regards this as having
been ``more clearly sacerdotal'' than secular (1960:148). He writes that ``the
magico-religious role of the ariki chiefs as a link with the clan gods was
especially characteristic of the societies where kin groups had not lost their
importance,'' that is, in the more sociopolitically conservative societies
(1960:140). In contrast, where there had been evolution toward social and
political strati®cation, ``the priestly role of the ariki was less prominent''
(1960:159).
The evidence is compelling that in Ancestral Polynesian societies, the
principal ritual leaders were simultaneously the main secular leaders, the
*qariki. They were not the only ritual of®ciants, however, for the separate
category of *taaula indicates the existence of other individuals who probably
were spirit mediums, persons who by individual charisma or ``gift'' (rather
than by hereditary rank) were able to effect contact or communication with
the supernatural realm. Extending the reconstructed gloss for PPN *qariki to
include that of `priest or ritual leader' is critical to a proper understanding of
Ancestral Polynesian religion and ritual practice. It illustrates how triangulation draws upon the full range of comparative ethnographic evidence
available when developing a particular semantic history.
Ritual spaces
Polynesian religious facilities are notable for their variability and diversity,
and evidence from archaeological surveys has many times been adduced in
arguments regarding cultural relationships between Polynesian cultures (e.g.,
Emory 1943, 1970; Heyerdahl and Ferdon 1965). Such diversity might make
the task of reconstructing Ancestral Polynesian ritual architecture appear
intractable, but upon careful comparison and examination of both archaeological and ethnographic materials, a probable reconstruction emerges.
We begin with a brief survey of regional variability in Polynesian ritual
architecture. The Outliers, and especially Tikopia, because it has been so
well documented by Firth (1967a, 1967b, 1970) provide an ideal starting
place. Tikopian rituals were carried out primarily in two settings: (1) in
thatched houses called fare that resemble ordinary dwellings ( paito), and may
indeed have originated as such, but became sacred in part through the burial
of generations of ancestors under their ¯oors; and (2) in open spaces called
marae, often attached to fare on their seaward sides, and usually de®ned on
three sides by alignments of upright stones, each stone marking the ``seating
250
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Fig. 9.1
Plan of a Tikopia fare house with attached marae (adapted from Firth 1970:
®g. 2). This particular example is the Marae Matautu, which adjoins the
house of the Ariki Tafua (Motuapi).
place'' (noforanga) of a particular deity. Figure 9.1 illustrates the layout of such
a fare-marae ritual space, based on the plan of Marae Matautu (Firth 1970:
®g. 2). The situation on Kapingamarangi, described by Emory
(1965:206±11) does not differ much, with thatched cult houses (some of
which had proper names incorporating hare, as in Hare Roro) attached to
open assembly spaces called marae, where rituals were performed. Upright
stones representing deities are likewise present in Kapingamarangi (Emory
1965: ®g. 39). In Bellona, the architectural layout of temples (nganguenga) and
adjacent open spaces was again similar, although the cognate terms marae
and fare are lacking (Monberg 1991:166±71). On Rennell, the ngoto mangae
(cf. PPN *loto marae) is ``a cleared space before the house'' of the chief
(MacGregor 1943:34).22
In Western Polynesia, there is greater architectural elaboration of ritual
facilities, although the fundamental architectonic concept of an open
assembly space (marae) attached to a cult house ( fare) remains consistent. The
least elaborated examples are in Futuna (Burrows 1936; Kirch
1994b:262±64), and include ethnographic descriptions as well as archaeological remains of ritual complexes at Lalolalo, and at Loka (on Alo® Is.).
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
251
Here rituals were performed on a plaza (malae) sometimes marked on the
inland side by a row of upright stones, fronting the residence of the priestchief (aliki ). Within his house, the main post was known as the pou tapu
(`sacred post') or pou atua (`god post'). At Loka (Kirch 1994a:239±41, ®gs. 99,
100) this house was positioned inland of the malae plaza and elevated above
it, with the tomb of a chie¯y ancestor adjacent. In Tonga, the most
elaborated ritual center was at Mu`a on Tongatapu (McKern 1929; Kirch
1984a:227±30, ®g. 73). The central feature was again a malae, or open space
used for ritual, this fronting a series of great burial mounds, langi, each
topped with a small thatched god house, as seen in the wonderful etching
from Cook's third voyage (Figure 9.2). The mounds, many of which were
faced with cut-and-dressed slabs of reef limestone, contained the interments
of chie¯y ancestors, particularly those of the Tu`i Tonga line. Other ritual
complexes throughout Tonga were less elaborated than those at Mu`a, but
followed the same basic architectural pattern. Finally, in Samoa we also ®nd
the main structural components of an open meeting/ceremonial ground
(malae), and a god house ( fale aitu). God houses, not much distinguished from
ordinary houses physically, occurred among dwellings in some aggregated
settlements (Davidson 1974), but may also have been situated upon elevated
stone or earthen mounds, such as the massive Pulemelei mound site on
Savai`i Island (Scott 1969; Green 1970:25).
In Eastern Polynesia, the situation is more complex and architecturally
diverse, ranging from the marae as meeting house in New Zealand, to the
megalithic ahu temples of Rapa Nui with their imposing statues, to the stone
platform and terraced heiau of Hawai`i. But for our purposes of reconstructing the nature of Ancestral Polynesian ritual spaces, it is not necessary
to trace every transformation among these Eastern Polynesian forms, and
we will restrict our survey to selected examples from central Eastern
Polynesia. The Mangaian case (Hiroa 1934:172±77; Bellwood 1978b) is
particularly interesting, as it is relatively simple and probably culturally
conservative, retaining older features. Mangaian marae consist of rectangular
courts paved with gravel and sometimes de®ned on their perimeters with
stone edgings or curbings. Upright stones, representing deities, are sometimes present at one end of a marae, as at Marae Akaoro in Keia District.
When in use, marae had a miniature thatched house on them, called `are ei
`au, in which the deities were presumed to take up spiritual residence.
The Tuamotuan marae has been thoroughly described by Emory (1947),
and consisted of a court (only rarely de®ned by stone edging) with an
elevated platform (ahu) at one end (Figure 9.3). This ahu was the most sacred
part of the marae, and supported a series of upright stone slabs ( po[u]fatu)
which marked ``the position of ancestral gods attending the service'' (Emory
1947:13). Other uprights on the court marked seating positions of chiefs and
Fig. 9.2
Annual tributary presentation of the ®rst yams on the ceremonial plaza (malae) at Mu`a, Tongatapu, as drawn by John Webber,
artist on Captain Cook's third voyage in 1777. (Collection of P. V. Kirch)
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
Fig. 9.3
253
Perspective renderings of three variants of Tuamotuan marae (after Emory
1934): (a) Marae Mahina-i-te-ata, on Takaroa Atoll; (b) the western Tuamotu
form; (c) a marae of Reao. While the nature of the court varies, all Tuamotu
marae are characterized by the ahu platform with its upright slabs.
254
Rediscovering Hawaiki
ritual of®ciants. In Tuamotuan marae, there was no actual house, but the
functional equivalent consisted of a miniaturized wooden box containing
sacred objects, and called ± signi®cantly ± fare tini atua (`house of the gods').
Extending this survey of central Eastern Polynesian marae to Mangareva
(Emory 1939), the Society Islands (Emory 1933), or other localities illustrates
a range of localized variation upon the same basic architectonic principles of
(1) a court (variously de®ned, but usually paved, and sometimes further
demarcated), and (2) a raised or elevated platform, ahu, with representations
of deities (stone slabs, upright wooden planks, etc.). Even the Rapa Nui
temple has fundamentally this same form, the entire structure now called
ahu, and with the platform supporting megalithic statues, themselves
elaborations of the simple stone uprights of the Tuamotus (in functional
terms, as representations of ancestral deities).
In sum, the essential components of ritual architecture consistently
present throughout all three main subregions of Polynesia (the Outliers,
Western Polynesia, and Central Eastern Polynesia) are: (1) an open space,
variously elaborated into a formal courtyard, and almost everywhere
designated by the term malae or marae; (2) some form of god house ( fale or
fale-adjective) attached or adjacent to the court, sometimes associated with
ancestral burials, and in central Eastern Polynesian miniaturized (even to
the extreme of a symbolic box);23 (3) posts or upright stones (often under the
term pou), or in Eastern Polynesia statues, serving as symbolic representations and/or manifestations of deities or ancestors, situated either around
the perimeter or at one end of the court, or at times within the god house
itself; and (4) present only in central Eastern Polynesia, a raised platform or
altar, called the ahu, situated at one end of the court. As we shall argue, this
Eastern Polynesian ahu was a transformation of the original foundation of
the god or cult house, as retained in Outlier and Western Polynesia.
These fundamental architectonic components have corresponding Polynesian terms, all of which can be robustly reconstructed to PPN (Table 9.2).
Most important is PPN *malaqe, which POLLEX glosses as `open, cleared
space used as meeting-place or ceremonial place.' Second, we have some
form of compound term, *fale-adjective, with the adjective denoting `sacred,'
`spirit,' or `god.'24 We believe that the most likely PPN form of this term for
the sacred house attached to a *malaqe was *fale-qatua, based on re¯exes in
EFU, RAR, and TUA. Third, we have PPN *pou, a general term for `post,'
but arguably also applying to house posts and/or upright stones which were
regarded as representations (or temporary receptacles) for deities.
Finally, there is PPN *qafu, a term requiring closer examination. The word
is represented by re¯exes in twenty languages (including FIJ and YAS), but
its meanings vary considerably. In Eastern Polynesia, ahu typically refers to
the raised platform or altar at one end of the temple court. In other instances
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
255
it means a mound, or `to heap' or `pile up.' In both FIJ and YAS, critical
extra-PN witnesses to the reconstruction of PPN, it means `foundation
mound of a house,' including mounds that supported god houses. And in
Vaitupu (ECE), the cognate afu refers to a `shrine' (Kennedy 1931:314±15).
From this evidence, we would construct the following semantic history
hypothesis: in PPN, *qafu referred to the foundation of a house, probably a
slightly elevated mound of earth, or possibly at times a stone platform. In
central Eastern Polynesia, as the god house (*fale-adjective) itself became
miniaturized or abandoned within temple architecture, the *qafu foundation
nonetheless remained, in time to become elaborated as a raised altar, the
most sacred part of the temple. We can only speculate as to the semantic
innovation behind this shift from PPN *qafu `house foundation,' to PCE
*ahu, `temple altar,' but it may well have had to do with the practice of
interring deceased ancestors under the ¯oor of the *fale dwelling, until this
became suf®ciently sacred that it became a god house (*fale-adjective).
We can now summarize what the comparative ethnographic, archaeological, and lexical evidence yields by way of a reconstruction of Ancestral
Polynesian ritual spaces. We infer these to have been architecturally simple
affairs, consisting of an open, cleared space (*malaqe) lying seaward of a
sacred house (*fale-{qatua}), the latter constructed upon a base foundation
(*qafu). The sacred house may sometimes have been the actual dwelling of
the priest-chief (*qariki ), and may at times have contained the burials of
ancestors (*tupunga or *tupuna). But we are con®dent that one or more posts
(*pou) within the sacred house were ritually signi®cant. Such a ritual
emphasis on posts was probably a continuance of an older Austronesian
practice of designating posts or other key architectural elements of a house
as ``ritual attractors,'' as Fox (1993) and others have argued.25
There is one ®nal detail of ritual space that can be argued for Ancestral
Polynesia: the use of plaited mats as ritual paraphernalia either within the
god house or on the *malaqe. Two PPN terms, doubtless related as they
represent metathesis, can be reconstructed for plaited coconut-leaf mats:
*takapau and *tapakau. Today such mats are widely used in a strictly secular
manner, to cover house ¯oors, and presumably they also had such function
in Ancestral Polynesian houses (see Chapter 7). But in at least four cases,
widely separated in space (and thus subject to Marck's Principle 2
[1996a:219]), the meanings of the cognates refer to ritual use. In TIK,
tapakau are necessary accouterments of religious ceremonies, laid out to
represent ancestors and to place offerings on (Firth 1967a); grave sites are
also covered with such mats. In TAH, tapau were `plaited pieces of coconut
leaves used by the priests to direct their prayers.' In TUA, Emory says that
tapakau were ``leaf decorations . . . tied to the turtle and to the altar of
Ruahatu'' (1947:38). And in HAW, the cognate term kapa`au does not refer
256
Rediscovering Hawaiki
to a mat at all, but to a `raised place in the heiau [temple] where offerings
were placed.'26 These witnesses provide reasonable evidence for a semantic
extension of *tapakau/*takapau, at least at the PNP level, including ritual use
of woven coconut-leaf mats; probably, it was so in Ancestral Polynesian times
as well.27
Kava
A psychoactive plant, kava (Piper methysticum) was with few exceptions grown
and used in all Polynesian societies.28 While the use of kava has medicinal,
social, and political functions and connotations throughout Polynesia, it also
had a strongly ritual or religious association, possibly stemming from a
``symbolic equation with poison'' (Lebot et al. 1992:131, 152±55). As Lebot
et al. opine, ``kava inebriation brings one into a communion with the gods
and ancestors. In so doing, it also provides access to potentially valuable and
powerful knowledge'' (1992:152). It is not necessary to recount at length the
varied ritual uses of kava in traditional Polynesian societies, ranging from
libations of the prepared drink poured to gods, to prayers offered up while
holding a dried root, to pieces of the plant kept in sacred containers. The
association between kava and ritual is so pervasive that these varied practices
are certainly retentions from such an association in Ancestral Polynesian
times.
The plant itself was domesticated in eastern Melanesia, most probably in
Vanuatu or the Banks Islands, from a wild ancestor Piper wichmannii (Lebot
and LeÂvesque 1989). The wild form is not naturally distributed within
Polynesia, so we can be certain it was introduced from the west. Most
probably, this occurred with or just after the initial Lapita settlement of the
Fiji±Tonga±Samoa region, the doubts raised by Crowley (1994:94) notwithstanding.29
PPN *kawa is attested by re¯exes in twenty-three Polynesian languages, in
virtually all cases referring to Piper methysticum, thus making it a case of prime
semantic agreement. More importantly, there are two other PPN terms
associated with the use of kava, strengthening the argument that kava
drinking or use was ritually marked in Ancestral Polynesian societies. The
®rst is *taa-noqa, glossed as `bowl for serving/mixing kava.'30 Although this
word is present in only ten Polynesian languages (and also in FIJ and ROT),
these range widely from the Outliers, through Western Polynesia, to
Hawai`i, making the PPN reconstruction secure; a semantic history is not
required. Among the ceramic assemblages known for Eastern Lapita and
later Polynesian Plainware phases, are small cups appropriate for kava
serving, as well as possible bowls for mixing the infusion (see Chapter 7).
Finally, we have PPN *fono, a polysemous word one of whose meanings was
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
257
`food served with kava.' This particular meaning is attested by eight
Polynesian re¯exes, with FIJ and ROT as external witnesses. Given that
another meaning of *fono was `deliberate assembly' of people, one might
speculate that the two senses of the word were related, with *fono assemblies
involving the ceremonial or ritual use of *kawa. This certainly would be in
keeping with ethnographic practice in Western Polynesia and the Outliers.
In any event, we will not push the evidence too hard; the key point is that
the use of kava, as prepared in special bowls and served in small cups, and
accompanied by food prepared for this purpose, was a part of Ancestral
Polynesian ritual practice.
Rituals of life, growth, and death
All Polynesian ritual systems incorporate an array of speci®c rites, ranging
from ceremonies held to mark the birth of a child, through various life cycle
changes, to death, as well as annual rites performed to offer ®rst fruits to
gods, and to assure fertility and rains, and success in ®shing. The words for
such rituals are mostly unique to particular societies, and therefore cannot
be reconstructed to PPN. However, there are a number of basic PPN terms
relating to ritual practice, which we enumerate in Table 9.3, and will brie¯y
discuss.
PPN *pule, although attested by numerous witnesses, is not a case of prime
semantic agreement, as the meanings associated with its cognates range
from `authority over food' (ECE) to `worship, pray to god' (TAH). The
POLLEX gloss of `have authority, exert authority' may be essentially
correct. Indeed, virtually all of the cognates which have meanings associated
with `prayer' are from Eastern Polynesia, while the Western Polynesian and
Outlier terms are associated with various indications of `authority' or `rule.'
This strongly suggests that the PPN term *pule meant something like
`authority,' quite conceivably the authority exercised by a *kainanga leader
such as the *qariki. Thus we would posit a signi®cant semantic innovation at
the PCE interstage, from `authority' to `pray, prayer,' a shift directly linked
to the rise of a specialist class of priests (PCE *tafunga, tahuna).
An older term may be *talo, a lexeme whose primary meaning is the taro
plant, but which also had an alternative meaning of `invoke supernatural
assistance, pray, incantation.' This second meaning is re¯ected in eighteen
languages plus FIJ and ROT, indicating it can be semantically reconstructed
to PCP. A term which probably does not apply strictly to ritual contexts is
PPN *taku, `to recite' or `utter.' In both PUK and REN, however, taku takes
the meaning `pray' or `request in prayer,' so some association with ritual
recitation may have been part of its PPN connotation. PPN *lotu is a word
widely adopted throughout Polynesia to mean `Christian religion or church,'
258
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 9.3. Proto Polynesian terms associated with ritual
Category/probable gloss
Proto
Polynesian
NCOG P1
Kava ceremonial
Kava plant, Piper methysticum
Bowl for serving kava
Food served with kava
*kawa
*taanoqa
*fono
23
10
8
3
3
3
3
3
3
*pule
*talo
22
18
3
3
3
*lotu
*mori
*taku
*faqi
*putu
*qinati
*taumafa
*tangi
*renga
17
16
10
12
7
8
16
28
25
3
3
3
3
Ritual terms
Authority (`pray' as a PEP innovation?)
Invoke supernatural assistance, pray;
incantation, spell
Prayer
Offering
Utter, recite, as a prayer
Rite; perform a ritual
Funeral feast, offering to the gods
Share, portion, of a feast
Ceremonial food, offering to the gods
Cry, wail, weep
Turmeric dye
P2
PSA
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
PPN reconstructions from Biggs (POLLEX).
NCOG: Number of cognate re¯exes in Polynesian languages (after POLLEX).
P1: Found in both Western (TON) and Eastern Polynesia.
P2: Found in at least two widely separated groups not known to have borrowed from each
other.
PSA: Prime semantic agreement.
but seems to be a valid older term with some connotation of religion, as it
appears in a few languages devoid of Christian context (e.g., TAH, rotu,
`expression used in a certain idolatrous prayer'). Given the historic transformation of its meaning in most languages, the PPN semantic value for *lotu
may prove impossible to de®ne with precision. PPN *mori, with re¯exes in
seventeen Polynesian languages and FIJ, has a range of meanings, but a
common semantic core focused on the `making of offerings to the gods,' and
we would give its PPN gloss as `offering.'
As far as speci®c rites or rituals are concerned, we have a general term,
*faqi, which seems to have meant `rite' or `to perform a rite or ritual.'
POLLEX reconstructs *faqi only to PNP, but if we take the TON terms fai
(`perform') and fa`itoka (`cemetery, burial ground') into consideration, a PPN
reconstruction seems likely. The only speci®c rite for which there is a PPN
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
259
lexical reconstruction is *putu, which Biggs glosses as `funeral feast, offering
to the gods.' However, the term is found only in Western Polynesia (EFU,
SAM, TON) and in several Outliers (NKR, REN, TIK, WFU), which raises
the possibility that it could be a post-PPN innovation.
PPN *qinati, while only reconstructed on the basis of eight re¯exes, is
certainly valid since its witnesses range from Western Polynesia (TON, SAM,
TOK, NIU, EFU, EUV) to Eastern Polynesia (MAO), and the Outliers
(REN), and it generally indicates a `share' or `portion' of food presented at a
feast. In proto-historic Tonga, `inasi referred to the great annual ®rst yams
ceremony performed at Mu`a (Kirch 1984a:237; see Figure 9.2), and this
raises the possibility that the PPN *qinati was a share associated with a ®rst
fruits feast or ceremony. SAM inati also refers to `®rst fruits,' strengthening
that hypothesis. TIK inaki refers to an offering to the gods, as in tapakau a
inaki o mua, `¯oor mats which are foremost offerings' in a temple (Firth
1985:146). Other glosses are `share of pork at feast' (EFU), `share of food at
feast' (MAO), and `food share' (REN). Given the common associations
between `share,' `feast,' and more than one reference to ®rst fruits, we
suggest that, in PPN, *qinati was a share or portion accompanying a ®rst
fruits feast. Moreover, if our reconstruction of the PPN lunar calendar is
correct (see below), then such a ®rst fruits ceremonial probably centered on
the yam harvest.
PPN *taumafa poses a more dif®cult problem of semantic reconstruction.
The lexical reconstruction is robust, with sixteen Polynesian re¯exes plus
ROT, but the meanings range from `offering, sacri®ce' (HAW), to `royal
food' (TON), to `curse' (PEN). Nonetheless, there is a common semantic
core which includes references to food, and to offerings to the gods, which
leads us to concur with the POLLEX gloss of `ceremonial food, offering to
the gods.' It may be that both PPN *qinati and *taumafa referred to foodstuffs,
but the former indicated food shares meant to be consumed by the mortal
participants in the ceremonial feast, whereas *taumafa marked foods reserved
for the gods.
Two other words listed in Table 9.3 have ritual associations. PPN *tangi is
a ®rm reconstruction lexically, and a case of prime semantic agreement,
meaning to `weep, wail, or cry.' It is not a ritual term as such, but the
practice of wailing is closely associated in most Polynesian cultures with
certain kinds of ``rites of passage,'' and we therefore mention it here.31 PPN
*renga is also well attested and a case of prime semantic agreement, being the
term for the distinctive yellow-orange pigment extracted from the rhizomes
of the Curcuma longa plant (PPN *ango). Virtually everywhere in Polynesia this
pigment has ceremonial uses, such as anointing ritual participants and
sacred objects or paraphernalia, and we infer that this was the case in
Ancestral Polynesia.
260
Rediscovering Hawaiki
A more elaborate reconstruction of Ancestral Polynesian rituals would
require an exhaustive comparative examination of the ethnographic literature on Polynesian religious practice, a task beyond our scope. However, in
addition to our hypothesis that ®rst fruits or harvest ceremonials were
important in Ancestral Polynesian societies (based on the PPN term *qinati,
on the widespread existence of such rituals throughout Polynesia, and on our
reconstruction of the PPN lunar calendar), we will point to one other kind of
ceremony which we believe was practiced in these societies. This was an
annual ritual coinciding with the seasonal reproductive behavior of the
Green Sea Turtle (PPN *fonu, Chelonia mydas), which lays its eggs in the sandy
beaches of Polynesian islands between June to September, a time when the
star-cluster Pleiades (PPN *Mata-liki ) becomes visible in the early morning
sky before sunrise. Kirch (1994b:283±85) reviewed ethnographic evidence
from the Lau Islands, Futuna, Pukapuka, Mangareva, Tuamotus, Marquesas, Rapa Nui, and Hawai`i regarding the sacred status of turtles, their
association with chiefs and deities, and various ceremonies in which turtles
were ritual offerings. In both Pukapuka and the Tuamotus there was a
symbolic association between the Pleiades and turtles, and in Futuna turtle
feasts were celebrated during the lunar month named Mataliki (the Pleiades).
These widespread, similar practices strongly suggest some kind of ritual
turtle feast, or ceremony, having its origins in Ancestral Polynesian societies.
Archaeology offers an additional clue, for both Lapita and Polynesian
Plainware middens in the Tonga±Samoa region are notable for their
relatively high concentrations of turtle bones (e.g., the To`aga site, NT-90 on
Niuatoputapu, and several others). Given that the arrival of the Chelonia
mydas turtles was markedly seasonal, it is not surprising that the early
Polynesians might have accorded ritual status to this important resource.
The reckoning of time and the ritual cycle
Although we can but dimly ascertain the kinds of ceremonies that Ancestral
Polynesians conducted in their *malaqe and *fale-qatua ritual spaces ± whether
rites of passage (e.g., *putu), celebrations of harvest (*qinati ), or seasonal turtle
feasts ± we can be certain that these were not conducted at random. Aside
from such life crisis rituals as cannot be scheduled (such as those occurring at
death), all ethnographically attested Polynesian ritual systems were ordered
by a formal temporal cycle. The reconstruction of the Ancestral Polynesian
system(s) of time-reckoning poses a number of challenges, although it is by
no means refractory to the triangulation method.
The greatest problems stem from the unevenness of the ethnographic data
on Polynesian time reckoning, largely owing to the replacement of indigenous temporal systems with the Gregorian calendar soon after European
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
261
contact. Many ethnographic reports dating to the early twentieth century
lament the inability of informants to give a coherent account of lunar
calendars, or of sidereal or solar methods of time reckoning (e.g., Collocott
1922:164; Handy 1923:347; MeÂtraux 1940:49; Thompson 1940:126).32
Nonetheless, early nineteenth-century explorers and missionaries, as well as
indigenous Polynesian writers, did record aspects of these calendrical
systems.33
Drawing on all available sources, we have compiled in Table 9.4 data
pertaining to a number of key aspects of Polynesian calendrical systems. In
virtually all cases, the `year' was partitioned into two periods, as in Tikopia
where there is the `work of the trade wind,' and the `work of the monsoon,'
or in Hawai`i where the year was divided into the makahiki34 period
dedicated to the god Lono, and the remainder of the year (called kau) in
which Ku was the reigning deity. The PPN term *taqu seems to have
indicated such dual seasons, and is re¯ected in virtually every Polynesian
language, often taking on the meaning ``year'' in the Western sense, after the
adoption of the Gregorian calendar.
There are two PPN words for `moon' and/or `month,' *maasina and
*malama, the latter a semantic extension from an older POC term (*marama)
for `light' or `bright.' While the Western Polynesian languages use re¯exes of
*masina to index the moon and lunar months, re¯exes of both *masina and
*malama occur across the Outliers and Eastern Polynesia. Table 9.4 also lists
the numbers of lunar months (synodic months, lunations) recorded for
particular Polynesian societies, which most frequently are given as thirteen,
but range from twelve to fourteen. We discuss the reconstruction of the
thirteen-month PPN lunar calendar below.
Precisely when a `year,' or a calendric cycle, was initiated in speci®c
Polynesian societies is often a matter of uncertainty, as the data in Table 9.4
indicate. In at least three cases (including Western and Eastern Polynesia),
the year was said to have begun around late November or early December,
while in the cases of Tokelau and Rakahanga, a June commencement is
indicated. As we shall argue shortly, it is likely that both of these times were
important in the Ancestral Polynesian system, correlated with the acronitic
and heliacal risings of the Pleiades, and marked the transition from one *taqu
(`season') to the next.
*Mata-liki: the Pleiades cycle
One of the most beautiful star clusters in the heavens, the Pleiades or ``Seven
Sisters'' (designated by astronomers as cluster M45 in the Messier Catalog)
comprise a young, open cluster some 120 parsecs distant, in the constellation
Taurus. Six stars are visible to the naked eye. At the present time, the
262
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 9.4. Key aspects of Polynesian calendrical systems
Pleiades observed at:
Island/
group
Term for No. of
Name for No. of
`season' seasons/ lunar
lunations/ `Year'
or `year' year
period
year
begins in
Western Polynesia
Tonga
Niue
Samoa
Futuna
Tokelau
tau
tau
tau
ta`u
tau
Vaitupu
tau/nanga 2
Polynesian Outliers
Tikopia
tau
Kapingamarangi tau
Eastern Polynesia
Rakahanga
Tongareva
Pukapuka
Society Is.
Mangaia
Marquesas
Mangareva
Tuamotu
Hawai`i
New Zealand
Rapa Nui
tau
mataiti
vaia
tau,
matahiti
tau
tau
tau
kau,
makahiki
tau
ta`u,
matahiti
2?
2
2
mahina
mahina
maasina
maasina
maahina
12
14
12
maalama
13
2
marama
marama,
mahina
2 or 3
marama
2 or 3
2
maina
marama
2
marama
mahina
marama
2
2
2
mahina,
malama
marama
mahina
12± 13
Acronitic Acronitic Heliacal
rising
setting
rising
Dec.±Jan. ?
February
?
October ?
December,
June
Nov.±Dec.
?
X
X
X
X
X
13
12
12
13
13
12
12± 13
12 ?
June
February ?
May
December
X
December
X
July
December
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Pleiades lie at a declination of +248 above the celestial equator. As
Makemson (1941:75) writes: ``They rise soon after sunset on November 20,
are on the meridian at sunset about February 20, and set in the rays of the
setting Sun toward the end of April. Thirty or forty days later they are
visible on the eastern horizon just before dawn.'' The ®rst two events are
known as the acronitic (or acronical) rising and setting, while that at dawn is
the heliacal rising. As Makemson also noted, due to the precession of the
equinoxes the star-cluster ``is now 308 farther east of the vernal equinox than
it was 2,000 years ago, when it was also 78 closer to the celestial equator''
(1941:76).35 As we shall discuss further below, this also means that the
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
263
timings of the various risings and settings of the Pleiades were also somewhat
earlier in the mid-®rst millennium BC than they are today.
A PPN name for the Pleiades, *Mata-liki, can be robustly reconstructed
based on twenty-four re¯exes; it is a retention from POC.36 As Table 9.4
indicates, the risings and settings of the Pleiades were widely observed in
many Polynesian societies, where they were used to mark the change in
seasons (*taqu periods), and/or to mark the commencement of the `year.'
The acronitic rising (when Pleiades ®rst becomes visible just after sunset) was
critical in many societies, such as the Society Islands and Hawai`i, but also in
Tokelau and Vaitupu in Western Polynesia. In an equal number of cases, the
heliacal rising (just before dawn) seems to have been key. The acronitic
setting (when the Pleiades are last visible just after sunset) is less commonly
noted as having been important, but does ®gure in at least three accounts.
Makemson devoted considerable attention in her monograph on ancient
Polynesian astronomy to the importance of the ``Pleiades year'':
With but few exceptions they continued to date the annual cycle from the rising of
these stars until modern times. In the Hawaiian, Samoan, Tongan, Society,
Marquesan, and some other islands the new year began in late November or early
December with the ®rst new Moon after the ®rst appearance of the Pleiades in the
eastern sky in the evening twilight. Notable exceptions to the general rule are found
in Pukapuka and among certain tribes of New Zealand where the new year was
inaugurated by the ®rst new Moon after the Pleiades appeared on the eastern
horizon just before sunrise in June. Traces of an ancient year beginning in May have
been noted in the Society Islands, but there is some uncertainty about the beginning
of the year in native annals generally, at least as reported by missionaries and others,
due perhaps to the desire to make the Polynesian months coincide with stated
months of the modern calendar. (1941:76±77)
A few ethnographic examples will provide some ¯avor of the signi®cance
of the Pleiades for Polynesian calendrics. One of the earliest and most
coherent accounts was recorded from the Tahitian King Pomare in 1818:37
These are the kingly periods observed by Tahitians. They are Matari'i-i-ni'a
(Pleiades above) and Matari'i-i-raro (Pleiades below). When the Pleiades ®rst
sparkles in the horizon toward the constellation of Orion's belt in the twilight of the
evening [acronitic rising], in the month of Tema (The clearing), on November 20th,
they are the forerunners of the season for plenty. Matari'i-i-ni'a is then the season,
until these little stars descend below the horizon in the twilight of the evening, in the
month of Au-unuunu (Suspension), on the 20th of May. That is the ending of the
season of plenty.
Matari'i-i-raro is the season beginning in the month of Au'unuunu (Suspension)
in May, when those little stars disappear below the horizon in the twilight of evening
[acronitic setting], until they sparkle again above the horizon, in the twilight of the
month of Tema in November. This is the season of scarcity.
One year has two seasons according to this reckoning. (Henry 1928:332)
264
Rediscovering Hawaiki
For Rakahanga in the northern Cook Islands, Hiroa (1932a) likewise
obtained a detailed account in which both the acronitic setting and the
heliacal rising of the Pleiades were critical:
It is clear that the whakaauanga or morning rising of the Pleiades in June [heliacal
rising] was the guide to the commencement of the year, in the month of Whakaau.
The morning rising of the Pleiades is the only de®nite sign given by which the
annual cycle of months could be inaugurated. Other stars are mentioned with each
month, but they were merely seen in those months and there are no details
concerning their appearance or disappearance as with the Pleiades. No mention is
made of the Pleiades in the November-December period, so that the evening rising
of that constellation [sic] was of no signi®cance in the Rakahangan calendar. After
Whakaau was inaugurated by the morning rising of the Pleiades on approximately
June 5, the tau marama or sequence of months followed automatically with the rising
of each new moon . . . In May the Pleiades disappear and cannot be seen at any
time of the night. Their reappearance in June in the eastern sky before sunrise is
thus the reappearance of that which has been lost and is hailed with singing and
dancing. According to the chant, the Pleiades represent the woman who descended
into the pit of the setting sun in the west and who, after traveling around the tuanuku (back of the earth), emerges again in the east scatheless after her great
adventure and with her six eyes sparkling on the face of the dawn. (Hiroa
1932a:226±27)
Gill, who observed the Mangaian system prior to its replacement with the
Gregorian calendar, gives the following brief account, in which the acronitic
rising of the Pleiades was the key event:
This beautiful constellation [sic] was of extreme importance in heathenism, as its
appearance at sunset on the eastern horizon determined the commencement of the
new year, which is about the middle of December. The year was divided into two
seasons, or tau: the ®rst, when in the evening these stars appeared on or near the
horizon; the second, when at sunset the stars were invisible.
The re-appearance of Pleiades above the horizon at sunset, i.e., the beginning of a
new year, was in many islands a time of extravagant rejoicing. (Gill 1876:43±44)
These and other accounts leave no doubt that a cycle of two *taqu periods,
in which each period is initiated by a rising or setting of the Pleiades, PPN
*Mata-liki, was a critical element of Polynesian calendrical systems that had
been retained from Ancestral Polynesian times.38 All the evidence points to
the acronitic and the heliacal risings as the two sidereal events that marked
the breaks between *taqu periods; the acronitic setting would also have been
observed, of course, offering advance indication that the heliacal rising
would soon follow.
Due to the precession of the equinoxes, the Pleiades today rise somewhat
later in the year than they did in the mid-®rst millennium BC. As a rule of
thumb, this precession amounts to a change of one day of rising point for
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
265
any star every seventy-one years.39 Thus in 500 BC, the Pleiades would have
risen some thirty-®ve days earlier than they do at present. On this basis, we
can calculate the approximate dates for the various key risings and settings
of Pleiades in 500 BC as follows: (1) acronitic rising, October 24; (2) acronitic
setting, March 15; and (3) heliacal rising, May 16. In Figure 9.4, we show a
computer-generated celestial map for May 16, 500 BC, from about the
geographic position of Niuatoputapu, looking toward the eastern horizon
(808 azimuth) at 5:10 am, about an hour before sunrise, with *Mata-liki at
158 in the sky. This is the heliacal rising which, in our reconstruction, would
have signaled the beginning of a new *taqu period, and which ± as in many
later Polynesian societies ± was likely to have been joyously celebrated by the
Ancestral Polynesians.
When, then, did the Ancestral Polynesian ``year'' begin? The answer must
be quali®ed by ®rst reiterating that we have no PPN term corresponding
precisely to the Western concept of ``year''; rather, we have PPN *taqu,
seasons that alternated in an endless cycle. The cusp points between each of
these *taqu ± marked alternately by the acronitic and heliacal rising of
Pleiades ± must have been equally signi®cant. Associated with the heliacal
rising were the appearance of sea turtles to deposit their eggs in island
beaches, and the time for harvesting of ritually important turmeric (PPN
*ango), not to ignore the critically important commencement of yamgardening work (see below). Some months later, the acronitic rising of
*Mata-liki signaled the onset of harvests, and the ``season of plenty'' as
several descendent Polynesian societies would term the period when the
Pleiades were visible in the night sky. This surely would have been the season
for celebration of the harvest, for the offering of ®rst fruits.
*Taqu seasons and the yam cycle
That the Ancestral Polynesians chose the risings and settings of the Pleiades
as the key sidereal events by which they calibrated their dual seasons, their
*taqu, was a matter neither of coincidence, nor simply of ``celestial
aesthetics.'' Rather, the Ancestral Polynesian ritual cycle and calendar were
inseparably linked to the horticultural year, and especially to the seasonal
yam crop, whose scheduling depended on climatic seasonality within the
Polynesian homeland. In the Tonga±Samoa region, there are marked wet
and dry seasons, the former beginning around September±October and
continuing to about May±June (Kirch 1978, 1994a). The acronitic rising of
the Pleiades thus coincides with the beginning of the wet season, while its
heliacal rising signals the onset of the dry season. In short, the risings and
settings of Pleiades provided an ideal sidereal timekeeper for the major
ecological rhythms of the Polynesian homeland.
Fig. 9.4 The southern sky as it would have appeared an hour before sunrise on May 16, 500 BC, from an island in
Western Polynesia, showing the heliacal rising of the Pleiades (*Mata-liki ), at about 15 degrees above the horizon.
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
267
Yams (Dioscorea alata, D. esculenta, and other species) are today a dominant
crop in Western Polynesia, and are likely to have been so in Ancestral
Polynesian times (see Chapter 5). Yams are tropophytic plants, having a
growth period of seven to nine months, and an intervening dormant period
when the vines wither and the tubers are stored. Polynesian horticulturalists
in this region begin yam ®eld preparation and planting during the dry
season, so that the later phases of the growth period and harvest correlate
with the wet season (see Kirch 1994a:123±26, ®g. 47; and, Kirch 1978 for
ethnographic examples from Futuna and `Uvea). Thus the ®rst yam harvests
commence around November, and the last harvests are as late as May or
June. Moreover, in Western Polynesian languages, re¯exes of PPN *taqu (e.g.,
EFU ta`u) refer not just to `season,' but more speci®cally to `yam season.' We
believe that this was the original meaning of *taqu, and that in Eastern
Polynesia where the cultivation of yams became inconsequential or even
absent, the term took on other locally speci®c meanings of `season' or `year.'
We can see that in 500 BC, the acronitic rising of the Pleiades in late
October would have marked not just the onset of each new wet season, but
also the impending harvest of the yams, and the ritual necessity of offering
®rst fruits to ancestors and gods. Likewise, the heliacal rising around May 16
in 500 BC would have signaled the time to begin preparations for clearing
and planting new yam gardens.
Indigenous calendars based on such horticultural rhythms are arguably
ancient in Oceania, and we ®nd them evidenced in other parts of the Paci®c.
Malinowski (1935:52±55, ®g. 3) described the complex relationships
between seasons, lunar months, and agricultural activities (especially yam
gardening) in the Trobriands. As he says, ``the cultivation of gardens gives
the full rhythm and measure of the seasonal sequence in the year,'' that is,
``the real measure of time'' (1935:52, 53).40 We know this also to have been
the case in protohistoric Fiji (Perks 1980). Thompson (1940:126±27) describes how in Southern Lau the year was divided into two seasons, based on
the yam crop: a ``harvest season'' of roughly ®ve months (December±April),
and a dry season of seven months. Hocart (1929:108) remarks that, in Lau,
``yam planting determines the names of most months.'' Given the signi®cance of yams in the traditional seasonal cycles of Futuna, `Uvea, and Tonga
in Western Polynesia (Kirch 1978, 1994b; Collocott 1922:166), we have
every reason to infer that such was the case in the societies of Ancestral
Polynesia.
The lunar calendar
As Table 9.4 indicates, in addition to a sidereal year based on the acronitic
and heliacal risings of Pleiades, and with two *taqu seasons, the Ancestral
268
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 9.5. Selected Fijian and Polynesian lunar calendrical lists*
FIJ
TON
Gasau
(April)
Doi (May)
Fakaafumoui
Fakaafumate
Hiligakelekele
Hiligamea`a
Vaimua
ECE
SAM
Mulifa
Utu-va-mua
(Nov.±Dec.) ( Jan.)
Takaoga
Toe-utu-va
(Feb.)
Werewere
Kelekele
Faaafu
( June±July)
(March)
Cukicuki
Siliga
Lo
(August)
(April)
Vavakadi
Utuaemua
Aununu
(Sept.)
(May)
Balolo lailai Vaimui
Toeutua
Oloamanu
(Oct.)
( June)
Balolo levu Lihamua
Fakaafu
Palolo-mua
(Nov.)
( July)
Nungga lailai Lihamuli
Kaunuunu
Palolo-muli
(Dec.)
(Aug.)
Nungga levu Ao`ao
Luamanu
Mulifa
( Jan).
(Sept.)
Sevu (Feb.)
Fu`ufu`uGataitokia
Lotuaga
nekinaga
(Oct.)
Kelikeli
Tanu-maga Palolomua Taumafamua
(March)
(Nov.)
Uluega
Toepalolo
Toetaumafa
(Dec.)
EFU
TAH
Ualoa
(April)
Tulalupe
(May)
Mataliki
( June)
Tolu
( July)
Palolo-mua
(Aug.)
Palolo-muli
(Sept.)
Munifa
(Oct.)
Tauafu
(Nov.)
Vai-mua
O Rehu
`Ikuwa
Napea
(Dec.±Jan.) (Oct.±Nov.) (May)
Fa`ahu-nui Welehu
Matai`i
(Nov.±Dec.) ( June)
Pipiri
Makali`i
Tuhua
(Feb.±Mar.) (Dec.±Jan.)
( July)
Ta`a-`oa
Ka`elo
Takuua
( Jan.±Feb.)
(Aug.)
Au-unuunu Kaulua
Ehuo
(April±May) (Feb.±Mar.) (Sept.)
`Apa`apa
Nana
Mahina i hea
(May±June) (March±April)(Oct.)
Paroro-mua Welo
Oaoa manu
( June±July) (April±May) (Nov.)
Paroro-muri Ikiiki
Avea
( July±Aug.) (May±June) (Dec.)
Muri-`aha Ka`aona
Ehua
(Aug.±Sept.) ( June±July)
( Jan.)
Hia`ia
Hinaia-`ele`ele Veo
(Sept.±Oct) ( July±Aug.) (Feb.)
Te-ma
Mahoe-mua
Uaoa
(Oct.±Nov.) (Aug.±Sept.) (March)
Te-`eri
Mahoe-hope
Uahameau
(Nov.)
(Sept.±Oct.) (April)
Te-ta`i
Pohe
(Dec.)
Vai-muli
(Dec.)
Lisa-mua
Lisa-muli
( Jan.)
Fakaafuola
(Feb.)
Fakaafumate
(March)
HAW
MQA
*Month names are listed in the order given by sources cited below. No attempt has been made to
correlate these temporally or lexically. Sources: TON, Burrows (1938a: table 5); ECE (Tuvalu), Kennedy
(1931:10± 11); SAM, Turner (1884:204 ±8); EFU, Kirch (1994:296, table 1); TAH, Oliver (1974:265 ±66);
HAW, Handy and Handy (1972); MAQ , Handy (1923:350), after Dordillon.
Polynesians also possessed a lunar calendar, for such calendars based on
synodic months are ubiquitous throughout Polynesia. In most societies, the
year was divided into thirteen lunations, although in some cases only twelve
are recorded (there are fourteen names recorded for Futuna). Table 9.5
provides examples of lunar month lists for FIJ and selected Polynesian
examples, giving some of the ¯avor of the raw data; additional information
may be found in Williamson (1933:154±81), Burrows (1938a:82±83, table
5), Makemson (1941), Emory (1946), and other sources. As we shall see, the
Ancestral Polynesian lunar calendar was primarily a horticultural calendar,
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
269
closely linked with the main phases of the yam crop, and with the wet±dry
seasonality of the Polynesian homeland region.
A perusal of Table 9.5 reveals that reconstructing a full set of thirteen
PPN lunar month names is not a straightforward task. Part of the problem
stems from the absence of a list for NIU, leaving the TON list as the sole
witness for the Tongic branch of Polynesian; furthermore, the available
TON list itself has only twelve names. Some assistance is provided by the FIJ
list as an external witness, but only three names are cognate with the
Polynesian sets, and in any event the FIJ list has just eleven names. In Table
9.6 we have reduced the entire corpus of available lists to a set of twenty-one
reconstructions at various Polynesian language interstages, ranging from
PCP (two lexemes), through PPN (the two PCP lexemes plus eight or
possibly nine PPN innovations), to PNP (two additional innovations), PEC
(ten innovations), PEP (one innovation), and ®nally PCE (three innovations).41
Table 9.7 is our best effort at reconstructing a thirteen-month PPN lunar
calendar, based on the data summarized in Table 9.6, even though we must
leave the names of two months unreconstructed, and one is problematic.
Table 9.7 also indicates the successive transformations of this PPN calendar
at various later interstages of Polynesian. We now make a few comments on
the reconstructed PPN calendar.
*Mata-liki, as we know, is the proper name for the star cluster Pleiades.
Our reconstruction of *Mata-liki as a lunation name to the PPN stage is
putative, because it is absent in the TON and FIJ lists, but given that the
name of the star cluster is a secure PPN reconstruction, we argue that it was
a PPN lunar month name as well.42 Moreover, the appearance of these stars
also signaled the time to plant yams in Rotuma, another outside witness for
reconstruction to the PCP stage (Hocart MS [1913]).43 In any event, *Mataliki is securely reconstructed, in both semantic senses, to PNP. Its position in
the cycle was unquestionably linked to the heliacal rising of Pleiades on the
eastern horizon just before sunrise, which in 500 BC would have occurred
around May 16 (Figure 9.4). The ®rst visibility of *Mata-liki before dawn
would thus have marked the onset of the dry season, and commencement of
much horticultural work. This would also have been the time in which
fecund sea turtles appeared on Western Polynesian beaches to lay their eggs,
establishing a ritual linkage between the Pleiades and turtles that would be
carried on into later time periods in other archipelagos.44 Moreover, the
leaves of the *ango plant (Curcuma longa) wither at this season, and the
rhizomes must be pulled to extract the ritually marked *renga pigment. If
there was any ceremonial associated with the preparation of *renga in
Ancestral Polynesia (as we suspect based on its prevalence in later Polynesian
societies), it would have occurred at this time.
270
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Table 9.6. Reconstructed lunar month names for various Polynesian proto-languages
Reconstructed Highest-level
month name proto-language
Re¯ected in
*Mata-liki
EFU, HAW, MRA, MQA, NUK, ROTa
*Li(h,s)a-mua
*Li(h,s)a-muli
*Kaununu
*Oroamanu
*Palolo-mua
PNP (poss. PPN or even
PCP)
PPN
PPN
PEC
PEC
PCP
*Palolo-muli
PCP
*Munifa
PNP
*Siringa kelekele PPN
*Siringa maqa
PPN
*Wai-mua
*Wai-muli
*Vai-(mo-vai)
*Takaonga
*(F,s)ingaia
*Utua-mua
*Utua-muli
*Pipiri
*Serefu
*Faka-qafu-ola
*Faka-qafu-mate
PPN
PPN
PNP
PEC
PCE
PEC
PEC
PCE
PCE
PPN
PPN
TON, EUV, EFU
TON, EUV, EFU
TAH, TUA, MKI, MIA, MVA
MKI, MAO, MIA, TUA
FIJ, EFU, SAM, ECE, TOK, PEN,
MRA, TUA, MVA, TAH
FIJ, EFU, SAM, TOK, PEN, MRA,
TUA, MVA, TAH, ECE
SAM, TOK, ECE, MRA, PEN, TUA,
TAH, RAR, MVA
TON, EUV, TOK, ECE, MRA, TUA,
RAR, MAO
TON, EUV, TOK, ECE, PEN, RAR,
MRA, MVA, MAO, HAW
TON, EUV, EFU
TON, EUV, EFU
EUV, TOK, EAS, TUA
TOK, ECE, PEN, MRA
TAH, TUA, MVA, HAW
TOK, SAM, MRA, ECE, MVA, RAR
SAM, ECE, TOK, MRA
MAO, MVA, RAR, TAH, TUA, MRA
TUA, MVA, PEN, MRA, HAW
TON, EUV, EFU
TON, EUV, EFU, SAM, ECE, TOK,
PEN, TUA, MAN, TAH, MRA, RAR
P1
P2
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
a
As the name of the star-cluster, Pleiades (*Mata-liki) is re¯ected in twenty-three languages,
and is a robust PPN reconstruction.
The *Li(h,s)a-mua and *Li(h,s)a-muli month names are based on the
witnesses of TON, EUV, and EFU, admittedly weak reconstructions,
especially since EUV borrowed heavily from TON in late prehistory. PPN
*li(h,s)a is a widely re¯ected term everywhere meaning `nit, or egg or louse,'
and the metaphoric or other meaning conveyed to PPN speakers by naming
these months `®rst-louse' and `last-louse' might seem to be lost on us today.
Reference to Tongan ethnography, however, clari®es the issues, and suggests
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
271
Table 9.7. Probable reconstruction of the Proto Polynesian lunar calendar, and its
transformations in subsequent Polynesian proto-languages
Period
PPN
PNP
PEC
June±July
July
August
September±October
October±November
December
December±January
January
{*Mataliki ?}
*Li(h,s)a mua
*Li(h,s)a muli
*Palolo mua
*Palolo muli
{?}
{?}
*Siringa kelekele
February
February±March
March±April
(March±April)
April±May
May
*Siringa maqa
*Wai mua
*Wai muli
±
*Faka-qafu muli
*Faka-qafu mate
)
)
)
*Kaununu
)
*Oroamanu
)
)
)
)
*Munifa
*Murifa
)
*Takaonga
*Silinga
)
kelekele
*Silinga ma
)
)
*Utua mua
±
*Utua muli
*Wai (muli, mo) *Wai (noa)
)
±
)
*Fakaafu
PEP
PCE
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
*Pipiri
)
)
)
)
)
*(F/S)ingaia
)
)
)
)
*Wai (tu)
±
)
)
)
)
*Serefu
±
)
Note: ) denotes term carries through from previous level; ± denotes absent.
that these months occupy this position in the calendar, something not clear
from the con¯icting list orders. The key reference is Collocott (1922:167),
who notes that in Tonga Liha mua and Liha mui are the months when the ®rst
yams are forming roots, and that it is at this stage of growth that the little
protuberances or roughnesses, like nits, appear on the seed yams; the
implications are clear.
The *Palolo mua and *Palolo muli months refer to the seasonal rising of the
reproductive segments of the Neiris sea-worm (PPN *palolo), a prized
delicacy.45 (As with the liha/lisa months, the terms *mua and *muli mean
`front, ®rst' and `back, last' respectively.) Moreover, these months must have
been a part of the pre-Polynesian calendar, for they are present in FIJ as
well.46 Probably, they were a PCP innovation to the lunar calendric cycle
used by the ®rst Lapita settlers of the Fiji±Tonga±Samoa region. The *Palolo
months would have correlated closely with the ecological transition from the
dry to the wet seasons, and with the shift in the horticultural cycle from the
end of the yam planting period to the yam growing period. Indeed, fast
maturing yam varieties planted at the beginning of the dry season (in the
*Faka-qafu lunar period) might be ready for harvesting. This would make the
*Palolo months of some signi®cance in the ritual year, because they would
have signaled the approach of the wet season *taqu, the ®rst yam harvests,
272
Rediscovering Hawaiki
and the time for ®rst fruits ceremonial. Such was the case in protohistoric
Futuna, where the main ritual season commenced at the end of Palolo-muli
with a major feast called fakaangiangi, and with the offering of ®rst yams to
the gods (Kirch 1994b:275±79, ®g. 3). Although the Futunan ritual cycle as
we know it ethnohistorically is separated in time from its Ancestral
Polynesian predecessor by some two millennia, both were linked to the same
geographical spaces and the same ecological-horticultural rhythms, so it is
perhaps not an unreasonable proposition that the Futunan cycle has
conservatively retained much of the ancestral pattern.
The palolo worms rise to the ocean surface during the months of October
to November,47 so it is also noteworthy that this coincides with the acronitic
rising of Pleiades in mid-October, in 500 BC. Very likely, the two events
were closely linked, and as was the case in some later Polynesian societies,
the new *taqu period of the wet-season probably commenced with the ®rst
new moon following the acronitic rising.
For the two lunations that must have followed upon the *Palolo months we
have no ®rm PPN lexical reconstructions, although it is possible that PNP
*Munifa was present in PPN, but lost later in TON, rendering it unreconstructable by formal linguistic rules.48 The placement of the *Hiringa months
here is supported by several lines of evidence. First, this is the position
suggested by the PEC, PEP, and PCE lists. Second, kelekele may have been a
FIJ month in which the yams, with earth adhering to them, are dug up
(Perks 1980:66, Wilkes 1845, 3:341).49 Thus the kelekele part of this month
has a PCP antiquity. Finally, as Collocott (1922:167) reports for the Tongan
calendar, it is the `laying' (hilinga) `earth' (kelekele) month in which to start
digging yams.
The names of the next two lunations are more readily comprehended, for
PPN *wai means `fresh water' or `rainwater.' Thus *Wai-mua and *Wai-muli
are ®rst and last rains, and indeed, these months correspond with the end of
the wet season in the Ancestral Polynesian region.
Finally, the wet season *taqu ± season of yam harvests and plenty ± would
have come to an end as Pleiades approached its acronitic setting around
mid-March. The lunar names *Faka-qafu muli and *Faka-qafu mate presumably indicate the preparation of ®elds for yam planting at the transition
from the wet to the dry season, as PPN *faka is the causative pre®x, and *qafu
means `to heap up,' as in a mound (or house foundation). The presumed
reference, then, is to the action of preparing yam planting mounds.
This lunar calendar would have required a system of intercalation in
order to keep the lunar year from becoming progressively out-of-sync with
the solar year, and with the seasons so clearly tracked by the lunar month
names. The problem, of course, is that each lunar or synodic month has a
period of 29.53 days, with twelve lunar months totaling a year of 354 days
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
273
with a leap year of 355 days, eleven days short of the tropical solar year of
365.24 days.50 As both Hiroa (1932a:230±31) and Makemson (1941:94±8)
recognized, the Polynesians resolved this problem through the periodic
intercalation of a thirteenth lunar month. Precisely when this thirteenth
month was intercalated is not known, but the Rakahangan system described
by Hiroa gives some indication of how this intercalation system operates:
The Rakahangan information establishes a hitherto unrecorded method of
correlating the lunar cycle with the Pleiades year . . . The intercalation of a 13th
month was decided not by mathematical calculations but by the simple rule that the
new year could not start until the ®rst new moon after the morning rising of the
Pleiades. The rule of not commencing the new year until the ®rst new moon after
the astronomical sign applies equally well if the evening appearance of the Pleiades
is taken as the sign. The strict observation of the rule would automatically lead to
the intercalation of a 13th month in some cycles. Under this system, the usual year
of 12 lunar months would consist of 354 days and at intervals a 13-month year of
383 or 384 days would prevent the disassociation of the lunar month names with
the seasons. The range of variation in the year was one lunar month. (Hiroa
1932a:230±31)
Valeri (1985:197), in discussing the Hawaiian calendar, hypothesizes that
``the intercalations were made ad hoc, when the difference between the ®rst
rising of the Pleiades after sunset and the phase of the lunar month
theoretically associated with it was noticeable.'' It seems most likely that
such ad hoc intercalation, calibrated by the sidereal clock of the Pleiades,
was the system used by the Ancestral Polynesians to keep their lunar,
horticultural calendar in sync with the seasons.51
Summary of Ancestral Polynesian calendrics
To sum up, time reckoning in Ancestral Polynesian societies was a complex
matter, involving not just one system, but an interlocked set of systems
including: (1) an annual cycle of alternating wet and dry seasons (*taqu); (2) a
sidereal cycle based on observations of the acronitic and heliacal risings of
Pleiades, which marked the transitions between seasons; (3) an annual lunar
calendar of twelve to thirteen months; and (4) a system of intercalation that
kept the lunar calendar in sync with the tropical year.52 In Figure 9.5, we
diagrammatically summarize this set of Ancestral Polynesian annual cycles,
correlating the Pleiades cycle, the thirteen lunations, the *taqu seasons, the
horticultural yam cycle, and several kinds of inferred ritual activities.
Early central Eastern Polynesian ritual transformations
In closing, we comment brie¯y on a few of the many transformations that
occurred following the breakup of PPN and after the initial movement of
274
Rediscovering Hawaiki
Fig. 9.5
Diagrammatic summary of the reconstructed Ancestral Polynesian ritual
cycle, in relation to the Pleiades year, the horticultural seasons, and the
reconstructed Proto Polynesian lunar calendar.
Polynesian peoples into central Eastern Polynesia. In general, we have not
addressed such transformations in this book, but here we ®nd them
noteworthy, as they led to critical changes in ritual architecture with major
implications for Polynesian archaeology. In Table 9.8 we list a number of
lexical and/or semantic innovations that occurred at various stages after the
breakup of the PPN speech community. The Proto Ellicean stage (PEC)
re¯ects an initial expansion out of the geographic region of the PPN
homeland. The Proto Eastern Polynesian (PEP) and Proto Central Eastern
Polynesian (PCE) stages are correlated with the expansion of Polynesian
speakers into the Cook, Society, Austral, Tuamotu, Mangareva and Marquesas archipelagos and to remote Rapa Nui.
As can be seen in Table 9.8, six innovations occurred at the PNP and PEC
stages, re¯ecting an elaboration of the set of named, ®rst-order anthropo-
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
275
Table 9.8. Some post-Proto Polynesian lexical and semantic innovations in ritual
terminology
Category
Probable gloss
Gods and
spirits
Space dei®ed; space between the
sky and the earth
First-order anthropomorphic god
First-order anthropomorphic god
First-order anthropomorphic god
First-order anthropomorphic god
Primary god of war
Ritual expert, priest
Ceremonial meal
Ritual feast ?
A kind of chant or prayer
Raised stone platform or altar on
one side of marae
Upright stone, representation of a
deity or ancestor
Carved human image, sculpture
Year/season
Rituals
Ritual
spaces
Calendar
PNP
PEC
PEP
PCE
*Aatea
*Mauri
*Rongo
*Taane
*Tonga-Fiti
*Tu(q)u
*tahunga
*anga
*fakaala
*oli-oli
*ahu
*kefo
*tiki
*mata-®ti
morphic gods. First to be added to the single PPN god, *Taangaloa, was a
`primary god of war,' *Tu(q)u. This was followed at the PEC stage with the
addition of the anthropomorphic sibling set including *Rongo, *Mauri,
*Taane, and *Tonga-Fiti, all of whom, in Eastern Polynesian cosmology,
emerged from the dei®ed space (*Aatea) between the Primordial Pair. Marck
(1996a) discusses these innovations in detail. We would merely point out that
the elaboration of the pantheon at the PEC stage marked a fundamental
change in Polynesian theology, one that would be especially important in the
later development of Eastern Polynesian societies.
We can also trace several innovations in ritual practice. At the PCE stage
there was a lexical and semantic innovation involving the older PPN term
*tufunga, originally meaning `expert' of any sort, but which now developed a
narrower meaning of `ritual expert' or `priest.' This innovation suggests that
the early communities of central Eastern Polynesia were experimenting with
a functional separation of secular and sacred elites, which in some societies
led to separate ranks of chiefs and priests.
There are a few innovations at the PNP level suggesting development or
elaboration of ritual, although none of these is especially well attested. PNP
*anga is known only from three witnesses in ECE, ANU, and TIK, and may
276
Rediscovering Hawaiki
have designated a ceremonial meal, possibly associated with childbirth or
puberty. PNP *fakaala is re¯ected in ECE, REN, TIK, and TUA, but the
discordance in meanings makes semantic reconstruction problematic. Possibly it, too, was a kind of ritual feast. Finally, there is PNP *oli-oli, a kind of
chant with seeming ritual connections, more strongly evidenced by re¯exes
in eleven Polynesian languages.
In our discussion of Ancestral Polynesian ritual spaces, we brie¯y reviewed
the innovations in central Eastern Polynesian marae, which formalized the
original court by means of stone construction or paving, and eliminated or
miniaturized the attached god-house, while at the same time raising and
elaborating a former house foundation as a stone altar. This altar is marked
by semantic innovation of the PEP term *ahu (derived from PPN *qafu); that
the innovation occurred at the earlier PEP stage (rather than PCE) is
indicated by the witness of EAS, where ahu came to replace the older term
marae entirely. At the PEP stage we also have *kefo, which probably referred
to upright stones set up on the marae court or ahu, and which served as
representations of deities. But the most intriguing innovation of all may be
PCE *tiki, `carved human image.' It was in the societies of Eastern Polynesia
that images of gods became highly developed, carved either in stone or
wood, and the appearance of *tiki at this stage suggests that initial
experiments in the carving of such ®gures were underway among the
speakers of Proto Central Eastern Polynesian.
There were, as well, modi®cations and elaborations to the Polynesian
lunar calendar after the breakup of the PPN speech community. In Table 9.7
we traced various transformations and innovations in the lunar month
names; most of these occurred in the PEC stage, as groups began to expand
out of the geographic core of the old Polynesian homeland. This is wholly
expectable, for they were now moving into islands with different seasonal
rhythms and distinctive ecological conditions (e.g., the absence of the palolo
sea-worm), necessitating adaptation of their horticultural cycles. In central
Eastern Polynesia, especially, the older emphasis on yam cultivation declined, replaced in part by an intensi®cation of tree cropping based on
breadfruit, and in some islands on pond®eld irrigation of taro. These
horticultural changes inspired additional modi®cations to their ritual calendars. Aside from changes in the lunar month names, the central Eastern
Polynesians developed a comprehensive set of names for the ``nights-of-themoon.'' A further lexical innovation in PCE is *mata-®ti, which supplanted
the older PPN *taqu as a term for denoting `season' or `year.' Thus did the
varied ritual and calendric systems of the Eastern branch of the Polynesian
phylogenetic ``tree'' develop their distinctive characteristics.
Epilogue: on history, phylogeny,
and evolution
In place of the events that are dust, Braudel urged us to focus our
attention on two . . . kinds of time he considered more real. There
are the enduring structures . . . that determine over the longue dureÂe
. . . our social ecology, our civilizational patterns, our modes of
production. And there are the cyclical rhythms of . . . these structures
± the expansions and contractions of the economy, the alternation of
emphasis in political and cultural phenomena . . . Underneath the
ephemeral happenings of the immediate public arenas lie the
enduring continuities of patterns . . . that change slowly.
wallerstein 1991:137 ± 38
Anthropology and history are inseparably linked. We do not refer just to the
scholarship derived from written documents, but to the primacy of chronological perspective, whatever ``texts'' must be consulted. In the narrow,
documentary sense, there is a growing history of anthropology, which
productively decodes the discipline's own archives. But increasingly one
®nds robust endeavors in anthropological history (incorporating traditional
``ethnohistory''), and in historical archaeology (which consciously integrates
the study of documents and material culture). In some parts of the world,
ancient texts even extend such enterprises well back into antiquity. For the
Maya of prehistory, the recent ability of scholars to read the Classic Period
glyphs has opened the door to a political history of named actors, places,
and dates.
As we observed in our Prologue, some scholars would extend historical
anthropology to encompass an entire range of evidence well beyond written
texts, and have labeled such an approach ``holistic archaeology.'' Yet they
have not attempted to push the temporality of this approach much beyond
the period of the written word. Nor have archaeologists or prehistorians
often incorporated the evidence of historical linguistics into their enterprise,
although here too there are signs of a renewed interdisciplinary engagement.
In such a context, our own efforts have aimed to further the development of
an integrated and deep-time anthropology of history; a holistic and historically
grounded anthropology of peoples for whom there is no ± or only limited ±
written documentation of their past.1
277
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A ®ne objective, this; but what of that pivotal word, integrated? How does
one marry the varied testimony of the past ± derived from such disparate
sources as comparative ethnology, oral history, scant and largely recent
historical texts, paleobiological anthropology, historical linguistics, and
archaeology ± and extend it back one, two, three, or more millennia into the
past? This is precisely the task we have set ourselves in this ``essay'' on
anthropology's history. Our view is that Polynesia offers an ideal case,
precisely because it has long been identi®ed ± for good reasons ± as a clear
example of a phylogenetic unit, and because the unusual conditions it entails
lend themselves to exploring the theoretical and methodological issues in
detail.
Our conviction is that if we can tease out even some of the key methods
and the practicalities of their application in Polynesia, then modi®cations
and enhancements to the phylogenetic approach ± and its application to
regions where the contingencies of cultural history make things more
complex ± may open up possibilities for historical anthropology. Our own
procedure involves two stages in what we envision as ultimately a three-stage
process. Step one required the demonstration that Polynesia constitutes a
valid phylogenetic unit, a true ``segment of cultural history,'' including the
de®nition of its main branches or clades. The second phase, represented by
Part II of this book, required a detailed and rounded reconstruction of the
Ancestral Polynesian node at the base of this well-de®ned phylogenetic unit.
The third step, not undertaken here, will require that many scholars trace
out the particular trajectories of continuity and change that resulted in the
varied societies and cultures of the islands and archipelagos which are their
special concerns (and in the process, modify and enhance our own reconstructions).
Essential to our endeavor is the triangulation method, which we foreground
in Part I and apply assiduously in Part II. Drawing upon the principal
sub®elds of anthropology for the independent lines of evidence they offer, we
have tried not to privilege unduly any one of them. Comparative ethnography has perhaps the longest tradition of scholarship in Polynesia, and we
have drawn upon the accumulated researches of several generations of
®eldworkers. Naturally, a careful appraisal of such sources is essential, both
in terms of the evolving history and theory of anthropology, and in their use
of written historical texts to augment twentieth-century ®eld ethnography.
However, far from constituting an outmoded ethnographic archive of little
relevance to contemporary theory ± as some postmodern scholars contend ±
we have found the Polynesian ethnographic record of immense value for a
reinvigorated anthropological history. What is essential to make productive
use of this corpus for historical purposes, nonetheless, is a rigorous theoretical framework, one we contend is inherent in a phylogenetic approach.
Epilogue: on history, phylogeny, and evolution
279
The second sub®eld contributing substantially to our triangulation method
is historical linguistics, especially the genre practiced by those linguists active
in the Oceanic ®eld who view themselves as ``culture historians.'' For
Polynesia in particular, an unparalleled resource has been assembled under
the aegis of Bruce Biggs, joined more recently by Ross Clark, in the form of
POLLEX. The POLLEX ®les have been essential to our work, and we hope
that we have drawn upon them not too naively. Largely accepting the
POLLEX lexical reconstructions as given, our own contribution has been in
the realm of semantic or terminological reconstruction, enhancing our understanding of key words through carefully constructed semantic history
hypotheses. Such semantic history hypotheses join linguistics with comparative ethnography, for one must go beyond simple dictionary glosses for
cognates. One must mine the ethnographies themselves, extracting richer
and more nuanced sets of denotata, yielding the basis for a sophisticated
gloss on any particular term. We are encouraged by the recent tendency, in
Oceanic linguistics and ``culture history'' studies, to develop such methodologically rigorous reconstructions of ancient terminologies (of which the latest
example is the Oceanic lexicon project, Ross et al., eds., 1998), as well as the
equally necessary re®nement of subgrouping models, moving from family
tree to dialect chain interpretations of proto-language dissolution.
Thirdly, we draw upon the evidence of our own sub®eld, archaeology,
viewing ourselves in the broadest sense as ``prehistorians.'' Our methods are
not those of traditional ``culture history'' (in the North Americanist sense of
the term), nor are they closely aligned with ``processual archaeology'' in that
we are concerned here primarily with the disentangling of homologies from
analogies and synologies. And while we clearly favor bringing in the
symbolic and emic domains of ethnography and linguistics to create a
rounded picture of the past ± indeed, a true ``cognitive archaeology'' ± our
approach hardly matches much of ``post-processual'' archaeology. Rather,
we insist that our enterprise is an integral part of a historical anthropology of
the longue dureÂe.2
As archaeologists ®rst and foremost, our foray into historical anthropology
has afforded us an opportunity to critically examine our own sub®eld,
especially with regard to its strengths and limitations for historical reconstruction. Our Ancestral Polynesian case study allows us to pose the
question: just how constrained would a reconstruction of the past be, if it
were strictly limited to the archaeological record of durable material culture, as
recovered in Western Polynesian sites of the mid-®rst millennium BC? As
detailed in Chapter 7, our careful estimate is that such durable items
constitute at most 20 percent of the material culture inventory revealed
through comparative ethnography and lexical reconstruction. (Not surprising, then, that Goldman [1970:xxiv] referred to the archaeological
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Epilogue: on history, phylogeny, and evolution
record of early Polynesia as largely one of ``pottery and adzes.'') More
importantly, the richness of this durable archaeological record varies tremendously from domain to domain. For domains such as subsistence or cooking,
archaeology contributes signi®cantly to our understanding of Ancestral
Polynesian culture; for social organization, ritual, or the calendar, it is to all
intents and purposes mute.
This variable aspect of the archaeological record is not news to most
archaeologists, who have long understood the limitations of cultural reconstruction (e.g., Hawkes 1954). But seldom have archaeologists been in a
position (lacking a time machine) to give their intuitions a concrete basis.
Certainly, in different parts of the world with particular conditions of
preservation and taphonomy, what survives and how much of it has been
recovered will vary greatly. But for tropical Polynesia, thanks to the
triangulation method, we can offer a quantitative estimate of the degree of
erosion of the material culture inventory, of the numbers of distinct kinds of
objects ± each lexically marked in the Proto Polynesian language ± which
have not been archaeologically recovered, and are unlikely to ever be
recovered. For us, it is sobering to know that fully 80 percent of the
reconstructed Ancestral Polynesian artifact array is missing from our
archaeological assemblages. On the other hand, that we have been able to
describe the absent categories (even giving them their PPN names), even
though we may not know their exact shapes or precise functions, is to us a
demonstration of the power of anthropological triangulation.
It is, however, in the domains of kinship, social organization, political
leadership, belief systems, ritual practice, and the calendar that triangulation
provides advances even when archaeology is de®cient as a source. Here the
careful employment of semantic history hypotheses, informed by a close
scrutiny of the ethnographic archives, and constrained by a phylogenetic
model, are more essential than ever, for the independent checks otherwise
contributed by archaeology are lacking. Nonetheless, we are con®dent that
our reconstructions of social and political organization, as well as religion
and ritual, are neither ``conjectural'' nor ``pseudo-history.'' While there are
limitations on how far the evidence will take us, and many questions we will
never be able to answer to our complete satisfaction, we claim a real
advance in our understanding of Ancestral Polynesian culture and societies.
One thrust of the post-processual movement in contemporary archaeology
has been toward what is sometimes called ``recovering mind,'' or ``cognitive
archaeology'' (e.g., Leone 1982; Hodder 1991; Flannery and Marcus 1993;
Hodder et al. 1995). We believe we have made some contribution toward
that end, but from a rather different perspective, in which archaeologists join
in a close partnership with their linguist and ethnographer colleagues, the
perspective of historical anthropology.
Epilogue: on history, phylogeny, and evolution
281
In our view, it is not unreasonable for the archaeologist as historical
anthropologist to seek to understand the nature of ancient social groups,
leadership roles, kinship systems, ritual practices, or even lunar calendars,
for many regions of the world at time depths as deep as 3,000±4,000 years,
and in some cases, perhaps older. But there are limits to what the triangulation method can achieve, even when informed by stringent application of a
phylogenetic model. We will be the ®rst to admit that the approach taken in
this book will be of little utility to those who study, for example, the
Palaeolithic. Thus we are not advocating our strategy for adoption by
archaeologists everywhere, at all times, and in all situations. Not at all.
Rather we would encourage its use, with the necessary modi®cations as
circumstances require, where success seems likely. Polynesia is one such case, and
we doubt that it is unique.
Successfully recovering the ancestral node for a phylogenetic set of
derivative cultures and societies requires that certain conditions be met.
Among these are the following:
(a) A demonstration that the set under consideration does indeed constitute a real phyletic group, however much subsequent migration, contact, or
borrowing its members may have undergone. Here the evidence of historical
linguistics, especially through the genetic comparative method, is invaluable,
for it can yield phylogenies based on shared innovations, rather than on
mere retentions (which may be shared outside of the set of cultures under
consideration), or worse, on perceived similarities which have resulted from
borrowing (synologies). Newly improved methods of biological anthropology
(such as molecular sequencing) may also prove increasingly useful in this
critical stage, in assessing the biological relatedness of populations associated
with particular language groups.
(b) Using multiple lines of evidence ± linguistic, biological, ethnological,
and archaeological ± to determine the speci®c geographic space and
particular time period occupied by the putative ancestral culture, and if
possible the size and nature of the biological population(s) involved. The
historical circumstances of Polynesia, which had no human occupation
before 3000 BP, make this step more straightforward than it will be for other
regions with greater time depth and more historical complexity. We have
tried to lay out some of the principles for correlating linguistic, biological,
and cultural evidence (see Chapter 2), but are certain that further methodological re®nement can be achieved.
(c) The application of a triangulation method that allows the analyst to go
beyond the strict material record of archaeology, and employ multiple lines
of evidence in a convincingly integrated fashion. One key to applying this
method is to work from domain to domain, ®rst generating terminological
sets, then amplifying their meanings through semantic history hypotheses
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Epilogue: on history, phylogeny, and evolution
generated by comparative ethnography, and testing these against the
archaeological record wherever feasible.
Application of these steps to Polynesia has yielded a rounded reconstruction of Hawaiki, Ancestral Polynesia, far beyond a lexically attested ``word
portrait,'' as has sometimes been the case in linguistically based culture
history.3 A full reconstruction of an ancestral node requires a complex
process of separate exploration and analysis along each of the pathways of
evidence bearing on the problem, before one attempts their integration. With
the hindsight endowed by our own research over the past decade, we look
back on our earlier attempts to de®ne Ancestral Polynesia (Kirch 1984a;
Kirch and Green 1987) as too mechanical, a naõÈvete that obscured the
methodological subtleties. (An example is the difference between the
reconstruction of *qariki given in Kirch [1984a:63±64], and that offered here
in Chapters 8 and 9.) We see our present reconstruction of Hawaiki as
analogous to an extension of ethnography into the past, yet anything but a
simple projection of the ``ethnographic present'' onto that past!
This latter point provides a base for a further comment. The societies of
Ancestral Polynesia are sometimes spoken of as ``simple chiefdoms,'' giving
rise to later, more ``complex'' social formations with varying degrees of
strati®cation and hierarchy, and leading in a few instances to ``archaic'' or
``proto'' states. We ourselves have, at times, indulged in such characterizations, as have many others (see Green 1993:227). Our research has now
convinced us that Ancestral Polynesian societies ± though they may have
been small scale ± were anything but ``simple'' in their social, political, or
religious structures. As Green, in a previous discussion of ``what's in peoples'
heads versus what's in the ground,'' put it:
Much of any such [linguistic] reconstruction may re¯ect only what is deemed to
have gone on in people's heads. Its realisation in the ground will probably be a
rather more mundane affair. In fact, even in the realm of social relations, this same
asymmetrical situation will probably also apply. Ancestral Polynesian Society [sic]
on and in the ground will not look as socially differentiated and complex as the
linguistic evidence implies. (Green 1994:183)
Our integrated perspective of historical anthropology now demonstrates
that these Ancestral Polynesian societies comprised tiny populations as
judged by the later demographic standards of large numbers of people
occupying the Polynesian high islands. Yet they were probably not very
different in their complexity from the small populations and territories that
comprised ethnographically attested atoll societies such as Tokelau or
Pukapuka, or the raised coral island societies such as Niue, or even the small
high island cases of Anuta, Tikopia, or the Chathams. Sahlins long ago
made such a general point in respect to the social structure of Polynesian
atoll dwelling groups, claiming that they could be expected to show a
Epilogue: on history, phylogeny, and evolution
283
number of interlocking social groups, each dedicated to the exploitation of a
particular resource or resource area . . . as a compensating adjustment to selective
pressures limiting surplus production. By this means, highly organized groups
engaging in particular tasks and distributing strategic goods are created without
necessitating specialization. Every member of the community, as a member of each
type of group, automatically shares in the control, production and distribution of
every product. (1958:245±46)
While noting that the atoll societies were relatively ``egalitarian,'' Sahlins
also observed that they were ``structurally complex'' (1958:236, 246).
We would maintain that such structural complexity, present in even relatively
egalitarian and demographically small-scale societies such as Tokelau
(Hooper 1968:238±40), likewise characterized Ancestral Polynesia. And
essential to this complexity was a greater degree of ranking and social
differentiation than might be anticipated, certainly more than would ever be
attested in the archaeological record alone. We envision Ancestral Polynesian societies as having exercised ¯exibility among a set of small-scale
interlocking social groups, advantageous (ecologically essential, perhaps) to
tiny populations exploiting a diversity of environments, each at some degree
of resource and demographic risk. These societies possessed considerable
structural complexity, as well as social ranking and heterarchy, a formative
base that would lead to greater hierarchy and, eventually, true strati®cation
in some of the descendent societies. Thus, while it is certainly true that the
degrees of ranking or modes of leadership within Ancestral Polynesia did not
equal those of later Polynesian groups occupying the large high islands and
archipelagos (supported by populations in the tens and even hundreds of
thousands), characterizing the former as ``simple'' is not only uninformative,
it is misleading.
Finally, we note that this essay in historical anthropology has been
underpinned throughout by an evolutionary paradigm, as is evident in Part
I. Indeed, a fundamental advantage of a phylogenetic model is its ability to
disentangle homologies from analogies and synologies (Boyd et al. 1997:376),
thus paving the way for meaningful evolutionary analysis. We make no
apology for this stance; it is our foundational position. It is true that the kind
of evolutionary paradigm we prefer requires a form of cultural evolution,
one quite different from certain evolutionary models prominent in the
contemporary literature (see Teltser 1995; Boone and Smith 1998; Trigger
1998). We do not adhere to the strict ``selectionist'' school of cultural
evolution (e.g., O'Brien 1996; O'Brien et al. 1998:487±88), but rather ®nd
the greatest sympathy with a co-evolutionary model (Durham 1991).4
Our current project, however, while underpinned by an evolutionary
perspective ± and in our view contributing to enhanced possibilities for
evolutionary analysis ± was not undertaken as a programmatic or substantive
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Epilogue: on history, phylogeny, and evolution
promulgation of evolutionary archaeology. Our more modest intention has
been to ground the possibilities for evolutionary study within an integrative
historical anthropology, where as archaeologists who practice anthropology,
we have invited seats at the discipline's seminar table. In this role, we will
advance the claim that history in an evolutionary framework is contingency
bound, and that a diversity of mechanisms contribute to the structuring of
both continuity and change.
More expansive discussion of co-evolution within Polynesia must be saved
for another day, when the many and complex historical trajectories that
comprise the Polynesian phylogeny will be our focus, rather than its
ancestral node. Then our rounded reconstruction of that ancestral node ±
that Hawaiki ± will provide the basis for discerning change and continuity,
for discriminating what was retained from what was innovated. The
ancestral patterns will be seen as having helped to condition multiple
outcomes at a series of later stages in the developmental sequences for each
Polynesian island group and society. In short, all that we have endeavored to
do here can only advance and enhance the possibilities of an evolutionary
archaeology, one ®rmly set within the overarching goals of historical
anthropology. In anthropology, as in any science, history matters.
Notes
Prologue
1 On the Polynesian concept of Hawaiki, and for various examples of Polynesian
myths incorporating the Hawaiki concept, see Smith (1921), Hiroa (1938:72,
1945:12), Luomala (1955:4±5, passim), Orbell (1985), and Stimson (1957:4±9).
Taumoefolau (1996) provides a fascinating linguistic analysis of *Hawaiki,
suggesting that it was originally a loan word from Proto Tongic into Proto
Nuclear Polynesian. We should also note that the Proto Polynesian word was
properly *Sawaiki, with PPN *s changing to /h/ in some Polynesian languages.
Given the long-established usage of Hawaiki in Polynesian literature, however,
we have opted to retain this form in our title.
2 One contemporary scholar who has been in¯uenced by Sapir's approach is the
linguist Robert Blust (1981a), who proposed a generalization of the comparative
method of linguistics to provide explanations for the distribution of nonlinguistic traits.
3 As Goodenough (1997:17) observes, one attempt to synthesize the data of world
ethnography according to a cultural-evolutionary model of ``major cultural
phyla'' was Ralph Linton's book, The Tree of Culture (1955). Aside from being
``seriously ¯awed by inaccuracies of detail,'' Linton's work was written at a time
when cultural anthropologists were rapidly moving away from evolutionary
perspectives.
4 Efforts of this sort in the Paci®c ®eld have a long history. Earlier ethnologists
such as W. H. R. Rivers (1914) and C. G. Seligmann (1910) attempted, on the
basis of admittedly uneven and insuf®cient survey data, to advance historical
reconstructions for Oceania as a whole. The slightly later reconstructions of
E. S. C. Handy (1930), even though based on more intensive comparative
®eldwork, suffered from inadequate theoretical bases, such as a simplistic
Kulturkreislehre perspective. Only with the classic study by E. G. Burrows (1938a,
1940), who explicitly applied Sapir's methods, do we begin to ®nd an adequate
historical treatment of a Paci®c region.
5 While homology is a well-understood term, synology we have adopted from Boyd et al.
(1997:376), ®nding it particularly useful. The term culture history is somewhat
problematic, having not only the North American archaeological connotation that
has alternatively been called ``traditional archaeology'' by Renfrew and Bahn
(1991:407), but also more recent connotations in history (``the new culture history,''
Hunt 1989:3, 10) and in historical linguistics (e.g., Pawley and Ross 1993).
285
286
Notes to pages 3±8
6 Within the ®eld of Polynesian studies, this shift from an earlier interest in
historical reconstruction (represented, for example, by the work of W. H. Rivers,
E. S. C. Handy, or R. B. Dixon) to that dominated by the structural-functionalist
study of synchronic societies (typi®ed by B. Malinowski and his student R. Firth,
or in the American tradition by M. Mead) was not without rancor. Te Rangi
Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck), always a strong proponent of the ``historical method'' in
anthropology, railed against the ``functional and psychological methods'' that
had won out by mid-century. The functional method, according to Hiroa, ``is
primarily associated with the names of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, who,
like Moses and Aaron, lead their followers into a land of greater promise. The
greater ®eld of promise lies in ignoring the bondage of the historical past''
(Hiroa 1945:127).
7 Recently, linguistics and biological anthropology have been joined in some
provocative efforts to outline the history of human populations in macroregional and even global terms (e.g., Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1988, 1994; Renfrew
1992; Cavalli-Sforza 1997).
8 For examples, see Kaufman 1976; Jennings 1979; Ki-Zerbo 1981; Tardits 1981;
Ehret and Posnansky 1982; Trigger 1989b; Ehret 1998, 1991.
9 A special issue of The Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory (Kepecs and Kolb
1997) also includes papers devoted to the intersection of history and archaeology.
10 This temporal restriction of perspective is exempli®ed in the paper by Kepecs
(1997:195) which introduces a special issue of The Journal of Archaeological Method
and Theory devoted to integrating archaeological and historical records.
11 This viewpoint is all the more puzzling, given that the historicization of
sociocultural anthropology owes much to the French Annales tradition. Taking
their lead from Bloch and Braudel, both of whom used non-textual sources in
their historical writings, Annales scholars have long been open to a diversity of
historical evidence, even if historical documents are still privileged. Ladurie
(1979), for instance, would go so far as to write the ``history of rain and ®ne
weather,'' drawing upon archaeological, palynological, and paleoclimatological
data as well as upon written documents.
12 On the con¯icts between postmodernism and an older empirical, historicist
tradition in anthropology, see the insightful review by Geertz (1998); we
welcome his observation that ``it is, perhaps, rather too early to exchange roots
for routes'' (1998:72).
13 This problem is at the heart of some barbed comments regarding interdisciplinary collaboration on culture-historical matters. For the Paci®c region, for
example, Irwin (1992:205; see also 1992:2) has claimed that archaeologists and
linguists have for too long known what was in each other's pockets.
14 These are sometimes referred to as ``Science A'' and ``Science B'' after a
curricular distinction at Harvard University (Gould 1989:279). See also Chalmers (1990:19), who remarks that among scientists and philosophers of science,
``what is tacitly assumed is that physics constitutes the paradigm of good science
to which all other sciences should aspire.''
Notes to pages 15-22
1
287
The phylogenetic model in historical anthropology
1 In adopting this stance, Vogt was re¯ecting a more fundamental perspective
on the role of language within anthropology, summed up by Hymes' statement
that ``anthropology has a vested interest in the genetic classi®cation of
languages'' (1959:50). Hymes went on to observe of genetic classi®cation that
``it identi®es lines of cultural transmission in which regularities of change can
be sought . . . it provides a framework against which diffusion can be traced
and within which earlier cultural content can be reconstructed; and it may
reveal past connections and locations of cultures for which little or no other
trace may remain.''
2 This is not a trivial point, and some detractors to the use of a phylogenetic
model in prehistory (e.g., Gosden 1991:262; Smith 1995a, 1995b) have failed to
appreciate that the use of linguistic models of subgrouping, or of lexical and
semantic reconstruction, are in no way intended to take precedence over proper
archaeological data.
3 The concept of ``culture area'' has, of course, a long history in anthropology. In
the Paci®c it goes back to such pioneering comparative-synthetic monographs as
Rivers (1914), Seligmann (1910), and Williamson (1924, 1933, 1937). In North
America, the concept was elaborated by Kroeber (1939) and Wissler (1926). In
recent decades, however, the notion of culture areas has suffered from the
postmodernist attack on ethnography. As Knauft says, ``from a postmodernist
perspective, the ethnographic characterization of culture areas and regions is an
artifact ± the result of a Western academic discourse that projects its own
cultural biases and assumes incorrectly that these characterizations re¯ect other
people's reality'' (1993:3; see also Knauft 1999). As Knauft's own work along
with that of other historically oriented anthropologists in New Guinea (e.g.,
Gewertz 1983; Lutkehaus et al. 1990) suggests, however, a culture area approach
in anthropology may be enjoying a renaissance.
4 In this statement, Kirch was participating in then-current debates within the
®eld of archaeology regarding the application of ethnographic analogy to the
interpretation of archaeological data (Gould and Watson 1982).
5 Green (1993:228) sets out eleven major processes that he identi®es as operating
within Polynesia, resulting in divergence, convergence, or parallel trends.
6 Grace (1966) was one of the ®rst Paci®c linguists to challenge Dyen's lexicostatistically based classi®cation of Oceanic languages, and his critique was an
important milestone in the move toward rigorous subgrouping based exclusively
on the genetic comparative method.
7 We note that Ehret's work on the Mashariki Bantu languages also eschews time
depth based on glottochronology (1998:29, fn. 4), using ± as we also advocate ±
independent archaeological evidence to establish chronology.
8 Recent useful discussions of the genetic comparative method, especially as it has
been applied to subgrouping in Austronesian historical linguistics, are those of
Pawley and Ross (1993:430±41; 1995). Although we advocate the ``comparative
method,'' we should comment brie¯y on one other approach, the ``mixed
288
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
Notes to pages 22±28
languages'' school, in which the languages of Melanesia (for example) were seen
as hybrids, ``the products of contact between Indonesia (western [Austronesian])
and Papuan (non-[Austronesian]) languages that followed migrations of Western
[Austronesian] speakers to various parts of Melanesia'' (Pawley and Ross
1993:434). There are compelling reasons, including some fundamental ¯aws
mentioned by Pawley and Ross (1993:435), to reject this long-held view
regarding the diversity of language, race, and culture within the New Guinea
and western Island Melanesian region.
In contrast, a family tree diagram for the Austronesian languages based on
Dyen's lexicostatistical approach (Dyen 1965; see also Bellwood 1978a: ®g. 5.7,
repeated in Terrell 1986: ®g. 14) yields a quite different picture of thirty-four
primary branches of Austronesian in or near Melanesia.
Debates over ``reticulation versus phylogeny'' have a long history in anthropology, traceable to some of the founding ®gures of the ®eld (e.g., Tylor 1888).
Renfrew (1992, 1997) argues that the spread of farming peoples in the mid- to
late Holocene was responsible for the continuous distributions of major
language families throughout the world.
For a time in the late 1960s and early 1970s, numerical taxonomy also enjoyed
considerable popularity among archaeologists as a method for the classi®cation
of artifacts, largely due to the enthusiasm for this method displayed by David L.
Clarke (1968).
Hennig's ®rst comprehensive publication of the principles of cladistics actually
dates to 1950, in a treatise entitled Theorie der Phylogenetischen Systematik, which
Mayr (1982:226) has characterized as ``written in rather dif®cult German, some
sentences being virtually unintelligible.'' Consequently, the diffusion (indeed,
one might say a classic instance of ``horizontal transmission'' within the
international scienti®c community) of Hennig's ideas into Anglophone taxonomy took some time, and did not truly come of age until the publication in
English of his principles (Hennig 1965, 1966).
Eldredge and Cracraft (1980:33) opine that the concept of synapomorphy is
``one of the most important concepts in comparative biology,'' providing ``the
theoretical basis for constructing and testing cladograms.''
Some of the important literature on cladistics which we have consulted, and
which we have found to be enlightening, includes: Schaeffer et al. 1972; Szalay
1977; Cracraft and Eldredge 1979; Nelson 1979; Eldredge and Cracraft 1980;
Joysey and Friday 1982; Platnick and Funk 1983; Forey et al. 1992.
The volume edited by Hoenigswald and Wiener (1987) contains useful papers
comparing and contrasting the phylogenetic methodologies in biology and
historical linguistics.
Eldredge and Cracraft (1980:326±27) distinguish between microevolutionary
processes, which concern changes in ``gene content and frequency within
species,'' and macroevolutionary processes, which concern changes in ``species
composition in time and space within a monophyletic group.'' In their view,
hypotheses concerning the former may be tested experimentally and modeled
mathematically, whereas hypotheses concerning macroevolution ``require a
Notes to pages 29±38
18
19
20
21
22
289
cladogram (i.e., a well-corroborated hypothesis that a group is monophyletic)
plus distributional data pertaining to component species.''
Spencer (1997:227) has correctly deduced that we fall into the ``processualist''
camp, in part because we favor an approach that takes account of human
agency, even though we ®nd aspects of selectionist theory appealing (such as the
useful distinction between style and function).
Boyd et al. (1997:384) make much the same point when they write that ``good
phylogenies are crucial for the proper study of adaptation using the comparative
method.''
An observation of Hennig's is relevant here: ``The unsharp distinction between
evolution and phylogenesis, or failure to observe the fact that the evolution of
organisms is exclusively by way of phylogenesis although ``evolution'' is not
identical with ``phylogenesis,'' seems to me an important reason for the
misunderstanding and negative attitude often found today among representatives of the humanities and related disciplines'' (1966:198).
Berg and Singer (1998) make the case that in fundamental research, ``the most
promising discoveries'' are often made at the ``fringes'' of science, especially in
simpli®ed experimental systems, citing the cases of Drosophila and Escherichia coli
in working out the fundamentals of genetic systems. Similarly, Mayr (1997:28±9)
points to the signi®cance of choosing appropriate ``natural experiments'' in the
historical sciences. We suggest that Polynesia, precisely because of its simplifying
conditions, provides an ideal region for working out some of the fundamental
methods in historical anthropology.
Areas where a phylogenetic approach has proved useful include Mesoamerica
(Flannery and Marcus 1983; Marcus and Flannery 1996), the American Southwest (Shaul and Hill 1998), sub-Saharan Africa (Ehret and Posnansky 1982;
Ehret 1998), mainland Southeast Asia (Higham and Thosarat 1994:131±41),
and Japan (Hudson 1995).
2
Methodologies
1 Whether Mangaasi represents an ``intrusive'' culture is increasingly doubtful, as
evidence has mounted that the distinctive Mangaasi ceramic series in fact
developed directly out of the preceding Lapita ceramic series (Spriggs 1997;
Bedford et al. 1998).
2 Some scholars have referred to this late stage as Eastern Oceanic, but as Pawley
and Ross (1995:65, fn. 12) indicate, none of the attempts to delineate a distinct
Eastern Oceanic subgroup ``has been convincing.''
3 A. Pawley (pers. comm., 1999) has expressed doubts about whether the Reef/
Santa Cruz languages are intrusive or a relic, as there are no close relatives
elsewhere, and possibly no relatives at all.
4 Dialectal differences, however, are well documented in some of the larger
Polynesian archipelagos, such as the Marquesas, Hawai`i, and New Zealand.
5 Although we have not studied the situation in other regions in detail, we suspect
that the two main kinds of processes summarized above will also prove to be
290
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
Notes to pages 39±46
widespread, as Ross (1997) describes. For example, Hines (1998) refers to the
necessity of a ``chain model'' in the creation of English.
Terrell (1986:49), however, observed that on Dyen's data any age up to 35,000
years might be contemplated!
The metaphor we employ does not, therefore, restrict the researcher to only three
lines of evidence, which would be a ``tripartite'' rather than a ``triangulation''
method.
This situation is more than merely analogous to the construction of cladograms
or phylogenies through the joint incorporation of information regarding living
sister groups of species (synchronic data), and the paleontological evidence of
the fossil record (diachronic data). The incorporation of both kinds of data has
occasioned considerable methodological discussion among cladists (e.g.,
Schaeffer et al. 1972; Szalay 1977).
Pawley and Pawley (1998:209) make essentially this same point, writing that ``for
doing culture history several disciplines are, ultimately, better than one,'' but
noting that ``the challenge . . . becomes how to combine judiciously the evidence
from different disciplines.''
Of particular note are the reconstruction of Proto Austronesian and several
lower-order interstages of Austronesian, by Robert Blust (n.d.), the Oceanic
Lexicon Project at the Australian National University (Ross et al., eds., 1998),
and the POLLEX ®le originated by Biggs at the University of Auckland (Biggs
1998). Also noteworthy is the Austronesian Comparative Dictionary Project of
Tryon (1995), which does not include reconstructions, but gives many valuable
comparative data.
Terms range from ``chronic alienation'' and ``mutual contempt'' to complete
denial of the possibility or value of ever relating the ®elds of archaeology and
historical linguistics in the absence of texts. Pawley and Ross write: ``Some
prehistorians evidently ®nd the methods of historical linguistics so arcane or the
idea of such detailed lexical reconstructions so incredible, that they prefer to
ignore or discount the reconstructions as irrelevant to prehistory. This attitude is
no more excusable than that of a linguist who would ignore C14 dates for
artifact assemblages because he does not understand how such dates are arrived
at or who would discount the relative dating of assemblages in any archaeological site on the suspicion that worms, humans or earthquakes have disturbed
the layers'' (1995:48±9).
Under other names, these approaches have a long history in Indo-European
studies (Diebold 1987:fn. 13).
The problem is a familiar one to archaeologists using ethnographic analogy, that
if they start solely with ethnographic sources known to them for their inferences
about the past, they will be forced to limit their constructions of the past to those
same kinds of cultures and societies.
In Dyen's view, ``the function of the SHH is to provide the semantic link
between the etymon and its re¯exes'' (1985:358).
Early versions of POLLEX were Walsh and Biggs (1966), Biggs, Walsh, and
Waqa (1970), and Biggs (1979).
Notes to pages 46±56
291
16 Marck (1999b: table 1.2) records that the 1994 version of POLLEX contained
3,645 headwords, of which 1,390 appear to be uniquely PPN innovations, while
another 937 are shared with some higher-level proto-languages (ranging from
PCP to PAN); these latter constitute shared retentions in PPN. Finally, some 1,318
items are reconstructable to one or another internal subgroup within Polynesian,
indicating that they are innovations that took place after the breakup of the PPN
speech community. Of these, the largest numbers of innovations are for the PNP
(430 items), PCE (450 items), and PTA (141 items) interstages.
17 Note, however, that this brief gloss can be re®ned, as demonstrated by Pawley
and Pawley (1998:178).
18 Environmental variation per se plays little role in Burrows' model of differentiation between Western and Eastern Polynesian cultures. However, in a separate
paper Burrows (1938b) examined the in¯uence of environment on the differences between the two Western Polynesian cultures of Futuna and `Uvea.
19 We refer here to what Braudel (1980) originally termed the longue dureÂe within his
classic tripartite ``wavelength'' theory of historical change, which Sahlins (1981)
adapted as the ``structures of the long run'' in his efforts to combine structuralist
and historical perspectives on transformation in Polynesian societies.
3
Polynesia as a phylogenetic unit
1 POLLEX gives the PPN gloss of *tangata as `man(kind),' whereas we would
argue that `human being (of either sex)' or `person' is a better gloss given the
great number of glosses in re¯ected terms. Likewise, Biggs' gloss, of `true, right,
genuine' for PPN *ma(a)qoli does not suf®ciently take into consideration the
semantic range (in eight out of twenty-four modern re¯exes) which incorporates
a concept of `indigenous as opposed to outsiders/newcomers.'
2 This is due largely to a long tradition of superb linguistic scholarship in
Oceania, beginning with the great comparative research of Dempwolff
(1934±38), and continuing with many other scholars, only the most recent of
which we will cite here.
3 There is a possibility, as argued by Blust (1998), that the highest-order subgroups
of Oceanic should be divided into just two primary subgroups: (1) the Admiralty
Islands, and (2) all other Oceanic groups. The linguistic evidence for this is still
slim, although such a scenario would ®t well with the emerging archaeological
picture from the Bismarck Archipelago.
4 Since the proto-language lexemes reconstructed for the various eastern subgroups of Oceanic are usually not far removed in time or in linguistic form and
meaning from those of the Oceanic subgroup itself, the available lexical
reconstructions for different domains in Oceanic serve as a very useful, slightly
earlier stage of background data for the speci®c proto-language, PPN, which is
our principal focus in this book. These earlier Oceanic-stage reconstructions are
to be found in numerous papers cited by Pawley and Ross (1993; see also Pawley
and Ross 1995:64 fn. 7), plus in the OCELEX ®les being compiled at the
Linguistic Department, RSPAS, Australian National University.
292
Notes to pages 58±67
5 In 1993 this number was 1,392 lexemes, which would have to be reduced
somewhat, especially among those lexemes exhibiting semantic innovations, as
external cognates continue to be found in other OC languages (Pawley
1996a:393).
6 The term ``Outliers'' (capitalized) refers to a group of some eighteen Polynesian
societies and their respective languages which are distributed to the west of the
main Polynesian Triangle subtended by New Zealand, Hawai`i, and Rapa Nui
(Kirch 1984b). These Outliers are found mainly along the fringes of the
Solomon and Vanuatu archipelagos, and in Micronesia, and include the
ethnographically well-known cases of Tikopia and Anuta.
7 The dating of this breakup is a matter of some contention, depending as it does
on archaeological evidence for initial human colonization in central Eastern
Polynesia, estimates of which range from as early as 500 BC to as late as AD 600
(Spriggs and Anderson 1993; Kirch and Ellison 1994). We are reasonably
con®dent that the evidence will eventually support a date of at least 2000 years
BP (see Irwin 1997).
8 Work on the classi®cation and genetic relationships of the Polynesian languages
has a long history, which can be traced at least as far back as J. R. Forster's
``comparative table of the various languages in the Isles of the South Sea'' (1996
[1778]). A touchstone of modern comparative study was Emory's (1946) analysis
of Polynesian vocabularies, a kind of pre-lexicostatistical approach. Elbert (1953)
offered a ``tree diagram,'' de®ning for the ®rst time the critical deep branching
between Tongan and Niuean on one side, and all other Polynesian languages.
Elbert's tree was further re®ned by Green (1966) and Pawley (1966), and Biggs
(1967) provides a useful summary discussion of these articles, along with a
comprehensive bibliography of Polynesian linguistics in the critical period
between 1946 and 1966.
9 The further implication here, which we will merely point to without elaboration, is that such differentiation had an underlying sociological basis (see Ross
1997).
10 Bowdler (1993) suggests that a region comparable to Ancient Near Oceania may
in its early stages have quali®ed as a ``culture area.''
11 The Comparative Austronesian Project, as its title indicates, has taken the
inclusive unit de®ned by Austronesian language speakers as its analytic focus,
using a phylogenetic framework (Bellwood et al. 1995). This Project has now
resulted in several stimulating comparative analyses (Pawley and Ross 1994,
1995; Fox and Sather, eds., 1996).
12 For counter views, see Terrell et al. (1997), and Welsch et al. (1992). Note,
however, the strong opposition to Welsch et al.'s position regarding the nonutility of language-based models in Melanesia contained in the papers by Moore
and Romney (1994, 1996) and Roberts et al. (1995).
13 For discussion of this debate, see Blust (1999), Pawley (1996a), Irwin (1997),
Kirch (1997b), and Green (1997c).
14 See Oliver (1989:779) for a de®nition of these terms.
15 As Green and Kirch (1997) have argued, the distinction was not so marked at
Notes to pages 69±85
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
293
the time of Lapita settlement of Western Polynesia; its more regionalized focus
laid the basis for various interaction trajectories in Polynesia.
Nevertheless, unilineal descent principles do apply in certain key ethnographic
cases and, as we argue in Chapter 8, provide strong evidence for the interpretation of at least one major Ancestral Polynesian social group (the *kainanga) as
having been unilineal.
Houghton (1996) has developed a model to suggest that this process was driven
by selection and adaptation to long-distance, open-ocean voyaging in their
Remote Oceanic world, a model that remains somewhat controversial (see
Brace 1998).
A reduction in selection pressure in the area without malaria, combined with
marked variation caused by genetic drift, seems quite compatible with the
evidence for bottlenecks indicated by the mitochondrial DNA 9 base-pair
deletion in Polynesians, and by more recent studies of variable tandem repeats
in populations from Vanuatu to Eastern Polynesia.
See McArthur et al. (1976); Black (1978, 1980). See also general papers by
Hammel et al. (1979, 1980), that minimal effective (viable) breeding population
sizes are smaller than had been claimed in the literature.
The irrefutable evidence for at least one South American contact is the
prehistoric introduction of the sweet potato into central Polynesia (Yen 1974;
Hather and Kirch 1991). Green (1998a) supports the view that both the Lagenaria
bottle gourd and the sweet potato provide evidence of such contact.
By ``horizon-like'' we refer to the classic culture-historical use of the term horizon
(Willey and Phillips 1958).
Such a Samoan ``cultural province'' would have included Futuna and, until the
time of heavy Tongan in¯uence and cultural borrowing in late prehistory, the
islands of `Uvea and Niuatoputapu as well.
In our view, the ``chronometric hygiene'' approach advocated by Spriggs and
Anderson (1993) yields far too conservative an estimate. There is considerable
evidence that people began moving well out onto islands of the Paci®c Plate in
both Eastern Micronesia and Eastern Polynesia c. 2000 ‹ 200 years ago (Athens
1995:268; Irwin 1992, 1997). Kirch and Ellison (1994) discuss some further
dif®culties with the Spriggs±Anderson model, such as extreme demographic
assumptions.
The critical point is that the Rapanui language does not share in a signi®cant
number of Eastern Polynesian innovations, and it must therefore have split off
from PEP prior to, for example, the divergence of Hawaiian from Marquesan.
On archaeological criteria, the latter must have occurred by AD 800 at the
latest, and possibly as early as AD 300 (Kirch 1985).
This is an issue that has long concerned both of us. Green (1972:672±73) had
begun to discuss contacts between cultures both within Polynesia and externally,
observing that such contacts were not random, were more complicated than
most imagined, and were structured by various factors which he listed. His views
were backed up subsequently in a series of papers demonstrating at least 3,000
years of trade and exchange, sometimes over long distances (see Green
294
Notes to pages 87±102
1997a:56). The same position was taken with regard to Western Polynesia
(Green 1975), leading Irwin (1980) to observe that in Western Polynesia
``isolation . . . was of a selective kind.'' Referring to Irwin's views, Green wrote:
``The model which the present archaeological evidence ®ts best is no longer one
of successive developments in isolation . . .'' (1981:144). Green (1981:146) also
pointed out how this applied to the linguistic situation. Kirch, with his own
research experiences in documenting interaction with respect to Futuna, `Uvea,
and Niuatoputapu in Western Polynesia, and more importantly for the southeastern Solomon Islands (Kirch 1986b), summed up his view of interaction in
Oceania as follows: ``While island ecosystems are physically bounded, they are
not `closed systems,' and our culture-historical reconstructions must re¯ect the
reality that Oceanic peoples were adept seafarers who frequently extended their
ecosystems through regular contact with adjacent and even far ¯ung islands.
The number of true cultural `isolates' among Paci®c Islands is probably very
low, including perhaps remote Easter Island and some other Polynesian islands''
(Kirch 1984c:629).
26 Other extra-PN examples of readily detectable borrowing in the Paci®c include
Kiribati, which has borrowed from Polynesian (Harrison 1994), and Mele (a
Polynesian Outlier) which has borrowed as much as one third of its total
vocabulary from the nearby language of Efate (Clark 1998).
Part II Introductory remarks
1 Hawaiki or cognate variants appear in Western Polynesia as place names, the
most famous being Savai`i Island in Samoa, but not as a concept of an ancestral
homeland or spirit world. Again, we note that the proper phonological
rendering of the PPN name is *Sawaiki (not *Hawaiki ), the *s to /h/ shift
occurring later in various Polynesian languages. As explained earlier, however,
we have retained the spelling Hawaiki because of its long history of usage in
Polynesian scholarship.
4
The Ancestral Polynesian world
1 In the WoÈrter und Sachen approach of linguistic paleontology, the location of a
homeland, such as that of the Proto Indo-European speakers, is argued on the
basis of the geographical distribution of distinctive ¯ora, fauna, or other physical
characteristics indicated in the lexicon of the proto-language. This approach
obviously has serious limitations, as described for example by Renfrew
(1987:77±86), although with careful application (as, for example by Mallory
[1989, 1997]) it can still provide useful insights to the problem of homeland
determination.
2 The only exception to this is `Eua Island in the Tongan group, which has
exposures of diabasic, rhyolitic, and epidotic rocks, as well as uplifted marine
limestones, all re¯ecting its more ancient andesitic island-arc origin (Hoffmeister
1932).
Notes to pages 102±17
295
3 Of particular use in preparing this table have been Marck's (1994) study of Proto
Micronesian terms for the physical environment, as well as Biggs' (1994) paper
on Maori terms for the physical environment; although neither of these papers
deals with PPN environmental terminology per se, they suggest possible cognates
and have thus provided useful clues.
4 Re¯exes of *takulua refer to Sirius in HAW, MAO, MQA, and TAH, so it is
possible that this meaning is a PCE semantic innovation. Elsewhere re¯exes of
the term refer variously to Altair, Canopus, ``two large stars,'' or to the planets
Jupiter or Saturn.
5 Ross (1995a) reconstructed a set of POC terms for meteorological phenomena
which have been of use to us in determining which PPN terms for weather,
winds, and so forth are retentions from this earlier interstage.
6 Ross (1995a:280) reconstructs a POC contrast set *raki, `dry season when the
southeast trades blow,' and *apaRat, `wet season when northwesterlies blow and
the sea is rough.' He suggests that this set was replaced in PPN with *tonga,
`southeast trade wind,' and *tokelau, `northwest wind.' If he is right, the PPN
change involved not only a lexical replacement, but important changes in
meaning as well, for ``whereas the POc terms evidently referred prototypically
to seasons, the central meanings of the PPn terms seem to have been winds from
a certain portion of the compass'' (1995a:281).
7 Firth, describing the Tikopia, offers a wonderful anecdote of how pervasive the
seaward/landward distinction can be to Polynesian peoples. He writes that ``for
all kinds of spatial reference they use the expressions inland and to seawards . . . I
have even heard a man direct the attention of another in saying: `There is a spot
of mud on your seaward cheek' '' (1936:19).
8 In TON, a key witness for the reconstruction of PPN, the pre®x is ki, a
directional generally meaning `to, toward,' and also a good PPN reconstruction.
PPN *ki is indeed a likely candidate for the pre®x used in the *tahi/*quta
directional contrast set.
9 At the POC level, Clark (1994) deals with bird names and Pawley (1996b) with
names for reef and shoreline invertebrates, while Geraghty (1994) has compiled
PCP ®sh names.
10 Blust (pers. comm. 1999) observes that ``the durability of a sound-meaning
match in the area of ¯ora and fauna is directly proportional to its economic
usefulness, OR its danger.'' He points to the stone®sh (PPN *nofu) as one taxon
with no known economic value, but which is a relatively stable term in Paci®c
languages as a whole. Presumably this is because ``of the importance of avoiding
it with bare feet on the reef.''
11 See Hunt and Kirch (1997), Kirch (1993a), Dickinson et al. (1994), and
Dickinson and Green (1998) for reviews of the geomorphological and archaeological evidence.
12 Steadman (1993b:222±23) reports that there are two questionable historical
reports of Megapodius species in Samoa (M. stairi ) and in Ha`apai (M. burnabyi ),
each described from only a single egg specimen. However, such eggs could
well have been trade or exchange items, and may actually represent nothing
296
Notes to pages 118±32
more than eggs of M. pritchardi brought to Samoa and Ha`apai from
Niuafo`ou.
13 In addition to these three Polynesian re¯exes, there are cognates in three
Oceanic languages of Vanuatu, making the reconstruction of *malau valid back
to the Proto Eastern Oceanic interstage.
14 On the ecological vulnerability and fragility of Remote Oceanic ecosystems, see
Fosberg (1963a, 1963b).
5
Subsistence
1 *Kulu is also the term with a deeper history in the Austronesian family, with a
reconstruction back at least to Proto Malayo-Polynesian (PMP *kuluR). With
regard to the *kulu/*mei semantic problem, Marck (n.d., 7) observes that ``such
uncertainties are a part of life in comparative linguistics''!
2 The further question here is whether the Ancestral Polynesian communities
utilized Metroxylon palms only for thatching material, or also extracted the
starchy pith as a food. The technology for starch extraction is known in such
Western Polynesian societies as Futuna (Kirch 1994a), and of course has a
widespread and presumably ancient distribution in Melanesia (Barrau 1959;
Dutton 1994). We believe that the narrow-necked, globular-shaped plainware
ceramic vessels so common in Lapita assemblages, and continuing into Ancestral
Polynesian times, may well have been used for the storage of sago ¯our (see
Kirch 1997a:161). This is a question which we must defer for the time being,
however.
3 Blust (pers. comm., 1999) reports that ``re¯exes of PAN *kali refer speci®cally or
primarily to the excavation of tubers in a number of languages in insular
Southeast Asia and the Paci®c (cf. Thao kari `dig up or out, as tubers'; Hanunoo
kali `digging up, as of rootstocks, tubers, etc.').''
4 With re¯exes occurring in sixteen Polynesian languages as well as FIJ, modern
glosses of wele terms range from `to weed' (EAS, HAW, RAR), or `weed with
®ngers' (SAM), to `clear the ground' (TAH), but all incorporate the same basic
meaning.
5 The sole exception is a PPN term, *fusi, which seems to have meant a `swampy
area,' and which POLLEX suggests may also have meant such a swampy area
under cultivation. For reasons discussed in detail by Kirch and Lepofsky
(1993:193±95), it is likely that the application of this term to raised-bed or
pond®eld irrigation was a later semantic innovation of the Fiji±Western
Polynesian region, but the use of naturally wet, and suitably drained areas may
go back to the PPN stage.
6 At the time this article was written, ``Samoic-Outlier'' was still an accepted
subgrouping within the Polynesian linguistic model; more recently, revisions by
Wilson (1985) and Marck (1996c, 1999b) have shown that the Outlier languages
do not constitute a monophyletic group.
7 The term is from Blaikie and Brook®eld (1987).
8 In our view, it is unlikely that they were ``scrapers,'' as suggested by Janetski,
Notes to pages 131±44
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
297
because they do not have sharpened edges, and the columella was not removed,
so that these ``scrapers'' would quickly clog with vegetable peelings.
While Poulsen (1987) may well be correct in his functional interpretation of the
perforated Anadara shells as net sinkers or weights, there are other possibilities.
One is that these shells were used as coconut graters, the perforation being used
to lash the shell (which has a naturally serrated edge) to a wooden shaft or stool,
as in ethnographically documented examples.
Faunal assemblages have been analyzed and reported from several Ancestral
Polynesian sites, including those on Tongatapu (Poulsen 1987:233±40), on
Niuatoputapu (Kirch 1988), and on Samoa ( Janetski 1980b; Nagaoka 1993).
Nagaoka (1993:207±14, tables 13.19, 13.20) provides a useful overview of these
data, which we only brie¯y summarize.
It is known from an Early Eastern Lapita context from Ha`apai (Pregill and Dye
1989), and by a single jaw fragment from the NT-100 site on Niuatoputapu
(Kirch 1988:221).
A term which POLLEX reconstructs only to the PNP level, *reke, may have
indicated the shank knob or snood end of an angling hook.
On this point, see Green's important and extensive discussion of Samoan trolling
lures in the early post-contact period (Green 1974a:271±74).
A second term for `®shing line' speci®cally is reconstructed to Proto Samoic,
*uka.
No PPN term for `weight' or `sinker' seems to exist, but one can be
reconstructed for Nuclear Polynesian, *kalisi.
A term for scoop-net, *kuku-ti, is reconstructed for PNP.
6
Food preparation and cuisine
1 The development of a scholarly approach to Polynesian cuisine and to ``archaeogastronomy'' has been a particular interest of one of us (PVK), as evidenced in
recent writings (Kirch 1994a:95±100; 1997a:212±17). This interest dates back
to much pleasurable time spent in the traditional cookhouses of Anuta (in 1971),
Futuna (in 1974), and Tikopia (in 1977±78).
2 Inexplicably, the fascinating section detailing Tikopian recipes (1936:
103±10) was eliminated from the later, paperback edition now read by
students.
3 *Kina probably most often referred to ¯esh foods that accompanied a meal based
primarily on starch staples. Its modern re¯exes sometimes also refer to such
relishes as coconut.
4 The PPN term *qota quite nicely exempli®es the necessity of amplifying the
minimal glosses provided in POLLEX with additional ethnographic detail. Out
of twenty re¯exes for *qota listed in POLLEX, the glosses as provided from
standard dictionary sources indicate `raw' in every case, but correlate that
rawness with ®sh or shell®sh in only six cases. Yet, if one carefully consults the
ethnographic corpus for Polynesia, it is abundantly clear that the only kinds of
meat regularly consumed in a raw state are ®sh and shell®sh. Moreover, the
298
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
Notes to pages 144±54
re¯ected terms, as far we can determine, only apply to the consumption of ¯esh
foods, not to vegetable products.
An apparent PCE innovation was the compound term *koo-moto, meaning `not
quite ripe,' possibly restricted to coconuts.
The gloss `raw' is clearly one of prime semantic agreement, although this should
probably be quali®ed to indicate that it applies primarily to plant foods.
In closely examining the various meanings and glosses ascribed to the twentytwo re¯ected terms for *peqe, one is struck by the consistent reference to `soft,'
`crushed,' or `easily-crushed.' Those who have spent time with traditional
Polynesian peoples who depend to any extent upon the seasonal breadfruit
harvest for their subsistence will be well aware of the concern that is expressed
on a daily basis for the ripening of the fruit. Ideally, one wishes to harvest the
fruit at the peak of its ripeness for cooking. However, a day's delay may result in
the fruit falling to the ground, whereupon it all too easily is bruised or crushed
and, while still edible, yields a less than satisfactory culinary product.
There is a poorly re¯ected term, *mangiti, witnessed only in FIJ and EFU and
which may therefore be a borrowing, that has the semantic value of `starch
staple' (see Kirch 1994a:98).
Interestingly, there was a PNP innovation with the same semantic value, *maluu.
One semantic referent of this term, at least in certain modern Polynesian
languages, is also to the state of being `intoxicated' (perhaps `stupe®ed' is a
better term) with kava, Piper methysticum. And even more recently, there has been
an extension of the semantic range for kona to include the state of alcoholic
intoxication.
This is perhaps an appropriate a place to acknowledge the in¯uence of Douglas
Sutton, whose continuous skepticism concerning both the ``reality'' of Ancestral
Polynesian Society, and the possibilities of what he (not we) calls ``linguistic
archaeology'' have been a friendly if at times contentious inspiration to continue
our collaboration into the project whose fruit is this book (see Sutton 1990,
1996).
Hiroa's comment on the structural similarity of both dwellings and cookhouses
raises a point for archaeologists to consider, for it is likely that the patterns of
postmolds will be nearly identical in many cases. Thus it is the associated
assemblages that will prove critical in discriminating function: cooking gear and
earth ovens for cookhouses, and tool-making activities or other evidence for
domestic tasks in the case of dwellings.
Half-coconut shells are also the preferred material for igniting earth ovens.
The Eastern Polynesian term *fale umu was thus an innovation.
PPN *faka-qafu has only six modern re¯exes, but these include TON and TAH
in the east, making this a fairly con®dent reconstruction.
PPN *fuke is re¯ected in twenty-®ve languages, including FIJ. There is a
second, probably closely related term, *suke, for which POLLEX provides a
gloss of `open up by removing a cover' but which may also have applied to earth
ovens.
More detailed zooarchaeological analyses should be able to shed some light on
Notes to pages 154±70
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
299
certain food preparation procedures, especially with regard to the butchering
and cooking of animal foods, such as pig, chicken, and so on.
In PUK, however, olo is the name of a taro pudding, and in TAH oro means
`grate the taro.' Thus while PPN *olo certainly had a general meaning of `grate,'
we suggest it might also have referred speci®cally to the grating of taro.
Alternatively, this may be a semantic innovation of TAH that was borrowed into
PUK.
The same term seems also to have indicated the gentle heating of leaves over a
®re to render them supple by wilting, prior to using them for parceling food.
We have been unable to ®nd a speci®c term for stone-boiling in wooden vessels,
although such a method was surely known to the Ancestral Polynesians, given
the presence of the earth oven and the widespread distribution of this technique
in Oceanic societies.
A secondary meaning, which may well have existed in PPN as well, is `brains,
bone marrow, spongy matter.'
This was presumably due to the elaboration of pounded starch pastes (*popoqi ) in
Eastern Polynesia.
A speci®c kind of *fai-kai can be reconstructed to PNP: *poke. This seems to have
been a pudding based on either taro or breadfruit mixed with coconut cream.
A second term is evidenced for PNP: *kao, `dried food, such as sweet-potato,
taro, or ®sh.'
While PPN *mara clearly continues from POC *ma(n)da, Lichtenberk (1994:278)
suggests that the older term had a semantic value of `very ripe, over-ripe' and
not necessarily of purposively fermented foods.
7
Material culture
1 In selecting the four examples given in Table 7.1, we have chosen two highisland cultures, and two atoll cultures, as it might be supposed that the different
resource bases of these respective island types had an in¯uence on their material
cultures.
2 The striking contrast here is with New Zealand, where non-tropical island
conditions produce many swamp sites with well-preserved organic artifacts over
a 700-year cultural sequence.
3 Spans measured from the tip of the thumb to tip of middle ®nger, the hand bent
over onto ®ngers, and thumb put next to middle ®nger knuckle (adding middle
®ngertip to knuckle distance) for which we have no word, are other kinds of
likely measurement, based on their use in Tongan bark cloth (Tamahori
1963:93).
4 Koch (1984) gives the most extensive set of indigenous measurement terms
known for a Polynesian group, from Tuvalu.
5 While POLLEX gives the PPN form as *kulo, Blust (pers. comm., 1999) advises
us that it should more properly be reconstructed as *kuro. This is because TON
kulo, which is critical to the reconstruction of the *kulo form, is irregular (one
expects kuo), and suggests the possibility that the TON word is a borrowing of
300
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
Notes to pages 170±78
FIJ kuro sometime after the disappearance of PPN *r. Such a historical
interpretation would be consistent with the archaeological record of the loss of
pottery in Tonga during the ®rst millennium AD, and with later trading of
occasional Fijian pots into Tonga.
TON haka, hole made in base of a coconut palm for catching and holding water.
The same term and meaning also occur EUV, where they may be a borrowing
from TON.
We are not particularly happy with Ross' gloss ``frying pan'' for this POC term,
as this implies a more Western culinary concept. Obviously, the cooking process
indicated is one of roasting or grilling, rather than frying (the latter implying the
use of oil, as well). May and Tuckson's (1982:355) de®nition of a pottery frying
pan for cooking sago ``pancakes'' (usually without the use of grease) may be
more germane.
But note that re¯exes for PPN *saka are limited to Western Polynesia, and as a
FIJ noun saqaa, one of two words for a restricted-neck water jar (Geraghty
1996b:428) that now has only two equivalent nominal re¯exes with an associated `water storage container' meaning in Polynesian.
Lichtenberk (1994: 275) gives a different POC lexeme with the meaning of a
`plug or bung' made from leaves for stopping pottery vessels, with re¯exes
extending as far east as FIJ.
Evidence for such an extension in meaning certainly exists in Samoan where `ele
is a re¯ex which ethnographically meant specially gathered red earth or clay
(Kramer 1902: 305; Hiroa 1930:302±3). Green (1974b:151±52) indicates it was
used in bark cloth decoration, in under house ¯oor burial pits, and possibly in
the red slip on some of the pottery vessels.
By the Ancestral Polynesian period, most of the elaborate and highly decorated
Lapita pot forms had been lost, and decoration on pottery was either absent, or
con®ned to a few simple indentations on some pot rims (Green 1974b:128).
Thus we defer discussion of PPN *kanu, `design pattern on pottery, tapa,
tattooing,' to the section on barkcloth (and tattooing) below. However, Ross'
(1996b:76) suggestion of another meaning for POC *pilit, found also in PPN
with the meaning of `braid,' could have carried the meaning of `strip of clay
around the top of the pot' for the rims of some of the Polynesian Plainware
vessels. The archaeological evidence suggests this was done to form some pot
rims (Kirch 1988:163).
The x in these reconstructions stands for a velar fricative.
Tongan has kie (Churchward 1959: 263) or loukie (Yuncker 1959:50) for a
botanically unidenti®ed kind of pandanus species, and POC *kiRe, but the rare
Freycinetia urvilleana itself goes under the name kahikahi. However, it remains likely
that PNP *kiekie applied to Freycinetia plants at the Ancestral Polynesian stage, in
those islands where it occurred, and was used to make ®ne mats.
We wish to acknowledge here permission to use Leach's exhaustive and
sophisticated analytical review of all the Samoan adz data (Leach MS).
Both Duff (1959) and Green (1971) recognized triangular cross-sectioned adzes
as a Polynesian innovation, but did not fully comprehend the technological basis
Notes to pages 180±96
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
301
of their manufacture, as a new addition to the unifacial and bilaterally ¯aked
adz forms preceding them in the Lapita adz kit. Nor did they place the timing of
the innovation as occurring within Ancestral Polynesian culture.
A technologically-inferred axe type function may be indicated for certain stone
implements found in Mangareva (Hiroa 1938:269±71), and in New Zealand
(Duff 1956: 184±90).
Ethnographic examples of pump drills with wooden cross-bars bearing a variety
of drill points in a range of materials are described by Hiroa (1930:495±96),
Koch (1984:152), MacGregor (1937:155±56), Emory (1975:141), Linton
(1923:347±48), Best (1974:66±91) and Hiroa (1962:194±96).
It is linguistically not out of the question that we have here a unique shared
irregular shift of *v to *m in these words.
The bark of the breadfruit tree (Artocarpus altilis) and some trees in the genus
Ficus were also used.
Thus Shipibo (like the Polynesians) have a separate term (``ouenea'') for their
highly distinctive designs which adorn pottery, textiles and clothing, human skin,
calabashes, turtle carapaces, house posts, canoes and canoe paddles, spindle
whorls, sand markings and doodles. This sounds highly comparable to Polynesian art styles as we understand them, with rock art substituting for sand
painting and ``doodles'' (Millerstrom 1997:192).
A ceramic dentate-stamped buttocks piece of a human ®gure and the head of a
human ®gurine bearing decorative motifs suggesting tattooing attests to its
presence in Western Lapita sites as well (Summerhayes 1998:160).
A shark's tooth with drilled hole (as for attaching to a wooden handle), recovered
from the plainware contexts of the To`aga site in American Samoa (Kirch
1993b:164) could have been from a club-like weapon known ethnographically in
many Polynesian societies, but could also have been part of a cutting implement,
or even an item of personal adornment. No lexical reconstruction for a sharktooth implement or weapon has been put forward.
There is a substantial ethnographic literature on the subject of these string
®gures, which are ubiquitous in Polynesia (e.g., Handy 1925; Hornell 1927;
Firth and Maude 1970). One aim of this early twentieth-century ethnographic
concern with string ®gures was comparative analysis to infer culture-history
(Hornell 1927:6±9). Given the rich lexical data associated with the ®gures
themselves, a renewed analysis informed by a modern phylogenetic approach
might well be worth the effort. Blust (pers. comm., 1999) also informs us that
such string ®gures have a very deep history among Austronesian speakers, and
that the PPN term *fai probably derives from PAN *paRiS (`stingray', term
applied to the constellation Scorpio, Southern Cross, or other astronomical
features).
A Triton shell ``ornament'' with a circular perforation which looks exactly like a
typical puu, and would be so interpreted, except for its rather small size (Poulsen
1987:204).
A CEP innovation, *tapu-a®, a compound term derived from *tapu (`sacred') and
*a® (`®re'), seems to apply to a more formalized, stone-outlined hearth found
302
Notes to pages 196±202
within the principal dwelling houses of certain Eastern Polynesian societies.
Green (1986:53) discusses their archaeological occurrence, but could ®nd no
PPN term for them. The likely PPN term seems to be a continuation of PCP
*dravu, from POC *rapu(R), meaning `hearth, ®replace,' as well as `ashes'
(Lichtenberk and Osmond 1998:147).
26 At the slightly earlier Early Eastern Lapita site of NT-90 on Niuatoputapu, the
spatial distribution of cultural materials was suggestive of a linear zone of
dwellings, with a separate zone of cookhouses immediately inland (Kirch
1988:90±92, 241).
27 Blust (1999) addresses this debate, and argues that ``the double canoe was
invented in the triangle formed by Fiji, Tonga and Samoa in the ®rst few
centuries BC, and that it was this technological innovation which permitted An
speakers to master the remaining physical obstacles in their way and thereby
complete the human colonization of the Paci®c'' (1999:82).
28 Anchor stones have been found archaeologically in Samoa dating to the last
millennium and a half, but not earlier (Green 1974a:270).
8
Social and political organization
1 By this we mean that archaeology can conceivably contribute much more, for
example, to the reconstruction of ancient household units and their spatial
variation, through the application of ``household archaeology'' and similar
approaches. As we point out in Chapter 7, however, this will require entirely
different excavation strategies than have been used to date for sites of the
Ancestral Polynesian period.
2 We here clarify the terminology of social units we would reconstruct, given
criticisms of our prior use of the term ``society'' (Kirch 1984a; Kirch and Green
1987; cf. Sutton 1996). Our practice derives from Oliver's framework
(1989:126±29), whose de®nitions we adopt with modi®cations. We employ the
following social unit terminology: (1) Social group: Any aggregate of persons who
interacted with one another, directly or seriatim, with some regularity and at the
time more-or-less distinctly from all other persons. (2) Household: A domestic
group consisting of persons who regularly slept in proximity and who shared in
the production, preparation, and consumption of food. Archaeologists in
Polynesia have referred to such dwellings and their associated features as a
``household unit'' (e.g., McCoy 1976; Jennings et al. 1982). (3) Community: A
group of people who resided in a cluster of households (usually spatially distinct
from other such clusters) and who shared sentiments of unity, including
distinctiveness from like units elsewhere, disposing them to interact among
themselves in peaceful and cooperative ways, including non-war mechanisms for
dispute settlement. (4) Society: The highest-level social entity with some measure
of cultural homogeneity and distinctiveness, obviating the need to introduce the
even more equivocal term ``tribe.'' The ``society'' was composed of an aggregate
of people residing within a local region that facilitated regular interaction,
speaking the same language (or languages), and sharing in large measure, and
Notes to pages 202±10
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
303
more or less distinctively, a common set of cultural premises, values, and
practices. It is de®ned by the possession of a common culture which, as Oliver
(1989:127) stresses, is a feature that may to a certain extent be assessed in
material terms from the archaeological record.
Hereafter we use the term House with a capital H to distinguish the larger
anthropological concept, which includes not only a physical dwelling but also
the social group which af®liates to the House, as well as other forms of
tangible (land) and intangible (rights, history) property which also go with a
House.
These including Madagascar (Bloch 1995a, 1995b), aboriginal Taiwan (Paiwan,
Chiang 1992), Tanimbar (McKinnon 1991, 1995), Melanesia (Young 1993),
New Zealand Maori (Van Meijl 1993), and Tikopia (Kirch 1996, in press).
Firth (1936) essentially recognized the fundamental nature of the House in
Tikopia social organization, but later applied the term ``ramage'' (Firth 1957) to
such groups. It might have been better to simply use the indigenous Tikopia
term, paito.
For a marvelous ethnographic exposition of this principle, see Firth's
(1936:81±87) discussion of house names as ``tabloid history'' in Tikopia. The
naming of houses in Tokelau is described by HoeÈm (1992:39).
To our knowledge, the ®rst scholar to comment extensively on the interesting
geographic distribution of rumah cognates was Codrington (1885:22±24), who
noted that re¯exes of this term were found both in island Southeast Asia and in
Melanesia, but not in Polynesia.
This is also true of contemporaneous sites in Fiji (Best 1984; Crosby 1988)
`Land' is the prominent gloss for PPN *fanua, but the term also carries two other
meanings, `placenta,' and `people of the land.' The range of meanings listed for
PPN *kai include `people of a place,' `to people a place,' and `to occupy.'
Among the processes leading to these changes in social grouping and land
tenure, Burrows suggested ``intermarriage, adoption, migration, and ± perhaps
most powerful of all ± warfare arising from rivalry over land or ambition for
enhanced status'' (1939:21).
As we will demonstrate below, Goodenough made a fundamental error in
assuming not without reason that the terms kainga and kainanga were simply
``variants'' of each other. As we can now demonstrate linguistically, they are in
fact distinct terms with separate etymologies, although they almost certainly
share a common root, POC *kai(n), ``people''.
As we will argue below, Goldman was correct in identifying the Polynesian word
kainga with this ``utility-minded land-holding group,'' while we would suggest
that the ``comprehensive genealogical network'' was lexically indexed by the
PPN term *kainanga.
Probably because he never undertook primary ethnographic ®eldwork in
Polynesia, Goldman was vili®ed by some Paci®c experts (e.g., Howard 1972).
Nonetheless, we have nothing but the greatest respect for his careful comparative insights.
Koskinen's discussion of these terms comes at the end of his monograph on ariki,
304
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
Notes to pages 211±18
the Polynesian term for chiefship, and is raised in relation to that term. He is
(purposively?) elusive, but on the speci®c social group which he thought to have
been headed by the ariki ± if we read him correctly ± this would have been the
kainanga.
Given the geographic distribution of cognates of *kainanga, the term may have
arisen at the Proto Remote Oceanic interstage indicated in the recent subgrouping model of Ross et al., eds. (1998: ®g. 1).
As Hage (1998a) has observed, the fact that PPN kin-terms include what is
called a ``bifurcate merging terminology,'' in which the father's brother and the
mother's brother are lexically distinguished, is strong supporting evidence for ``a
rule of unilineal descent since it separates patrilateral from matrilateral relations:
F = FB = MB.'' Hage further cites Murdock's cross-cultural study demonstrating that this kind of bifurcate merging terminology is typically associated
with unilineal descent.
Note also that many of the Eastern Polynesian re¯exes have the term *mata
pre®xed to *kainanga, and that this is uniformly the case for all languages within
the Proto Marquesic branch of Eastern Polynesian. This compound form also
occurs in NIU, which Marck (1999a:141) regards as an example of borrowing
from central Eastern Polynesia.
To our knowledge, re¯exes of *kaainga in languages outside of Polynesian are
restricted to Kiribatese in Micronesia and the Lau Islands in Fiji. Marck (1996b,
see especially fn. 16) puts the Kiribatese occurrence down to borrowing from
Polynesian. The Lau occurrence, with a meaning of `relations' (Hocart
1929:33), is dif®cult to appraise. It could be a TON borrowing or an inherited
form, such as vate (for `house, dwelling') from the Tokalau±Fijian±Polynesian
interstage. As Marck (1996b) indicates, PPN *kaainga would seem to have
developed later than POC late stage *kainanga, after the loss of the ®nal n
consonant in kai(n), possibly in Proto Polynesian itself.
Marck's shorter textual gloss in his 1996a paper (repeated in Marck 1999a:241)
is less satisfactory: ``agricultural and especially residential land of people
belonging to a social group and the dwellings thereon.''
Green (1986:53), in reviewing similar information, averred that PPN *kaainga
came fairly close to the archaeological usage of ``household unit'' which had
``widespread meanings associated with the term . . . `to be related' as of a family
or line, and `home' or `dwelling place' or in Eastern Polynesia `the portion of the
land where one makes a home.' '' Green's error was to ignore its fundamental
constitution as a social group.
This is, indeed, precisely the situation in such ethnographically documented
societies as Futuna (Burrows 1936; Kirch 1994a) where the two groups are
labeled the kutunga and the kaainga, or Tikopia (Firth 1936) where they are the
kainanga and the paito.
See discussion in McKinnon (1995) for such a case in Island Southeast Asia.
In POLLEX, Biggs distinguishes at least nine meanings for PPN *mata, including
`mesh of net,' `point,' `point of land,' `face,' `eye,' `raw, unripe,' `social grouping
of people,' `numeral unitiser for group of ®sh,' and `see, look at.'
Notes to pages 218±35
305
24 Examples include words for social groups, as in FIJ matanggali, or Proto Central
Eastern Polynesian (PCE) *mata-kainanga.
25 Blust (pers. comm., 1999) points out that there has been some confusion in the
literature regarding the POC terms *tubuq, `to grow,' and *tibu, *topu, *tubu,
`grandparent.' ``The morphemes meaning `to grow' and `grandparent' were
clearly distinct in PMP [*tumbuq vs. *tempu, *timpu, *tumpu], and remained so in
POC, since we know that PMP *-q was retained as POC *-q in at least a few
languages. Moreover . . . there were at least three variant forms for `grandparent,' distinguished by the penultimate vowel, only one of which partially
resembled the word for `to grow.' '' Blust thus regards the suggested interconnections among words for `grandparent' and `to grow' as speculative, and we agree
that more work on this problem is desirable.
26 With a TAH re¯ex and an extra-PN witness in FIJ, the term is of certain PCP
antiquity, and not a later borrowing into Polynesian.
27 There is a third PPN etymon, *taqo-kete, for which a semantic reconstruction is
ambiguous, but which may also have indexed a senior, same-sex sibling (Marck
1999a:270±71).
28 Because it is very likely to have been a borrowing, we do not here deal with PPN
*tuqi, glossed by POLLEX as `king,' which seems to us to be a dubious semantic
reconstruction for the PPN stage.
29 Hocart (1929:51) makes an interesting and suggestive ethnographic observation
for Lau, that there the sau, while a common chie¯y title, was in a sense subject to
the turanga for whom he helped to bear the reign by doing much of the work
with and for the latter. A similar situation prevailed in Tonga, where the hau
wielded the secular power for a sacred leader, the Tu`i Tonga. Other re¯exes of
*sau, however, preserve the sense of paramount chief (ROT, West FIJ, EFU),
leaving a semantic history hypothesis for PPN *sau ambiguous.
30 The concept of rank or status is also inherent to the meaning of the PCP and
PPN term *tuqulanga. Hocart (1929:49±50) makes the point that translation of
the FIJ word turanga as `chief ' is misleading, for it has other meanings which
embody the construct of rank (turanga, `noble,' versus kaisi, `low born'). In FIJ,
turanga developed the meaning of `chief ' also, while for Polynesia the POC term
for oldest child, *adiki (Lichtenberk 1986; see also Pawley 1982) became PPN
*qariki, initially with the prime meaning of leader of the *kainanga.
31 How this is played out ethnographically is perhaps best demonstrated for
Tikopia by Kirch (1996), with the exception that there the term *kaainga was
replaced by paito, whereas kainga developed a third sense in which once small
settlements have become villages. The change to paito involved the transference
of the PPN term for cookhouse, a central feature of *kaainga and indeed of the
household group, to the social group itself. This was accompanied by a further
semantic shift in the meaning of fare (PPN *fale) from its original meaning of
`dwelling house,' to that of a ritual god-house or temple in Tikopia.
306
Notes to pages 239±43
9
Gods, ancestors, seasons, and rituals
1 We do not intend to revisit the complex theoretical debates on these topics, but
some ¯avor of the long-standing anthropological issues with regard to mana may
be found in Handy (1927:26±50); Hocart (1927); Williamson (1933:130±47);
Hogbin (1936); Firth (1940); Keesing (1984); and Shore (1989).
2 In addition to the core semantic value of `supernatural power,' there is a
secondary meaning found in ten of the documented re¯exes, of `thunder.' This
was probably also another meaning of PPN *mana.
3 That both terms are good PPN reconstructions is certain since they both have
extra-Polynesian witnesses, and can be reconstructed back to POC *qatuan and
*qanitu, respectively.
4 It is possible that *tupuqa referred to the spirits of ancestors, a point that will be
discussed further below.
5 In his paper on Rennell Island religion, MacGregor comments that ``the
distinction between atua, gods, and aitu, supernatural spirits, is not clear in many
Polynesian islands and the two terms may be used in opposite senses in adjacent
islands. At Rennell both words are used in reference to Te Aitu Tabu [the
second great god of Rennell]'' (1943:33±34).
6 Marck (1996a:249±50) reconstructs *Tuu to the PNP level, and states that ``PCE
*Tuu was a ®rst-order anthropomorphic god and . . . his status as god of war
continued one held in PNP, though in this case we can be less certain about his
parentage.'' As we know, the PNP stage correlates with the ®nal breakup of the
PPN speech community, and innovations present in the former may have begun
before this ®nal stage. It is thus conceivable, therefore, that PPN *Taangaloa had a
twin sibling in the form of a PPN *Tuu, although the absence of an independent
witness from TON or NIU does not let us back up this claim de®nitively.
7 This is because the names in TON are not consistent, being Limu and Kele
(Marck 1996a: table 1). However, it is quite likely that these are TON
innovations.
8 According to Luomala (1949), Maui or Maui-like myths also appear in parts of
Melanesia and Micronesia, so this culture-hero may have a deeper time depth
than Ancestral Polynesia. He appears, for example, in Rotuma as ``Moeatikitiki''
(1949:206), although this particular instance is likely to be a borrowing into
ROT from a Polynesian language (i.e., from Maui-tikitiki).
9 Biggs (POLLEX) seems uncertain of the status of *tupuna, listing it only as ``*??*:
Grandparent,'' and providing no witnesses. An incomplete search by Kirch,
however, revealed numerous re¯exes, such as EAS tupuna `ancestor, grandparent,
forefather,' TUA tupuna `ancestor,' TIK tupuna `ancestor,' PUK tupuna, `grandparent,' MVA tupuna `grandparent,' and ANU tupuna `grandparent.' The term
would seem to us to be very robustly reconstructed to PNP, and a case of prime
semantic agreement. The Fijian term tubuqu, `grandmother,' may also be
cognate. Marck (1996b:15) reconstructs PPN *tupuna as `grandparent,' noting
also that its re¯exes frequently refer to ``ancestors of higher generations along
with collaterals of grandparents and higher generations.''
Notes to pages 243±46
307
10 To non-linguistic specialists, the whole matter may be, as Marck (1996b:18)
admits, a ``tedious discussion,'' but we think it important nonetheless. Although,
as noted, it makes no difference to our fundamental argument regarding the
signi®cance of ancestors, we are inclined to think that there were indeed two
separate terms, *tupuna and *tupunga. Marck states that *tupuna was formed by
adding the POC third person singular possessive marker to the old POC root,
*tubu. We suggest that *tupunga could similarly have been formed by adding the
suf®x -nga, which takes a verbal form and makes it a nominal, to the same root
*tubu. This new form *tupunga would thus have the connotation of `raising up
ancestors.' However, we leave it to the linguists to de®nitively resolve these
``tedious'' issues, if they can.
11 Dempwolff (1934±38) reconstructed *(t,T)umpu as `ancestor, Sir.'
12 Thus, Fox writes that ``when this conception is applied to social groups, the logic
of the metaphor would imply that the groups so de®ned are `ascent groups'
rather than `descent groups' '' (1995:35).
13 Much to his credit, the ethnographer E. S. C. Handy recognized such origin
structures for Polynesian societies, for he writes ``it is correct to say in Polynesian
parlance that men are ascended, not descended, from their ancestors''
(1927:19).
14 Firth (1970:67) offers some intriguing comments about the Tikopian re¯ex of
this term, tupua, which may bear on its original meaning in PPN. He argues that
the term ``was phonologically and perhaps semantically related to tupu, to
grow,'' and also to tupuna. Concerning tupua, Firth writes: ``The term was used as
an equivalent to atua [deity] sometimes in referring to a ghost or an ancestral
spirit, and as differentiated from atua at other times, to indicate supernatural
beings of olden times who had never been human beings, as opposed to the
more recent spirits of dead men. But more speci®cally in ritual contexts tupua
was the term applied to those spirits who were believed to be the most powerful,
heading the list in worship; in this sense the term may be translated god or
deity'' (1970:67). For other occurrences of tupua and its variant cognates, see
Handy (1927:93±94).
15 See, for example, Emory's reference to the invocation to atua tangata, ``immediate
ancestors,'' during turtle feasts on Reao Atoll (1947:69).
16 Gordon MacGregor, who was fortunate enough to spend two weeks on Rennell
Island in 1933 while the traditional religious system was still functioning,
describes ``the invocation of an ancestral spirit''(1943:35±36).
17 The Hawaiian term `aumakua is a re¯ex of the PNP innovation *kau-matua, a
compound term based on PPN *kau, `group, company,' and PPN *matuqa,
`mature, parent.' The term presumably referred to the collective `parents' of a
group. In some Eastern Polynesian languages, the word has come to mean `old
man or woman,' but in HAW it designated the personal or family gods of a
household.
18 Indeed, this ®ts well with the notion of a semantic as well as lexical innovation at
the PCE level, of *tahunga, derived from PPN *tufunga, but now with the speci®c
semantic value of `priest.'
308
Notes to pages 247±56
19 It would probably be more accurate to gloss this as `vessel of the god,' thus
keeping the Polynesian metaphoric play on the multiple semantic values of
*waka.
20 Bellona is one of the very few Polynesian societies that did not retain a re¯ex of
*qariki for its chiefs; the Bellona term (tunihenua) is a local innovation.
21 The speci®c titles in Mangaia were ariki-pa-uta (Inland High Priest), ariki-pa-tai
(Shore High Priest), and ariki i te ua i te tapora kai (Ruler of Food).
22 MacGregor (1943:35) further describes a visit to the god house of the chief
Taupongi: ``The god house, named Te Nganguenga, was built like the dwelling
houses of the island: it was a rectangular frame with a gable roof and eaves
which were only a foot or two from the ground. Before the house was a little
cleared space, a marae, which had a short upright coral slab at each side.''
23 Another Eastern Polynesian example of miniaturization of ritual structures is
Rapa (Heyerdahl and Ferdon 1965).
24 This reconstruction is not contained in POLLEX, but we believe it is entirely
supported by the lexical and ethnographic evidence. We adduce the following
witnesses in support of this reconstruction:
TON: fare fa`ahikehe: heathen temple
fare fe`ao: in old Tonga, house built near a heathen temple for
the reception of the sick
fare lotu, church building
RAR: `are atua: house full of gods
SAM: fale aitu, god house
TIK: fare, house esp. traditional; ritual temple
EFU: fale atua, god house, temple
TUA: fare tini atua, miniature god house on marae
TUA2: fare heiao, store house in which sacred relics of departed
ancestors were guarded
HAW: hale o Lono, temple of Lono
hale mana, house for ritual paraphernalia on Luakini temple
MIA: `are ei `au, miniature god house on marae.
25 Fox (1993:21) claims that ``this focus on the posts of the house is a signi®cant
feature of many Austronesian houses,'' that the housepost ``expresses an idea of
botanic continuity that is consistent with the overall imagery of the house'' as an
origin structure (see discussion earlier).
26 According to Monberg (1991), sacred or ritual mats were also used in Bellona,
although the terms for them are not cognate with *tapakau/*takapau. MacGregor
(1943:35±37) also describes the use of ceremonial mats in several different
Rennell Island rituals, but does not give the term for these. It seems that in
Rennell and in Tikopia, mats were symbolic markers of the place of the ancestor
or deity being invoked, and offerings were placed on these at various times
during ceremonies.
27 There is a second term, PPN *qepa, which may refer to a another, distinct kind
of ceremonial or ritual mat. The term has re¯exes in fourteen Polynesian
languages, but the meanings vary widely, from `®ne sleeping mat' (ECE) to
Notes to pages 256±61
28
29
30
31
32
33
309
`native mats on which dead chief is laid' (SAM), to `tribute' (MVA). Quite
possibly the originally PPN meaning was that of a ®nely woven Pandanus mat
which may at times have been used in certain ceremonials or rituals.
The exceptions are New Zealand where the plant was unsuited to the temperate
climate, and Rapa Nui where it may have been introduced but failed to survive.
Crowley (1994) notes that the PPN term *kawa seems to be an innovation at this
stage, and that the Fiji term yaqona is not cognate but rather an extension of the
term *kona, `bitter.' He suggests that *kawa itself might originally have meant
`bitter, sour' as well. However, he also cites Geraghty to the effect that the term
must be fairly old in Polynesia, for it appears as Polynesian loan in certain
Micronesian languages. Crowley is correct to be cautious, but we feel that the
case for *kawa meaning P. methysticum in PPN is quite strong; this does not
preclude a polysemous range also including `bitter,' which as any kava drinker
knows is quite true.
That *taa-noqa can be reconstructed back to PCP, based on extra-Polynesian
witnesses in FIJ and ROT, is additional evidence ± contra Crowley (1994) ± that
*kawa meant `kava' and not simply `bitter, sour.'
Such rites need not be con®ned to critical events in the human life cycle. In
1971, Kirch witnessed a wailing ceremony held on Anuta Island for the wreck of
a large sea-going canoe which had been damaged on the reef while returning
from ®shing.
Dening (1980:263±64) poignantly describes how, in the Marquesas, the nineteenth-century Catholic missionaries explicitly used concepts of time to ``civilize'' the Marquesans, in the process stripping away entirely the indigenous
systems of time-keeping.
Much of this early and frequently fragmented literature was synthesized by
Williamson (1933, 1). For Western Polynesian societies, reasonably detailed
accounts of time reckoning are available for Tonga (Collocott 1922) and Futuna
(Kirch 1994b:264±67), with more patchy information for Niue (Loeb
1926:188±89), Samoa (Turner 1884:203±8; Williamson 1933, 1:154±65),
Tokelau (MacGregor 1937:90±92), and Vaitupu (Kennedy 1931:9±11). For
Outlier societies, only Firth (1967b:28±30) for Tikopia and Emory
(1965:344±46) for Kapingamarangi provide any detailed information. For
Eastern Polynesia, Hiroa (1932a:218±31) provides one of the only truly
comprehensive, ®rst-hand ethnographic accounts for Rakahanga, while for the
Societies (Henry 1928:327±34; Oliver 1974:264±70; Babadzan 1993:223±33)
and Hawai`i (Malo 1951:30±36; Handy and Handy 1972:28±40; Kamakau
1976:13±19; Valeri 1985:194±99) there are excellent summaries based on
nineteenth-century sources. More spotty information is available for Tongareva
(Hiroa 1932b:215±20), Pukapuka (Beaglehole and Beaglehole 1938:24±5),
Mangaia (Gill 1876:43±44), the Marquesas (Handy 1923:347±52), Mangareva
(Hiroa 1938:411±14), New Zealand (Best 1922, 1925:214±17), Tuamotu
(Emory 1946:192±95), and Rapa Nui (MeÂtraux 1940:49±54). Other valuable
sources include Makemson's (1941) synthesis of Polynesian astronomical and
calendrical knowledge, Burrows' discussion of month names (1938a:82±83,
310
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Notes to pages 261±69
table 5), Emory's comparison of month names (1946:192±220), and AÊ kerblom's
(1968:97±99) briefer account.
The term *mata-®ti is itself an Eastern Polynesian innovation, but an early one,
as it is re¯ected in EAS, as well as in RAR, TAH, and HAW.
The precession of the equinoxes is the slow, continuous westward motion of the
equinoxes around the ecliptic, resulting from the precession of the Earth's axis,
due to gravitational forces. The Earth's axis precesses with a period of 25,800
years.
Makemson (1941:232) commented on the extra-Polynesian distribution of
cognate names for the Pleiades: ``Variants of the widespread name Matariki are
found in both Micronesian and Melanesian dialects, referring to the Pleiades
(Churchill), in such forms as Makeriker, Magarigar, Magirigir, and Marikir from
Micronesia and Mitariki from Melanesia.''
This account is especially valuable not only for its early date, but because it was
recorded in Tahitian language text as well; here we reproduce only the English
translation, but the Tahitian is given in Henry (1928).
There is some extra-Polynesian evidence for a two-season year regulated by the
risings and settings of the Pleiades. For example, of the traditional Gilbertese
calendar, Grimble writes that ``The year is considered to begin with the
appearance of the Pleiades in the nikaneve of the ®rst purlin to eastward, just after
sunset, which in these equatorial islands is always within a few minutes of 6
p.m.'' (1972:223). The Te Auti season ends ``when Antares is observed to appear
at the same altitude at 6 p.m. ± i.e. about the second week of June. The second
season (tannaki ) of the year (ririki ) then begins, and lasts until the Pleiades
reappear at sunset'' (1972:224).
Makemson writes that ``the Pleiades year had originally begun in the autumn,
about September 22, and has been gradually sliding toward the winter solstice
as a result of the precession of the equinoxes and the discrepancy between the
sidereal and tropical years at the rate of 14 days per 1,000 years'' (1941:78).
Malinowski also writes that ``even the name for `year' is taytu [cognate to
*taqu?], a small species of yam, which is the staple crop of the district'' (1935:52).
For those interested in tracing the history of the Polynesian lunar calendar, the
PEC phase marks a major period of lexical innovation, probably because by the
PEC stage the speakers of various Polynesian languages had now expanded well
beyond the original PPN geographic homeland. Since, as we argue below, the
original PPN calendar was strongly correlated with local ecological conditions
and with yam horticulture, it is not surprising that the calendar was signi®cantly
reorganized once people had left the homeland region, and once their ecological
settings and horticultural practices had changed.
The name madaligi also occurs as a month (`January') in NUK, which may be
additional evidence for a PPN reconstruction for this second semantic value;
however, there is a strong possibility that the NUK term is a Micronesian
borrowing.
Hocart (MS [1913]: 4,887), citing his Rotuman informant Mou, says ``they used
to watch the vatu`a tree which ¯owers red and a group of small stars (not yet
Notes to pages 269±73
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
311
visible) called Mafriri`it [small eyes]. When Mafriri`it appear in the morning it
is time to plant yams.''
Among the atoll societies of the Tuamotus, where turtles were a particularly
important food and became key offerings in marae ceremonies, the linkage
between the Pleiades and turtles was strongly developed. Emory (1947:61) says
that ``At Vahitahi, Honu (Turtle) was the child of Takero (Belt of Orion) and
Matariki (Pleiades).'' He also remarks that ``Matariki, which stands for a female
turtle, is the name of the Pleiades.''
Williamson (1933:157±64) synthesizes considerable ethnohistoric and ethnographic information on the rising of the palolo, which he regards as a ``seasonal
timekeeper.'' It evidently rises consistently in the October±November period of
the year.
The palolo worm is known to have been a key calendrical marker in other
Oceanic societies as well. For example, Malinowski writes of the Trobriand
temporal sequence that ``the moon of Milamala coincides with the appearance of
the palolo worm on the fringing reef, which is also called by the natives
Milamala'' (1935:54).
Woodworth (1995:477) states that ``the palolo appears on Samoa in the months
of October and November during the last quarter of the moon. This is the time
of the lowest or spring tide when at low tide the reef ¯at is exposed at shallow
places or is barely washed over. At that time the sun is nearest its zenith.''
PNP *Munifa is, however, widely re¯ected in SAM, TOK, ECE, MRA, PEN,
TUA, TAH, RAR, and MVA.
While Perks (1980) and other nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers give the
Bauan kelikeli `to dig up', Wilkes (1845) gave kelekele, `covered in earth,' for
another version of the calendar.
Makemson (1941:94) provides the following comment on the dif®culty of
reconciling the lunar month with the solar year: ``Omitting the quarter-day [in
the solar year of 365.24 days], which could not have given the Polynesians much
concern, there still remains an excess of 11 days during which the Moon attains
a growth between ®rst quarter and full. If then the next year dates from the ®rst
new Moon after the expiration of the Pleiades year, the current year would
contain 13 lunar months or 384 days, while the following year would commence
19 days after the advent of the star cluster [Pleiades] on the eastern horizon.
The second solar year will thus contain 365 minus 19 or 346 days. Eleven lunar
months use up 325 of these days while the twelfth carries over into the third year
by an excess of 8 days. Hence the third consecutive year will commence on the
ninth day after the initial rising of the Pleiades.''
Babadzan (1993) thus argues that the commencement of the year, in Tahiti and
Hawai`i if not other societies, was not an ``event'' but a ``process'' (and a highly
ritualized process at that). His discussion, drawing upon the Hawaiian ethnographic literature as well as that from Tahiti, is worth quoting here at length:
Revenons au probleÁme de la determination d'un eÂventuel deÂbut de
l'anneÂe. . . Ce rite annuel [Makahiki] est un rite de passage, au sens
ouÁ le renouvellement de l'anneÂe est un processus, qui demande du
312
Notes to pages 273±83
temps pour s'accomplir, comme tout processus de re-geÂneÂration. A ce
compte, l'arriveÂe des PleÂiades marque effectivement dans toute la
PolyneÂsie le debut de ce processus, aussi bien dans les rites annuels que
dans le mythe de creÂation qui les fonde . . .
Le lever des PleÂiades marque en effet le deÂbut de la saison chaude
(et le prochain changement de la course du soleil): mais l'abondance,
reÂsultat du processus, et objectif mateÂrial des rites, se fait encore
attendre. Aussi pourrait-on eÂgalement consideÂrer la ®n de cette
peÂriode rituelle, marqueÂe aÁ Tahiti par les offrandes des preÂmices,
comme une autre possibilite de ceÂleÂbrer le debut de l'anneÂe.
(Babadzan 1993:231)
52 In this regard, Ancestral Polynesian time-keeping was similar to the various
``natural cycles'' described by Oliver (1974:264) for the Maohi of the Society
Islands.
Epilogue
1 We hasten to note, however, that often such peoples have a well developed oral
narrative tradition of their history.
2 Here we express our agreement with John Bintliff (1993:100) on several points:
that the future of archaeology lies with a version of ``cognitive processualism'';
that the ®eld needs to become a ``hybrid `Human Science of Archaeology' ''
which can draw as readily upon material evidence (and lexical reconstructions!)
as upon Foucaultian theory; and that, to quote ``the world's most famous
archaeologist, Professor Indiana Jones . . . `Archaeology is about Facts; if you
want the Truth, go next-door to the Philosophy Department!' ''
3 Examples of such ``word portraits'' include Blust (1995a), Pawley and K. Green
(1971), and Zorc (1994). Not that there is anything wrong with such exercises,
which indeed prove useful starting places for historical anthropology. They are
not, however, the kind of robust or rounded reconstructions that historical
anthropology is capable of producing.
4 With regard to competing models of evolutionary process in biology, Harvey
and Pagel (1991:205) offer the following comment, which in our view is equally
relevant to historical anthropology: ``Nowadays the limiting factor is not the
range of available models, but knowing which one to choose. The choice comes
down to deciding which model makes the most realistic assumptions about the
evolutionary process. Tell us how to reconstruct the past, and we shall perform
the comparative analysis with precision.''
Glossary of terms
analogous change Changes which arise independently, in response to similar
contexts or selection pressures, and which do not re¯ect common ancestry or
shared inheritance.
ancestral culture That historical culture from which a set of modern
``daughter'' cultures has derived through subsequent change and
differentiation.
apomorphous In cladistic terminology, a ``derived'' character shared by
members of a monophyletic group.
borrowing In linguistics, words or sounds taken into one language from
another. Culturally, borrowing consists of taking a ``trait'' or cultural feature
from one culture to another, and is a major form of ``horizontal
transmission.''
cladistics The particular school or method of phylogenetic analysis founded by
Willi Hennig, in which classi®cation is based exclusively on genealogy.
cognate Words in two or more languages that are derived by direct inheritance
from a common ancestor, and display regular sound correspondences.
culture area A geographic region containing a set of cultures sharing common
systemic patterns, and assumed to be historically related. Unfortunately,
some culture areas (such as ``Melanesia'') were often designated in an ad hoc
manner, and thus may not have a real phylogenetic basis.
daughter language A language which has descended from a speci®ed proto
language.
dialect chain A network of widely distributed, related speech communities which
have yet to become separate languages. Dialect chains are apt to form
innovation-linked subgroups in which the innovations exhibit a non-exclusive
overlapping pattern among the set of dialects.
direct historical approach An approach in historical anthropology in which
one works backwards in time from the ethnographic present, or from the
ethnohistorical record, into late prehistory and thence into earlier time
periods. This approach is most successful when there is demonstrable
cultural continuity from historically documented cultures back into the
archaeological record.
direct inheritance In linguistics, inheritance of a word or sound from an
ancestral language, rather than through borrowing (indirect inheritance).
313
314
Glossary of Terms
foundation language The closely related speech communities of the ®rst wellestablished populations occupying an island region, as opposed to the
language or languages spoken by any later or intrusive populations.
homologous change Change which occurs within a set of related, or sister
groups, all of which share a common ancestry.
horizontal transmission In cultural evolution, the lateral transmission of
cultural traits between groups, often referred to by such terms as ``diffusion''
or ``borrowing.''
indirect inheritance In linguistic terminology, borrowing.
innovations, uniquely shared A set of innovations unique to the daughter
languages of a particular subgroup (and not found outside of that subgroup),
and thus arising at the stage of the proto-language ancestral to the set of
daughter languages. Uniquely shared innovations are critical to the robust
de®nition of subgroups, in opposition to shared retentions.
interstage language A proto-language at some stage intermediate between a
higher-order proto-language and its descendant daughter languages.
invading language (intrusive language) A language spoken by a group of
people who are not the ®rst inhabitants of an island or region.
lexeme A sound, word, or phrase which is a minimal unit of meaning.
lexical reconstruction Lexical reconstruction (in opposition to semantic
reconstruction) starts with the proposition that a language had a word with a
particular meaning, and asks in a rigorous fashion which among its
reconstructable morpheme sequences most likely displays that meaning, a
technique called by Indo-European scholars an onomasiological query.
monophyletic A group de®ned exclusively on the basis of synapomorphy (in
cladistics), or in the linguistic sense, de®ned on the basis of shared
innovations (phonological, lexical, or morphological).
Near Oceania That part of Oceania ®rst settled by modern humans around
36,000 years BP, and including New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and
the main Solomon Islands.
network-breaking model A model of a dialect chain in which there is a
gradual weakening of ties between the network of sister dialects, until sharp
language boundaries appear within the chain, at which point the break-up
may be said to be complete.
paraphyletic A group de®ned on the basis of symplesiomorphy (as opposed to
synapomorphy), and thus including some, but not necessarily all, of the
descendants of a particular ancestor.
parental population A historical, biological population of inter-breeding
individuals (sharing a common gene pool) from which a group or set of
modern populations have all descended.
phylogenetic model (or tree) A genealogical history of a group, usually
graphed as a tree or as a cladogram, which maps ancestor±descendant
relationships.
phylogeny The study of lines of descent from a common ancestor.
Glossary of terms
315
plesiomorphous In cladistic terminology, characters which are derived from the
ancestral state preceding transformation (which may therefore be shared
with other taxa outside the monophyletic unit under consideration).
polyphyletic A group whose members share certain similar characters due to
convergence, rather than due to common descent.
prime semantic agreement Homosemy, or sameness of meaning among a set
of cognates or re¯exes in a group of daughter languages assigned to each of
the major branches (or subgroups) within a higher-order grouping or
language family, for a given reconstruction of a proto-form or etymon.
proto-language An extinct language ancestral to a group of related daughter
languages, and from which the latter have derived.
radiation model A radiation model posits an initial period of uni®ed
development undergone by a localized, homogeneous language community,
followed by a period of geographic expansion, leading to the creation of
dispersed, and sometimes isolated, daughter communities which develop
independently after dispersal or radiation. This kind of model is often
diagrammed as a ``family tree.''
re¯ex A sound or word in a daughter language that corresponds to a sound or
word in an ancestral language.
Remote Oceania That part of Oceania which was not settled by modern
humans until after 3300 years BP.
retentions, shared A linguistic feature, such as a lexeme, that has been
inherited among a group of related languages from the common protolanguage. Shared retentions derived from an early stage in the history of a
language family cannot be used to de®ne later subgroups (see innovations).
segment of cultural history K. Romney's term for a group of cultures
(``tribes'') related to each other by descent from a common ancestral culture.
A culturally monophyletic group.
semantic history hypothesis In terminological reconstructions for a particular
proto-morpheme or lexeme where there is not prime semantic agreement
among the daughter language re¯exes, a semantic history hypothesis must be
forwarded to explain the various probable changes in meaning that have
taken place over time from a postulated initial semantic value.
semantic reconstruction In opposition to lexical reconstruction, semantic
reconstruction asks the question of what was the probable meaning for a
given proto-morpheme or lexeme within a given semantic ®eld; the
technique is called by some Indo-European scholars semasiology.
shared innovations See innovations.
symplesiomorphy The presence of plesiomorphous characters in a set of
species, marking them as sharing these characters by virtue of descent from a
common ancestor, but not necessarily indicating a monophyletic group.
triangulation methodology The method of bringing independent lines of
evidence (from archaeology, comparative ethnography, biological
anthropology, linguistics, comparative oral narrative, etc.) to bear on the
316
Glossary of Terms
reconstruction of some aspect of cultural history, thereby reducing the
potential ``triangle of error.''
witness An example recorded from a daughter language within a subgroup or
language family, judged to be an instance of independent evidence bearing
on a particular linguistic question.
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Social Sciences 19:1±18.
1992. The interplay of evidential constraints and political interests: recent
archaeological research on gender. American Antiquity 57:15±35.
1993. A proliferation of new archaeologies: ``Beyond Objectivism and Relativism.'' In N. Yoffee and A. Sherratt, eds., Archaeological Theory: Who Sets the
Agenda?, pp.20±26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1999. Questions of evidence. Paper presented at the Symposium, ``Archaeological
Method and Theory 2000,'' Annual Meeting of the Society for American
Archaeology.
Yen, D. E. 1971. The development of agriculture in Oceania. In R. C. Green and
M. Kelly, eds., Studies in Oceanic Culture History, vol. 2, pp. 1±12. Paci®c
Anthropological Records 12. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press.
1973. The origins of Oceanic agriculture. Archaeology and Physical Anthropology in
Oceania 8:68±85.
1974. The Sweet Potato and Oceania: An Essay in Ethnobotany. Bernice P. Bishop
Museum Bulletin 236. Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum.
1975. Indigenous food processing in Oceania. In M. Arnott, ed., Gastronomy: The
Anthropology of Food and Food Habits, pp. 147±68. Chicago: Aldine.
1990. Environment, agriculture and the colonisation of the Paci®c. In D. E. Yen
and J. M. J. Mummery, eds., Paci®c Production Systems: Approaches to Economic
Prehistory, pp. 258±77. Occasional Papers in Prehistory 18. Canberra: Department of Prehistory, Australian National University.
1991. Polynesian cultigens and cultivars: the questions of origin. In P. A. Cox and
S. A. Banack, eds., Islands, Plants, and Polynesians, pp. 67±95. Portland:
Dioscorides Press.
Young, M. 1993. The Kalauna house of secrets. In J. J. Fox, ed., Inside Austronesian
Houses: Perspectives on Domestic Designs for Living, pp. 180±93. Canberra: Australian National University.
Yuncker, T. G. 1959. Plants of Tonga. Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 220.
Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum.
Zorc, R. D. P. 1994. Austronesian culture history through reconstructed vocabulary
(an overview). In A. K. Pawley and M. D. Ross, eds., Austronesian Terminologies:
Continuity and Change, pp. 541±94. Paci®c Linguistics Series C-127. Canberra:
Australian National University.
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Bulletin in Zoology 2. Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum.
Subject index
Figures are indicated by a suf®xed -f, and tables by a suf®xed -t. Notes (suf®xed -n) are
referred to by number.
Aberle, D. F., 44
abraders, coral, 132, 181f
adaptation, 21
adzes, 102, 163, 178, 300n15; Ancestral
Polynesian, 176±82, 179f; Lapita adz kits,
301n15; plano-convex, 1; PPN lexical
categories for, 180±82; shell, 178, 180;
distinctive Polynesian kit, 78; stone, 220.
See also tattooing chisel
Africa, 4, 6, 202, 289n22
Aitutaki Island, 88
AÊkerblom, K., 310n33
Anadara shells, 152
analogy, 28, 29, 279, 283. See also homology;
synology
ancestor/ancestors, 224, 243, 244, 245, 249,
255, 256, 267, 306n4, 306n9, 307n10,
307n11, 307n13; burial of, 255;
dei®cation of, 245; eponymous, 217; PPN
terms for, 240t. See also ascent groups;
descent groups
ancestral: characters, 28; cultures, 41;
estates, 215
Ancestral Polynesia, 89; archaeological
record for, 83; archaeological sites and
assemblages, 81±83, 82t; breakup and
dispersion of, 79±81; calendrics in, 273;
ceramics/pottery in, 167±73; cooking in,
151; culture in, 30, 53; ethnobotanical
knowledge in, 109±15; material culture in,
164; priest-chief, 231; ritual architecture
in, 249; ritual spaces, 255; social groups
356
in, 207±19; concepts of time and space in,
75±79. See also Proto Polynesian
Ancestral Polynesian homeland, 77; Hawaiki
as the, 95±97, 99±101. See also Polynesian
homeland; pre-Polynesian homeland
Ancestral Polynesian Society (APS), 19, 41,
205±7, 282; breakup and dispersion of,
79±81; exchange in, 219±21;
reconstruction of, 19; time keeping in,
312n52; social groups in, 207±19;
transition from Lapita, 206±7; cultural
variations in, 101
Ancient Near Oceania, 63. See also Near
Oceania
Anderson, A., 293n23
Anell, B., 120
animal husbandry, 129. See also chickens;
dogs; pigs
anthropology, 142; archaeology in, 3;
biological, 3, 42, 91, 281; comparative
method in, 23; evolutionary approach in,
2; historical, 3±8, 23±25, 53, 95, 116,
142, 278, 289n21, 312n3, 312n4; holistic
perspective in, xiii, 2, 9; physical, 2;
phylogenetic approach in, 9, 13, 28±29;
postmodernist critique in, 6; history of,
277. See also archaeology; history;
triangulation method
anthropomorphic gods, 70; ®rst order, 239,
242, 275
Anuta Island, 33, 213, 244, 282, 309n31
Aoa Valley (Tutuila), 128±29
Subject index
APS. See Ancestral Polynesian Society
arboriculture, 125, 128, 129, 146. See also
breadfruit; tree crops; Tahitian chestnut;
vi apple
archaeogastronomy, 143, 147, 160, 162,
297n1
archaeological: assemblages, 56;
perspectives, 74±75; record, 33, 52, 77,
83, 279, 280; sites, Ancestral Polynesian,
84f
archaeology, 28, 29, 72, 79, 91, 99, 147, 162,
163, 165, 200, 278, 279, 290n11, 302n1,
312n2; anthropological, 3; cognitive,
279±80; ethnoarchaeology, 135±37;
evidence in, 18, 30, 32, 42, 118, 133±35,
142, 154, 160; evolutionary, 29; historical,
4; holistic, 4, 8; household, 302n1;
linguistics and, 7, 32, 34; problems of
con®rmation in, 44; radiocarbon dating
in, 27; sourcing in, 66±67, 79, 87;
zooarchaeology, 118, 121, 133±35. See also
culture history; direct historical approach
armbands, 189
aroids, 122. See also taro
arrowroot, Polynesian, 125
ascent groups, 213, 224, 231, 307n12;
unrestricted, 217; unilineal, 235. See also
ancestors; descent groups; kinship; social
groups
Asipani site (Futuna), 128
Atiu Island, 88
atoll societies, 283
Austronesian: homeland, 55; language
family, 7, 22, 55; subgrouping of, 36, 38,
39f
Babadzan, A., 238, 311n51
bananas, 121, 122. See also tree crops
Bantu languages, 6. See also Africa
bark cloth, 184±87; decorated, 220
Barrau, J., 120, 125, 143
basketry, 175, PPN terms for, 175
beads, 189
Beasley, H. G., 120
Bellona Island, 238, 245, 248, 250, 308n20
357
Bellwood, P., 24, 63, 225, 227
Berlin, B., 109
Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 71
Biersack, A., 5, 8
Biggs, B., 35, 46, 60, 62, 79, 87, 110, 112,
146, 279, 290n10, 292n8, 295n3, 304n23,
306n9. See also POLLEX project
birds, 134; landbirds, 121; names for, 295n9;
population declines of, 117; seabirds, 121,
134. See also megapodes
Bismarck Archipelago, 55, 63, 101, 291n3
Blust, R., 6, 45, 106, 107, 171, 204, 285n2,
290n10, 291n3, 295n10, 301n23, 302n27,
305n25, 312n3
Boas, F., 2
body decoration, 187±89. See also tattooing
Borofsky, R., 49
borrowing, 3, 24, 28, 87, 91, 102, 213, 231,
281, 304n17, 310n42
bottle gourd (Lagenaria sp.), 293
bottlenecks, genetic, 73, 293n18
Bourdieu, P., 202
bow and arrow, 190, 192
bowling, 190
Boyd, R., 28, 285n5, 289n19
bracelets, 189
Braudel, F., 4, 286n11, 291n19
breadfruit, 65, 121, 122, 125, 145±46, 276,
298n7, 301n19; cultivar terms in PPN, 115;
fermentation of, 159; pits for storage of,
159, 161f. See also arboriculture; tree crops
Brown, C. H., 110±11
Buck, P. H. See Hiroa, T. R.
burials, 255
Burrows, E. G., 16, 18, 48, 71, 80, 96, 136,
150, 208, 239, 268, 285n4, 291n18,
303n10, 309n33
calendar, 100, 261, 280, 309n33; Ancestral
Polynesian, 268±69, 271t, 273, 274f;
horticultural, 268±69; intercalations and,
273; Pleiades year, 263; Polynesian,
260±73, 262t; pre-Polynesian, 261, 271;
solar, 261, 272; Tongan, 272. See also lunar
calendar; Pleiades; year
358
Subject index
Cann, R. L., 88
canoes, 196±97, 204; double-hulled, 197,
302n27
carpenters, 225
Carsten, J., 202, 205
Chatham Islands, 80
chert, 183, 220
chickens, 121, 129; PPN term for, 142. See
also domestic animals
chiefdoms, 282
chief-priest, Ancestral Polynesian, 247±49
chiefs, 226, 304n14; in Ancestral Polynesia,
247±49; chief/big man distinction, 69;
paramount, 234, 305n29; Polynesian,
67±69, 226±27
cladistics, 26, 288n13, 288n15; cladograms,
290n8; historical anthropology and, 23;
theory and methods of, 26±7. See also
phylogeny; taxonomy; triangulation
method
Clark, R., 200, 279, 295n9
coconut, 122, 125; containers of, 175;
cream, 157; graters, 153f; oil, 157
coconut robber crab, 136±37
Codrington, R. H., 303n7
co-evolution, 8, 283±4. See also evolution
cognitive archaeology, 279, 280. See also
archaeology
Collocott, E. E. V., 271, 272
community structures, 193±96, 302n2
Comparative Austronesian Project, 6, 63
comparative ethnography, 42, 91, 99, 118,
135±37, 143, 162, 278
conical clan concept, 225
containers, 173±76; bamboo, 175; coconut
shell, 175; food, 153; for kava, 173;
wooden vessel, 173. See also pottery
controlled comparison, method of, 14, 16
cooking: Ancestral Polynesian, 151±59;
cookhouses, 302n26, 305n31; equipment,
146±54; facilities, 146±54; Futunan, 143;
methods, 154±59; Samoan, 143; utensils,
151
coral, 105±6
cordage, 197±99
cosmology: Polynesian, 240±41; Eastern
Polynesian, 275
Cracraft, J., 288n17
craftsmen, 246
crop plants, 116, 121; POC terms for, 120;
PPN terms for, 123t, 125, 126. See also tree
crops
Crowley, T., 309n29, 309n30
cult house, 248
cultural: convergence, 208; differentiation,
13; evolution, 16, 8, 29, 283; phylogenetic
model of culture, 25. See also evolution
culture, dual transmission model of, 25
culture area, 16, 287n3, 292n10
culture history, 3, 7, 8, 30, 285n5, 290n9,
310n23; segment of, 14, 32, 53, 70, 95,
278. See also archaeology; direct historical
approach; triangulation method
Curcuma longa, 259, 269
dart, 192
death, rituals of, 257±60
deity, 241±42, 307n14
demons, 243. See also spirits
Dempwolff, O., 291n2, 307n11
dendritic model, 24. See also cladistics, family
trees
Dening, G., 4, 309n32
descent groups, 18, 202, 307n12; corporate,
214; land and, 209±10; Polynesian,
69±70; ranking of, 225; unrestricted, 209,
217. See also ascent groups; social groups
Dewar, R., 24
Di Piazza, A., 143, 157
diachronic semasiology, 45. See also semantic
history hypothesis
dialect: chains, 35, 55, 58, 279; geography,
36; linkages, 55; variation, 58, 289n4
Diebold, A. R., 45
diffusion, 16, 24, 28, 48, 71, 85, 231
direct historical approach, 3, 4; archaeology
and, 51±2. See also archaeology; culture
history; triangulation method
directional systems, 106
divergence, linguistic models of, 35±8
Subject index
Dixon, R. B., 286n6
dogs, 121, 129; PPN term for, 142. See also
animal husbandry
domesticated animals, 116, 121, 129. See also
animal husbandry
Doran, E., Jr., 66
drills, 183; bow, 181f; pump, 183±84,
301n17
Driver, H. E., 71
dual transmission, 25
Duff, R., 51, 300n15
Dumont d'Urville, J. S., 54
Durham, W. H., 13, 25
Dye, T., 135, 228, 231
Dyen, I., 6, 27, 38, 39, 45, 46, 78, 287n6,
288n9, 290n6, 290n14
earth oven, 147, 148f, 195, 298n13, 298n16.
See also cooking
Easter Island. See Rapa Nui Island
Eastern Micronesia, 75
Eastern Polynesia, 44, 65, 79, 85, 89, 100,
106, 111, 130, 150, 157, 159, 231, 239,
241, 242, 245, 246, 251, 259, 274,
291n18, 299n22, 304n17, 304n20,
307n17; cosmology in, 275; cultural traits
distinguishing, 48, 71, 72t, 70, 81;
exchange network of central region, 87;
initial settlement of central region, 79;
innovation in, 152, 310n34; marae in, 254;
ritual transformation in, 273±76. See also
Central Eastern Polynesia; Western
Polynesia
ecosystems, human impact on, 117. See also
extinctions
Eggan, F., 14
Ehret, C., 6, 287n7
Eldredge, N., 288n17
Emory, K. P., 238, 248, 250, 268, 292n8,
307n15, 309n33, 311n44
equinoxes, precession of the, 264±65,
310n35, 310n39. See also calendar
ethnobotanical knowledge, Ancestral
Polynesian, 109±15. See also folk
categories
359
ethnogenesis, 23
ethnographic analogy, 287n4, 290n13
ethnohistory, 3, 4
`Eua Island, 118
evolution, 28±29, 284; cultural, 8, 16, 29,
283; dual transmission model of, 25
exchange, 66, 293n25; Ancestral Polynesian,
219±21; inter-archipelago, 79; interisland, 67, 79
exogamy, 213
extinctions, 117, 118. See also birds
Falefa Valley (Samoa), 208
Falemoa site (Samoa), 129, 132
family trees, 22, 23, 33, 35, 37, 39, 60, 279,
288n9. See also cladistics, phylogeny
Feinberg, R., 244
fermentation, 159. See also breadfruit
Fiji Islands, 22, 56, 65, 66, 69, 73, 74, 75, 77,
86, 100, 101, 109, 112, 267, 271, 303n8
®les, 181f; branch coral, 132; sea-urchin
spine, 132
®rst fruits, 226, 238, 257, 259, 260, 265, 267,
272
Firth, R., 3, 143, 157, 238, 244, 248, 249,
286n6, 295n7, 303n5, 306n1, 307n14,
309n33
®sh, 134; ¯ying ®sh, 139; PCP names for,
295n9; PPN names for, 112, 113; rays,
134; sharks, 134
®shhooks, 133, 163; angling, 121; one-piece,
132; PPN terms for, 139±40; trolling
hook, 133, 140; Turbo shell, 133f
®shing, 131±37; angling, 137; Lapita,
120±21; lexical evidence for, 137±41;
night ®shing, 139; poisoning, 139. See also
nets
®shing gear: nets, 133, 137, 141; octopus
lure rig, 132±33; rod, 140. See also
®shhooks
Flannery, K. V., 4, 16, 19, 22
folk classi®cation, in PPN, 109±15
food: preservation of, 159±60; PPN
categories for, 144; social dimensions of,
160±62; storage of, 159±60
360
Subject index
food preparation, 154±56; boiling, 156;
cookhouses, 149; POC terms for, 144;
PPN terms for, 154. See also food
preparation equipment; pudding complex
food preparation equipment, 147±49;
coconut graters, 148, 149, 152; coral food
pounders, 159; nut-cracking hammers,
148; pounders, 149±50; shell scrapers,
148, 151; stone food pounders, 152, 159
foundation culture, 33, 34, 75
foundation language, 33, 34, 55
founder effect, 21, 73
founder ideology, 225, 227
Fox, J. J., 63, 244, 255, 308n25
French-Wright, R., 120
Freycinetia plants, 300n13
fruit bats, 117, 134; population declines of,
117
Futuna Island, 77, 79, 89, 101, 115, 125,
128, 130, 148, 170, 178, 220, 232, 238,
248, 250, 260, 267, 272, 293n22, 296n2,
304n21, 309n33
games, 190±92
Geertz, C., 286n12
gender relations, 235
genetic: classi®cation of languages, 287n1,
292n8; comparative method, 22, 287n8;
diversity, 60; model, 13
Geraghty, P., 36, 96, 242, 295n9
ghosts, 243. See also spirits
glottochronology, 15, 21, 27, 41, 287n7. See
also lexicostatistics; linguistics
God houses, 251, 255, 305n31, 308n22
gods, 256. See also anthropomorphic gods;
demons; spirits
Goldman, I., 18, 49, 53, 70, 209, 210, 235,
279±80, 303n12, 303n13
Goodenough, W. H., 14, 16, 29, 30, 31, 32,
209, 217, 285n3, 303n11
Gould, S. J., 8, 12, 21
Grace, G., 39, 287n6
grandparent, 243, 305n25, 306n9. See also
ancestors, kinship
greater yam, 125
Green, K., 99, 105, 312n3
Green, R. C., 19, 33, 35, 36, 39±41, 45, 63,
77, 87, 147, 160, 168, 172, 185, 193, 205,
282, 287n5, 292n8, 293n20, 293n25,
300n15, 302n25, 304n20
Green Sea Turtle, 260
grinding stones, 181f, 182
Grinker, R. R., 205
Ha'apai Islands, 101, 116, 118, 297n11
habitus, 202, 205
Haddon, A. C., 196
Hage, P., 6, 86, 304n16
Handy, E. S. C., 49, 71, 238, 245, 247,
285n4, 286n6, 306n1, 307n13
Harary, F., 6, 86
harvests, 226, 265; annual ceremony, 238,
260. See also ®rst fruits
Hawai'i Island, 1, 164
Hawaiian Islands, 80, 85, 87, 88, 115, 130,
214, 231, 238, 245, 248, 251, 256, 260,
261, 263, 307n17, 309n33, 311n51
Hawaiki, 1, 8, 65, 93, 285n1; as ancestral
Polynesian homeland, 95±97, 282. See also
homelands
hearth, 195±96. See also earth oven
Hennig, W., 26, 288n13, 289n20
heterarchy, 131, 204, 217, 283
hierarchy, 131, 204, 217, 235, 282
Hiroa, T. R ., 50, 51, 93, 136, 143, 149, 150,
157, 163, 175, 183, 190, 192, 237, 239,
245, 264, 273, 286n6, 298n12, 309n33
historical linguistics, 27±28, 42, 72, 79, 162,
277, 278, 279, 288n16, 290n11
historical particularism, 2
historical reconstruction, 286n6. See also
triangulation method
history, 16, 28, 29, 89, 95, 277, 284; Annales
tradition in, 4, 286n11; of anthropology,
277; in an evolutionary framework, 284;
science and, 8. See also culture history;
direct historical approach; ethnohistory;
longue dureÂe
Hocart, A. M., 144, 267, 305n29, 305n30,
306n1, 310n43
Subject index
361
homeland regions, 89, 91; dispersal centers
and, 38
homelands: Ancestral Polynesian, 77, 95±97,
99±101; pre-Polynesian, 96
homologous change, 13, 16, 18
homology, 3, 28, 29, 213, 279, 283, 285n5
Hooper, A., 248
Hooper, R., 112, 114
horizontal transmission, 24, 25, 71, 85±86,
213. See also borrowing
Hornell, J., 196
horticulture: Ancestral Polynesian, 125,
126±30; Oceanic, 120. See also
arboriculture; crop plants; shifting
cultivation
House, 202, 247, 303n3, 303n5;
architectonic aspects of, 205; forms, 193;
names for, 303n6; C. LeÂvi-Strauss'
concept of, 235
House societies, 201±7, 215±18; in the
Austronesian world, 202±3; criterial
features of, 203±5; as social formation, 205
household unit, 235, 302n2, 304n20, 305n31
housepost, 308n25
houses, 193±96
Howard, A., 49, 223
Hugh-Jones, S., 202, 205
Hunt, T. L., 85, 87
hunting, 131±37
Huntsman, J., 248
Irwin, G. J., 294n25
Island Melanesia, 63, 288n9
Island Southeast Asia, 55, 205, 303n7, 304n22
isolation, 21, 62, 81, 83±89, 81
independent invention, 231
Indian almond, 125
Indo-European languages, 6, 35, 99,
290n12, 294n1; wave model and, 37
innovation, 81, 89; in Eastern Polynesia,
152; of material culture, 81; Oceanic
languages and, 37; shared, 22, 281;
subgrouping and, 37, 56
intensi®cation, 130±31
interaction, 81, 83±89; inter-island, 85. See
also exchange
intrusive: culture, 33; language, 33
invertebrates, POC names for, 115, 295n9
irrigation, 130±31
Lagenaria. See bottle gourd
land, 214, 303n9; control over, 213; estate,
204, 210; holding, 208, 210; rights to, 208.
See also social group
land tenure, 303n10
languages, genetic classi®cation of, 287n1.
See also linguistics
Lapita, 159, 163, 185, 256, 289n1; cultural
complex, 33, 36, 55±56; Early Eastern, 1,
77, 89, 91, 118, 171, 185, 207, 220;
Ancestral Polynesia, transition to, 206±7;
Eastern, 168; Remote Oceania,
colonization of, 235; settlers, Fiji-TongaSamoa, 271; subsistence 121±22
Janetski, J. C., 132
Kaeppler, A., 86
Kahiki, as ancestral homeland, 85
Kapingamarangi Island, 238, 248, 250,
309n33
kava, 226, 256±57, 298n10, 309n30;
ceremonial use of, 70; containers, 172;
wooden bowl for, 173. See also Piper
methysticum; Piper wichmannii
kinship, 202, 205, 208, 224, 280; bifurcate
merging terminology, 304n16; landholding and, 208; PPN terms for, 221,
223t; sibling classi®cation types in
Oceania, 6, 68f; sibling term pattern, 69.
See also ancestor; grandparent
Kirch, P. V., 4, 5, 18, 19, 78, 85, 86, 125,
130, 132, 135, 147, 148, 154, 160, 168,
170, 204, 210±11, 225, 226, 227, 238,
282, 287n4, 293n23, 294n25, 296n5,
305n31, 309n31
Kirkpatrick, J., 223
Knauft, B., 6
Koskinen, A., 201, 210, 226, 249, 303n14
Kroeber, A. L., 2, 71, 287n3
362
Subject index
Lau Islands, 96, 144, 260, 304n18, 305n29;
Southern Lau, 267
Leach, H. M., 177±78
leadership, 210, 226±35
Lebot, V., 256
Lepofsky, D., 130, 296n5
LeÂvi-Strauss, C., 201, 202, 205, 235
lexical reconstruction, 15, 22, 38, 44±46, 48,
99, 247, 279. See also semantic
reconstruction; terminological
reconstruction,; WoÈrter und Sachen
method
lexicostatistics, 15, 21, 27, 41, 287n6, 288n9.
See also glottochronology
Lichtenberk, F., 144, 152, 156, 171, 227,
299n25
Lifuka Island, 118
linguistic paleontology, 294n1b
linguistics, 19, 91, 99; anthropological, 3;
archaeological evidence and, 32, 34;
comparative method in, 27; dating and,
34; evidence, 32; historical, 2, 6; models of
divergence, 35±38. See also
glottochronology; lexical reconstruction;
lexicostatistics; semantic reconstruction;
terminological reconstruction
Linton, R., 71, 285n3
lithic resources, 101±2
lizards: iguanid, 134; population declines of,
117; PPN term for, 112
loan words, 87
longue dureÂe, 5±6, 28, 291n19. See also history
Lum, J. K., 88
lunar calendar, 128, 259, 267±73, 268t;
Polynesian, 310n41; PPN, 269;
modi®cations and elaborations to, 276;
thirteen month, 269. See also calendar;
Pleiades; lunar months
lunar months, 261, 267, 311n50; names in
Polynesian proto-languages, 270t
Luomala, K., 243, 306n8
Mace, R., 23
MacGregor, G., 238, 248, 306n5, 307n16,
308n22
macroevolution, 288n17. See also evolution
macrotaxonomy, 26. See also cladistics;
phylogeny
Madagascar Island, 24
Makemson, M. W., 262, 263, 268, 273,
309n33, 310n35, 310n39, 311n50
Malinowski, B., 267, 286n6, 310n40, 311n46
Mallory, J. P., 294n1b
mana, 70, 306n1
Mangaasi culture, 33, 289n1. See also pottery
Mangaia Island, 79, 88, 152, 248, 251, 264,
308n21, 309n33
Mangareva Island, 87, 254, 260, 310n16,
309n33
Manihiki-Rakahanga Islands, 214
Manu'a Islands, 118, 178
marae, 70, 249, 250, 251, 276, 308n22;
Central Eastern Polynesian, 276;
ceremonies, 311n44; Eastern Polynesian,
254; Tuamotuan, 251, 253f. See also ritual
Marck, J., 86, 90±91, 102, 122, 211, 213,
214, 224, 239, 242, 243, 244, 291n16,
295n3, 296n6, 304n17, 304n18, 304n19,
306n6, 306n9, 307n10
Marcus, J., 4, 16, 19, 22, 67
Marquesas Islands, 80, 87, 88, 91, 160, 168,
214, 260, 309n32, 309n33
Marxist theorists/Marxism, 29
material culture: Ancestral Polynesian, 164;
archaeological record of, 279; perishable,
164
mats, 300n13; plaited coconut leaf, 255; as
ritual paraphernalia, 255, 308n26,
308n27; woven, 220
Matthews, P., 185
Maui: as ancestor name, 243; as god or
mythical being, 306n8
Ma'uke Island, 88
Mauss, M., 221
Mayr, E., 8, 25, 288n13, 289n21
Mead, M., 3, 286n6
megapodes (Megapodius), 117±18, 295n12.
See also birds; extinctions
Melanesia, 38, 63, 202, 303n7, 306n8;
Eastern, 256. See also Island Melanesia
Subject index
men's house, 206
Merrill, E. D., 120
Mesoamerica, 289n22
meteorological phenomena: POC terms for,
295n5; PPN terms for, 106
microevolution, 288n17. See also evolution
Micronesia, 63, 65, 88, 159, 304n18, 306n8,
310n42. See also Nuclear Micronesia;
Eastern Micronesia
migration, 281
mollusks, 134
Monberg, T., 238, 245, 248, 308n26
monophyletic classi®cation, 25. See also
cladistics; phylogeny
month names, 309±10n33. See also calendar;
lunar calendar
Moore, J., 23, 24
Murdock, G. P., 225
musical instruments, 192±93
myths, 204
navigation, inter-archipelago, 106
navigator, PPN term for, 225
Near Oceania, 24, 30, 51, 63. See also
Ancient Near Oceania; Remote Oceania
needles, 188±89
NendoÈ Island, 33, 55
Neris sea-worm, 100, 271
nets and netting, 132; ®shing with, 141; seine
nets, 204
network-breaking model, 36, 41
New Caledonia Island, 33
New Guinea Island, 38, 55, 63, 73, 287n3,
288n8
New Zealand, 80, 85, 202, 232, 251, 299n2,
301n16, 309n28, 309n33
Niuafo'ou Island, 117±18
Niuatoputapu Island, 77, 101, 116, 129, 132,
134, 135, 147, 148, 160, 168, 178, 183,
220, 260, 265, 293n22, 297n10, 297n11,
302n26
Niue Island, 232, 234, 309n33
Non-Austronesian languages, 55. See also
Trans-New Guinea Phylum
nose-¯ute, bamboo, 193
363
Nuclear Micronesia, 65
Nuclear Polynesian (NP) languages, 59, 60,
78, 90
numerical taxonomy, 26, 27, 288n12. See also
cladistics; phenetics
obsidian, 102, 105, 148±49, 183, 220
Oceania, cultural regions in, 62±5. See also
Near Oceania; Remote Oceania
Oceanic languages, 55; highest-order
subgroups of, 55±56, 56f, 291n3;
innovations in, 37; Proto Paci®c subgroup
of, 41. See also Austronesian languages
Ofu Island, 116, 129, 132, 147
Oliver, D. L., 214, 219, 238, 303n2, 312n52
Ontong-Java Island, 18
oral history, traditions, 4, 18, 42, 80, 85, 88,
117, 278
origin structures, 244. See also ascent groups;
descent groups
ornaments, 188f
Osmond, M., 45±46, 120, 144, 163
Outliers. See Polynesian Outliers
oven-house, 146±54
Paci®c Rat, 80, 88, 116
palms, Metroxylon, 296n2
palolo sea-worms, 272, 276, 311n45, 311n46,
311n47
Pandanus, 149, 300n13, 309n27
paper mulberry, 125, 185
parental populations, 41
Pawley, A., 7, 8, 30, 33, 35, 37, 38, 39±41,
44, 45±46, 78, 87, 99, 105, 196, 205, 210,
211, 226, 227, 287n8, 290n9, 292n8,
295n9, 312n3
Pawley, M., 196, 289n9
phenetics, 26. See also numerical taxonomy
Philippine Islands, 38
phylogenetic model, xiii, 9, 13, 19, 25±28,
30, 278, 280, 283, 287n2; application to
Polynesia, 53±91; in biology, 288n16;
cultural evolution and, 25; historical
anthropology and, 28±9; in historical
linguistics, 288n16; history of, 14±16;
364
Subject index
phylogenetic model (cont.)
triangulation method and, 42±44. See also
cladistics; triangulation method
phylogeny, 83±89; Polynesian, 215, 231; See
also cladistics
pigs, 121, 129, 142. See also animal
husbandry; domestic animals
Piper: methysticum, 125, 256, 298n10, 309n29;
wichmannii, 256. See also kava
plaiting, 175. See also mats
plant taxa, PPN reconstructions of, 110
Pleiades, 260, 264; acronitic rising of, 262,
263, 264, 265, 267, 272, 273; acronitic
setting of, 263, 264, 265; cycle, 261±65,
310n36, 310n38, 311n44, 312n51;
heliacal rising of, 262, 264, 265, 266f, 267,
269, 273; PPN names for, 106; PPN term
for, 263; year, 310n39, 311n50. See also
calendar; year
plesiomorphy, 26. See also cladistics,
synapomorphy
POLLEX project, 46±48, 58, 99, 102, 112,
279, 290n10, 290n15, 297n4
Polynesia, 63; as a biological unit, 73±74;
cultural differentiation within, 70±73;
cultural patterns de®ning, 65±70; as an
emic category, 54; phylogenetic
differentiation in, 89±90; population
expansion, 91; prehistoric interaction
within, 87. See also Eastern Polynesia;
Polynesian Outliers; Western
Polynesia
Polynesian homeland, 35. See also prePolynesian homeland
Polynesian languages, 58, 292n8; family-tree
classi®cation of, 60±62, 61f. See also
Nuclear Polynesian languages (NP);
Polynesian Outlier languages; Tongic
language (TO) subgroup
Polynesian Outliers, 33, 59±60, 62, 79, 89,
107, 168, 238, 257, 259; languages of, 33,
60, 296n6
Polynesian peoples, biological origins of,
73±74
Polynesian Plainware. See pottery
polysemous words, 231
Pome'e-Nahau (NT-93) site, 160
pond®eld irrigation, 276, 296n5
posts, 255, 308n25
pottery, 147, 166±73, 300n5; Ancestral
Polynesian vessel shapes, 169f ; Ancestral
Polynesian, 167±73; classi®cation of,
168±70; designs, 185; Lapita dentatestamped, 56; manufacture, Polynesian
cessation of, 168; Polynesian Plainware, 1,
78, 81, 169, 171, 208, 296n2, 300n11;
POC terms for, 170; regional
differentiation in, 170
Potusa site (Samoa), 129, 132
Poulsen, J., 132, 147, 148, 152, 160, 168,
183, 188, 267n9
pre-Polynesian homeland, 96
priests, 228, 246, 275, 307n18; inspirational,
231
priest-chief, 211, 213, 248, 255; Ancestral
Polynesian, 231. See also chief-priest,
Ancestral Polynesian
priestly class, 231
prime semantic agreement (PSA), 46, 102,
122, 227, 240, 256, 298n6
primogeniture, 228
Primordial Pair, 91, 242±43, 275
Proto Austronesian (PAN), 38, 290n10;
reconstruction of, 6; terms for architecture
and settlements, 206t
Proto Central Paci®c (PCP), 38, 41, 41,
56±60, 78; dialect chain model of, 58f;
interstage, 56; dialect chain, 78
Proto Central-Eastern Polynesian (PCE), 60;
speech community, 80
Proto Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, 38
Proto Ellicean (PEC), 60
Proto Malayo-Polynesian, 107
Proto Marquesic, 304n17
Proto Micronesian, 295n3
Proto Oceanic (POC): architectural forms,
205±6; social groups, 208±11
Proto Oceanic (POC) terms, 33, 46; for
architecture and settlements, 206t; for
food preparation, 144; for meteorological
Subject index
phenomena, 295n5; for pottery, 170; for
social groups, 208±11
Proto Polynesian: homeland, 60; lunar
calendar, 259; social groups, 208±11
Proto Polynesian (PPN) language, 38, 41,
46±48, 56±60; adzes, lexical categories
for, 180±82; cooking utensils lexemes,
151; domesticated plants categories, 115,
122; endpoint of, 79; folk biology, 110;
folk categories/taxa, 112, 114; food
categories, 144; lexical reconstructions,
99, 110; north±south dialect
differentiation in, 59f; plant taxa
reconstructions, 110; tattooing lexemes,
189. See also Proto Polynesian terms
Proto Polynesian (PPN) terms: for
adornments, 186t; for ancestors, 240t; for
architectural features, 194t; for
astronomical phenomena, 106; for bark
cloth, 186t; for basket, 175; for the
biological world, 112; for birds, 112; for
breadfruit, 115; for canoes, 198t; for
chicken, 142; for clothing, 186t; for
containers, 167t, 173, 174f; for cooking,
155t; for cordage, 198t; for crop
harvesting, 128; for crops, 123t, 122, 125,
126; for directionals, 107; for dog, 142; for
exchange, 221t; for ®sh, 112, 114; for
®shhooks, 139±140; for ®shing gear and
apparatus, 139; for ®shing rod, 140; for
food preparation, 154; for gods, 240t; for
horticulture activities, 126, 127t, 128; for
household units, 194t; for industrial tools,
176t; for invertebrates, 112, 112t; for
kinship, 221, 223t; for life forms, 111t; for
lizards, 112; for lunar months, 261, 271t;
for marine exploitation, 137, 138t; for
musical instruments, 191t; for navigator,
225; for ornaments, 186t; for persons,
222t; for physical world, 103t; for pig,
142; for the Pleiades, 263; for pudding
complex, 158, 158t; for ritual, 258t; for
sago palm, 124; for the sea, 106; for a sea
expert, 225; for snake, 100, 112; for social
dimensions of food, 160±162; for social
365
groups, 211, 212t; for social ranking,
229±30t, 233t; for spirits, 246t; for sports,
191t; for stars, 106; for taste, 144±45,
145t, 146; for tattooing, 186t; for thatch,
124; for things, 165±66, 166t; for
valuables, 220; for warfare, 191t; for
warrior, 225; for weather, 106; for
specialists, 225
Proto Samoic-Outlier (PSO), 107
Proto Tongic (PTO), 41
proto-languages, 41
pudding complex, 152, 156±59. See also
cooking
Pukapuka Island, 18, 137, 213, 231, 232,
260, 263, 282, 309n33
Pulotu, 96. See also Hawaiki
r/K selection continuum, 21
radiation model, 36
radiocarbon: chronology, 79; dating, 27, 43,
63, 77
Rakahanga Island, 264, 309n33
rank and ranking, 204, 217, 226±35, 283,
305n30. See also hierarchy
Rapa Island, 308n23
Rapa Nui Island, 80, 85, 139, 248, 251, 254,
260, 309n28, 309n33
Rapanui language, 293n24
Rarotonga Island, 88
Rattus exulans. See Paci®c Rat
Reao Atoll, 307n15
red ochre, 185
Reinman, F. M., 120
religious facilities, Polynesian, 249. See also
marae
Remote Oceania, 13, 29±30, 31, 32, 36, 38,
39, 51, 55, 89, 121, 159, 209; human
expansion into, 63±65; Lapita
colonization of, 235. See also Near
Oceania
Renfrew, C., 6, 288n11, 294n1b
Rennell Island, 238, 248, 250, 306n5,
307n16, 308n26
Rensch, K. H., 78
rhizotic model, 24
366
Subject index
ritual: architecture and, 249; cycles, 260±73,
Ancestral Polynesian, 266f; duties, 248;
feasts, 276; of growth, 257±60; of life,
257±60; paraphernalia, mats as, 255,
308n26, 308n27; practice, 246, 280;
practitioners, 246±49; spaces, 249±56;
transformations, Early Central Eastern
Polynesian, 273±76
Rivers, W. H. R., 285n4, 286n6, 287n3
Romney, K., 14, 24
Ross, M., 7, 8, 35, 37, 38, 44, 45±46, 120,
170, 172, 175, 287n8, 295n5, 300n11
Rotuma Island, 269, 306n8, 310n43
Rotuman language, 58, 87
sago palm ¯our, 296n2
Sahlins, M., 4, 5, 16, 49, 53, 69, 282, 283,
291
Samoa Islands, 1, 77, 79, 86, 87, 91, 100,
101, 109, 112, 129, 132, 149, 152, 160,
168, 172, 178, 180, 220, 232, 242, 251,
271, 294n1, 297n10, 302n28, 309n33,
311n47
Sand, C., 78, 168±69, 171
Santa Cruz Islands, 33. See also NendoÈ Island
Sapir, E., 2, 4, 8, 9, 13, 16, 30, 38, 42, 48,
285n4
Sasoa'a site (Upolu), 147, 193, 195f
Savai'i Island, 1, 101, 251, 294n1
sea expert, PPN term for, 225
sea-craft complex, Polynesian, 66. See also
canoes
sea-level change, 116
seasons, 273. See also calendar, year
sea-urchins, 134
sea-worms, 100, 271, 272, 276. See also palolo
sea-worms
selectionist theory, 289n118. See also evolution
Seligmann, C. G., 285n4, 287n3
semantic history hypothesis, 45, 46, 102,
201, 203, 228, 234, 249, 255, 279, 280,
305n29. See also semantic reconstruction
semantic reconstruction, 45, 48, 279. See also
lexical reconstruction
sennit, 197
shaman, 246
shared retentions, 213, 231
shell: artifacts, 183; exchange valuables, 220;
scrapers, 122
shifting cultivation, 116, 128, 129
Shore, B., 65, 70, 239, 240±41, 306n1
sidereal: calendrics, 261; events, 264; year,
310n39
Simpson, G. G., 18
sling stones, 190
Smith, S. P., 95
social differentiation, 283
social groups, 208±11, 218±19, 302n2,
303n10, 305n31; Ancestral Polynesian,
236f, 207±19; and control of estate, 215;
Polynesian early form, 208; residentially
oriented, 235; strati®cation in, 217, 283;
words for, 305n24. See also ascent groups;
descent groups; kinship
social organization, 202, 280
social structures, 131, 201
social units, terminology of, 302n2
Society Islands, 79, 86, 88, 196, 214, 232,
254, 263, 309n33, 312n52
solar year, 272, 311n50. See also calendar
Solomon Islands, 109
sorcerer, 246
South America, 51, 75, 293n20
Southeast Asia, 289n22
Southern Cook Islands, 88, 168
spears, 190
specialists, PPN terms for, 225
spinning top, 192
spirits, 243, 306n5; ancestral, 307n14; spirit
medium, 246; spirit world, 242
sports, 190±92
Spriggs, M. J. T., 293n23
status rivalry, 70, 209, 235
Steadman, D. W., 137, 295n12
storage pits, 196
strati®cation, social, 217, 283
string ®gures, 301n23; games, 192
Su'a, T. I., 143, 157
subgrouping models, 22, 279. See also
cladistics; linguistics; phylogeny
Subject index
supernatural beings. See spirits
Sutton, D. G., 81, 227, 231, 235, 298n11
Swadesh, M., 27
sweet potato, 125, 293n20
swidden cultivation systems, 128
synapomorphy, 26
synodic months, 261. See also calendar; lunar
months
synology, 24, 28, 29, 279, 281, 283, 285n5.
See also analogy; homology
systemic cultural patterns, in Polynesia,
65±70
Tafahi Island, 102, 183
Tahiti Island, 238, 311n51
Tahitian chestnut, 125
Taiwan Island, 38, 39
tapu, 70, 239±41
taro, 121, 125; pond®eld irrigation of, 276
taste, PPN terms for, 144±45
tattooing, 187±89, 301n21; chisel for, 182;
PPN terms for, 189
Taumoefolau, M., 93, 96, 234, 235
Tavai site (FU-11), 122, 128
TcherkeÂzoff, S., 225
temples, 250, 305n31; architecture, 255. See
also marae
terminological reconstruction, 45±46, 48,
141, 142, 247, 279
Terrell, J., 24, 35, 85, 88, 290n6, 292n12
theology, Polynesian, 240±41
Thomas, N., 50
Tikopia Island, 18, 33, 85, 203, 204, 214,
231, 238, 244, 245, 248, 249, 261, 282,
295n7, 303n4, 303n5, 304n21, 305n31,
308n26, 309n33
time: depth, 39±41; and space, concepts of in
Ancestral Polynesia, 75±79, 309n32,
312n52; and the ritual cycle, 260±73;
reckoning of, 260±73, 260. See also calendar
To.6 site (Tongatapu), 147
To'aga site (Ofu Island), 116, 129, 132, 133,
134, 147, 183, 260, 301n22
Tokalau-Fijian-Polynesian interstage,
304n18; and PCP dialect chain, 58
367
Tokelau Islands, 79, 87, 107, 168, 231, 248,
263, 282, 303n6, 309n33
Tonga Islands, 1, 73, 77, 79, 86, 89, 100,
109, 115, 170, 172, 214, 220, 231, 242,
248, 251, 259, 267, 271, 300n5, 305n29,
309n33
Tongan maritime empire, 86
Tongareva Island, 309n33
Tongatapu Island, 101, 107, 116, 129, 147,
168, 178, 180, 208, 251, 252f, 297n10
Tongic (TO) language subgroup, 59, 78, 90
tools, industrial, 176
torches, 139
Trans-New Guinea Phylum, 63
tree crops, 116, 146. See also arboriculture;
breadfruit
triangulation method, 42±44, 95, 116, 117,
118, 120, 131, 141, 143, 162, 163, 200,
201, 249, 278, 280, 281
Trigger, B., 4, 7
Trobriand Islands, 311n46
trumpet, 192±93
Tuamotu Islands, 238, 248, 251, 253f, 260,
309n33, 311n44
turmeric, 265
turtles, 311n44; feast, 307n15; sacred status
of, 260; sea turtles, 265, 269. See also
Green Sea Turtle
Tutuila Island, 128±29, 177, 183
Tuvalu Island, 79, 87, 168
`Upolu Island, 147, 208
`Uvea Island, 77, 79, 87, 89, 101, 170, 267,
293n22
Vailele site (Samoa), 160
Vaito'otia-Fa'ahia site, 182, 196
Vaitupu Island, 263, 309n33
Valeri, V., 238, 273
Vanikoro Island, 33
Vanua Levu Island, 101
Vanuatu Islands, 33, 109, 256, 296n13
Vava'u Island, 101
vi apple (Spondias dulcis), 125
Viti Levu Island, 101
368
Subject index
Vogt, E., 14±16, 21, 32, 50, 287n1
voyaging, 293n16; inter-island, 86; two-way,
80, 85. See also canoes, exchange,
interaction
wailing, 259
Wallerstein, E., 277
Walter, R., 120
war and warfare, 190
warrior, PPN term for, 225
water-craft, ancestral, 196. See also canoes
Waterson, R., 203, 205
weapons, 190
weeding, 126
Weisler, M. I., 87
Western Polynesia, 43, 56, 60, 70, 91, 99,
107, 224, 234, 241, 250, 257, 259, 267,
291n18, 294n25, 294n1; cultural traits
distinguishing, 48, 71 72t, 81; Lapita
settlement of, 293n15. See also Eastern
Polynesia
whetstones, 181f, 182
Williamson, R. W., 95±96, 208, 226, 238,
268, 287n3, 306n1, 309n33, 311n45
WoÈrter und Sachen method, 38, 60, 99,
294n1b. See also homelands
Wylie, A., 44
yams, 121, 122, 267, 271; cycle, 265±67;
®rst yams offerings, 272; horticulture,
310n41; planting of, 128. See also ®rst
fruits; greater yam; sweet potato
year: sidereal, 310n39; solar, 272, 311n50;
tropical, 310n39; two-season, 310n38. See
also calendar
Yen, D. E., 120, 125, 127, 131, 143, 156±57
Index of Proto Polynesian (PPN)
Reconstructions
Note: Where a PPN reconstruction is polysemous, semantic variants are distinguished by a
brief gloss in brackets.
*afaa, 104, 106
*afo, 138, 140, 197, 198
*(a)folau, 194
*afu-afu, 104
*aka, 123
*alanga, 165, 166
*amo, 199
*angi, 104
*asu, 198
*atua, 245
*aveloa, 115
*awa, 103, 106
*faaliki, 194
*faangongo, 150, 154
*faangota, 137, 138
*faasua, 113
*fa®e, 150, 151
*fai [make, do], 158
*fai [cat's cradle, string ®gure games], 191,
301
*fai-kai, 157, 158, 299
*faka, 272
*fakaafu, 128
*faka-fana, 155, 156
*faka-peqe, 145, 146
*faka-qafu [preparing oven for lighting], 150,
151, 298
*Faka-qafu [lunar months], 270, 271, 272
*fale, 193, 194, 196, 207, 236, 305
*fale-qatua, 194, 254, 255, 260
*fana, 191
369
*fanaa, 198
*fanga, 138, 141
*fang(o,u), 193
*fangufangu, 191, 193
*fanua, 103, 105, 208, 303
*f(a,o)ulua, 198
*faqa-si, 165, 166
*faqi, 258
*faqi-totoka, 194, 207
*faqo, 194
*faqu, 186
*fara, 123, 175
*fata, 194
*fatu [stone, rock], 103, 105, 231
*fatu [weave, kidney, to fold, viscous, clotted],
231
*fatu [leader of the kaainga], 232, 233, 234, 236
*fatu-qariki, 232
*fatunga, 194
*feke, 113, 114
*feo, 103, 105, 113, 114
*fequnu, 198
*fetuqu, 104, 106
*fetuqu-qaho, 104, 106
*®lo, 198, 199
*®ngota, 111, 112, 114
*®ri, 198, 199
*®ro, 155, 156
*fohe, 198
*fohu, 166, 184
*fono [deliberate assembly of people], 196,
211, 257
370
Index of Proto Polynesian (PPN) Reconstructions
*fono [food served with kava], 256, 257, 258
*fonu, 114, 260
*fosa, 223
*fota, 141
*fuata [crop, especially of breadfruit], 127,
128
*fuata [shaft of a spear], 191
*fue, 186
*fuke, 150, 151, 298
*fungaona, 223
*fungawai, 223
*fuqanga, 176, 182
*fusi, 103, 105, 296
*futa, 138
*futi, 123
*futu, 138, 139
*hakau, 103, 106
*hama, 198
*hanga, 166
*hau, 187, 189
*hiko-®, 150, 151
*hoka, 150, 151
*i®, 123
*ika, 111, 114
*ike, 186
*ipu, 150, 154, 167, 171, 175
*isu, 198
*kaainga, 204, 207, 210, 211, 214, 215, 216,
217, 218, 232, 235, 236, 304, 305
*ka(a)wei, 173, 198
*kafa, 194, 197, 198
*ka®ka, 123
*kafu, 186
*kai [food], 144, 158, 297
*kai [people of a place], 208, 221, 236, 303
*kainanga, 207, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215,
217, 218, 225, 227, 231, 232, 235, 236,
247, 257, 293, 303, 305
*kakai, 208, 210, 221, 236
*kalaa, 103, 105
*kala-misi, 113
*kalewelewe, 115
*kali, 194
*kalolo, 191
*kamakama, 113
*kaniwa, 104, 106
*kanu, 185, 186, 300
*kape, 123
*kapu, 167, 171, 175
*kasi [Asaphidae spp.], 113
*kasi [shell scraper], 150, 151
*kaso, 194
*kasoa, 186, 189
*kasokaso, 123
*kato, 167, 175
*kau [wood, timber], 194
*kau [group, company], 307
*kawa, 123, 256, 257, 258, 309
*kawa-sasa, 138, 139
*kawa-susu, 138, 139
*kawe, 223
*kaweinga, 104, 106
*kawiki, 113
*kea, 114
*kele, 103, 105, 167, 172, 187
*kele-mutu, 111, 112
*keli, 127, 172
*keo(h,s)o, 165
*kete, 167, 175
*kiato, 198
*kie, 186
*kiekie, 186
*kili, 176, 182
*kili-kili, 194, 195
*kina [sea-urchin], 113
*kina [food eaten with another food as
relish], 144, 161, 297
*kofu, 155, 156, 186
*kohe, 175
*koho, 127
*koka, 186, 187
*kolo, 191
*koloa, 165, 220, 221
*kona, 145, 146, 309
*konga, 166, 176
*kora, 155, 156
*koro, 190
Index of Proto Polynesian (PPN) Reconstructions
*koso, 127, 151
*kuka, 113
*kuku, 113
*kulii, 129
*kulo, 150, 154, 167, 170, 171, 174, 200, 299
*kulu, 122, 123, 124, 296
*kumete, 150, 153, 154, 167, 173
*kupenga, 138, 141
*kuro, 299
*laa, 198
*lafo, 191, 192
*laki, 104, 106
*lalo, 104, 107
*langa, 127
*langi, 104, 240, 242
*lango, 115
*lapu, 155, 156
*laqaa, 104, 106
*laqo®e, 104, 106
*lase, 103, 105
*laulau, 153, 167, 175
*leu, 144, 145
*leu-leu, 186
*li(h,s)a, 270
*Li(h,s)a mua,*Li(h,s)a muli, 270, 271
*liko, 138, 139, 141
*lipi, 166
*lohu, 128
*loka, 103, 106
*loki, 194
*lolo [¯ood], 104
*lolo [coconut milk/cream or oil], 157,
158
*lolo-qi, 157, 158
*loo, 114
*loto, 103, 106
*loto malae, 250
*loto-qaa, 193, 194
*lotu, 257, 258
*lua, 194, 195
*lufa, 197, 198
*lunga, 107
*maa, 159, 160
371
*maa-kona, 161
*maangalo, 145, 146
*ma(a)qoli, 291
*maasina, 104, 106, 261
*maasoaqa, 123
*maatai, 225
*maatuqa, 223
*Maaui, 240, 243
*mae, 144, 145
*maea, 197, 198
*mafu, 158
*mafuike, 103, 105
*mahu, 161
*mahuku, 111, 127
*maka [stone or rock], 183
*maka [sling, to hurl or to sling], 190, 191
*makupuna, 223
*malama, 261
*malaqe, 246, 254, 255, 260
*malau, 60, 117, 296
*malie, 146
*malo, 186
*mama, 186, 189
*mana, 239, 240, 244, 306
*manu, 111
*manumanu, 111
*mao, 104
*ma-oha, 155, 156
*m(a,o)kupuna, 222
*maopo, 115
*maqa, 223
*maqai, 145, 146
*maqala, 126, 127
*maqunga, 103, 105
*mara, 159, 160, 299
*masafu, 191
*masaki-tanga, 223
*masi, 159, 160
*mata [headland], 103, 105, 304
*mata [mesh of net], 138, 141, 304
*mata [raw], 144, 145, 304
*mata [point, blade, or cutting edge], 166,
183, 304
*mata [a social group], 210, 218, 235, 304
*mata-a-pule, 222
372
Index of Proto Polynesian (PPN) Reconstructions
*Mata-liki [Pleiades], 104, 106, 260, 261,
263, 264, 265, 266, 269, 270
*Mataliki [lunar month], 260, 269, 270, 271
*matangi, 104, 106
*mataqu [®shhook], 43, 138, 139, 140
*mata(q)u [adz, axe tattooing comb], 176,
180, 181, 182, 189
*ma-tila, 138, 140
*matuqa, 223, 307
*mei, 122, 123, 296
*mele, 106
*meqa, 165, 166
*moa [chicken (jungle fowl)], 129
*moa [whipping or spinning top], 191
*moana, 103, 106
*moho, 145, 146
*moko, 112
*mongamonga, 115
*mori, 258
*moti-moti, 104
*moto, 144, 145
*motu, 103, 105
*mua, 271
*muli, 271
*mutu, 114
*nafa, 191
*namu, 115
*natu, 155, 156
*ngafa, 166
*nga®-nga®, 186
*ngalu, 103, 106
*ngaqati, 166, 167
*ngasau, 191
*ngata, 100, 111, 112
*ngatu, 186
*nguu-feke, 113, 114
*niu, 123, 175
*noa, 239, 240
*nofu, 295
*nono, 115
*nonu, 123
*nuku, 103, 105
*olo, 154, 155, 299
*oqa, 198
*paa [trolling lure], 138, 139, 140
*paa [plate, platter, bowl], 150, 153, 167,
170, 172, 174
*paa [wall, fence, enclosure], 193, 194
*paasua, 113
*paepae, 193, 194
*paito, 150, 151, 194, 196, 236, 305
*paka, 111, 112, 114
*pala, 145
*palai, 123
*palalafa, 150, 152
*pala-tuqu, 145
*pale, 186
*pali, 103, 105
*palolo [Neiris sea-worm], 60, 100, 271
*Palolo [lunar months], 271, 272
*pani, 187
*paopao, 198
*papa, 198
*pasu, 191
*patu, 191
*pekepeke, 157, 158
*pela, 103, 105
*penu, 155, 156
*peqe, 145, 298
*pili, 112
*pilita, 123
*pipi, 113
*pisi, 113
*poqoi, 158, 159
*poqou, 222
*pou, 193, 194, 207, 246, 254, 255
*puaka, 129
*puke, 127
*pulaka, 123
*pulapula, 127,128
*pule [cowries], 113, 114
*pule [authority], 257, 258
*puli, 173
*puli-puli, 167
*pulotu, 240, 242
*punga, 103, 105, 113
*puou, 115
Index of Proto Polynesian (PPN) Reconstructions
*pu(q)u, 191
*pusa, 167, 173
*putu [object with holes or perforations], 166
*putu [funeral feast, offering to the gods],
258, 259, 260
*qaa, 194
*qafa, 138, 141
*qafu, 196, 246, 254, 255, 276
*qahawena, 223
*qaitu, 240, 241, 242, 243
*qalili, 113
*qalopoqou, 222
*qao, 104
*qariki, 207, 211, 214, 217, 222, 226, 227,
228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 234, 235, 236,
247, 249, 255, 257, 282, 305, 308
*qaro, 165
*qato, 123, 124, 194
*qatua, 240, 241, 242, 243
*qau, 103, 106
*qau-kawa, 138, 139
*qau-talu, 127, 128
*qepa, 308
*qilamutu, 223
*qinati, 161, 258, 259, 260
*qo-fa®ne,*(q)a-fa®ne, 223
*qoho, 162
*qola, 176
*qolongaa, 138, 140
*qone, 103, 105
*qora, 138, 141
*qota, 144, 145, 297
*qu®,*qu®-lei, 123
*quha, 104, 106
*qulu, 126, 127
*qulu-matuqa, 222, 223
*qumoti, 167, 171
*qumu, 147, 150, 151, 194, 195
*qunga, 112
*qura, 113
*quta, 107, 295
*quuquu, 113, 114
*rama, 138, 139
373
*rano, 103, 105
*raqa-kau, 111
*rara, 155, 156
*rau, 138, 141
*rei, 186
*renga , 125, 258, 259, 269
*rofa, 166
*roqi, 158
*rumane, 113
*saawaki, 113
*safu, 103
*saka [boil food in water], 155, 156, 170,
171, 300
*saka [water jar], 174, 300
*samu, 161
*saqa, 218, 219, 236
*saqalo, 155, 156
*sasake, 104, 107
*sau [wind, breeze], 104
*sau [ear-pendant], 186, 189
*sau [return gift or services], 221
*sau [ruler, high-ranking elite, to have
command or rule over a group of people],
222, 234, 235, 236, 305
*sau ariki, 96, 234, 23
*Sawaiki, 285, 294
*sei, 186
*sele, 176, 183
*selu, 186
*siapo [paper mulberry plant], 123, 185
*siapo [bark cloth], 185, 186
*sii, 137, 138
*sika, 138, 141
*Siringa kelekele, 270, 271
*Siringa maqa, 270, 271
*sisi, 154, 155, 156
*sisifo, 104, 107
*soaka, 123
*soi, 123
*soko, 221
*soli, 221
*songe, 161
*sua, 127, 128
*sui, 221
374
Index of Proto Polynesian (PPN) Reconstructions
*suke, 150, 298
*sulu, 186
*sumu, 114
*sumukaleva, 114
*sumulenga, 114
*sunu, 155, 156
*suqa, *suqa-malie, 145, 146
*taa, 167, 172
*Taangaloa, 240, 242, 243, 245, 275, 306
*taanoqa, 167, 172, 173
*taa-noqa, 256, 258, 309
*ta(a)qonga, 165, 166, 221
*taaua?, 222
*taaula, 246, 247, 249
*tafu, 150, 151
*tafu-raqa, 114
*tahi, 103, 106, 107, 295
*(tahi)-masa, 103
*tahina, 223, 225, 236
*taka, 187
*takele, 198
*taku, 257, 258
*takulua, 104, 106
*tala, 165
*talai, 181
*tali, 199
*talie, 123
*talo [taro], 46, 123, 257
*talo [invoke supernatural assistance, pray,
incantation], 257, 258
*talu, 126, 127, 128
*tama, 222, 223
*tama (na), 223, 225
*tamaqiti, 222
*tamariki, 222
*tanga, 167
*tangata, 221, 291
*tangata ma(a)qoli, 54
*tangi, 258, 259
*tao, 138, 141, 191
*taonga, 220
*tapa, 186
*tapakau,*takapau, 194, 246, 255, 308
*tapatapa, 113
*tapu, 239, 240
*taqahine, 222
*taqo, 150, 151, 155, 156
*taqo-kete, 223, 305
*taq(o,u)fufu, 194
*taqu, 261, 263, 264, 265, 267, 271, 271,
272, 273, 276, 310
*tataa, 198
*tatau [wring out, express as with coconut
cream], 155, 156
*tatau [tattoo, of face or body], 187
*tau, 191
*taulekaleka, 222
*taumafa, 258, 259
*tau-poqou, 222
*tauqa, 191
*tauqi, 221
*taura, 197, 198
*tau-raki, 159
*tau-tahi, 137, 138, 222, 225
*tawa, 123
*teka, 190, 191, 192
*tia, 193, 194
*tifa, 113
*ti®ti®, 114
*tii, 123
*tika, 191, 192
*tili [to cast, throw, ®sh with net], 137, 138,
139
*tili [kind of hand net], 138, 141
*timu, 104
*tina (na), 223
*tingo, 123, 125, 259, 265, 269
*tio, 113
*titi, 186
*toa, 222, 225
*toafa, 103, 105
*tofe, 113
*to®, 181
*toka, 103, 106
*tokelau, 104, 106, 107, 295
*toki, 46, 176, 180, 181, 182, 200
*toli, 127, 128
*tonga, 104, 106, 107, 295
*tongi, 181
Index of Proto Polynesian (PPN) Reconstructions
*too, 123, 144
*toqa, 191
*toqonga, 220, 221
*totongi, 221
*tuafa®ne, 223, 225
*tuahi, 150, 152
*tuaka (na), 223, 225, 236
*tuangaqane, 223, 225
*tuaqa-tina, 225
*tufunga, 193, 222, 225, 236, 246, 248, 275,
307
*tui, 186, 189
*tuki, 155, 156
*tulu, 193, 194, 207
*tumutumu, 165
*tunu, 155, 156, 167, 172, 173
*tupa, 113
*tupe, 191, 192
*tupu, 224, 244
*tupulanga, 224
*tupuna, 222, 223, 225, 240, 243, 244, 245,
255, 306, 307
*tupunga, 222, 224, 240, 243, 244, 245, 255,
307
*tupuqa, 240, 242, 243, 244, 306
*tupuqanga, 224
*tuqa [back], 165
*tuqa [commoner, person without rank], 222
*tuqa-(a)-koi, 196
*tuqa-hakau, 103, 106
*tuqa-siwi, 103, 105
375
*tuqa-tina, 223
*tuqi, 305
*tuqulanga, 305
*tutu, 186
*tutu-a, 186
*Tuu, 306
*tuukau, 176
*tuutuu, 112
*uka, 197, 198
*uru, 150, 151
*uto, 138, 141
*utu, 127, 128
*waatia, 158
*wai, 103, 105, 272
*Wai mua,*Wai muli, 270, 271, 272
*wai-puna, 103, 105
*wai-tafe, 103, 105
*waka [sailing canoe], 46, 47, 198
*waka [medium or bodily abode of a god],
246, 247, 308
*walo, 113
*wana, 113
*wao, 126, 127
*waru, 154, 155
*weka, 223
*wele, 127, 128
*weli, 113
*wii, 123
*wili, 176, 184