Evolutionary process and Polynesian prehistory

Kirch, Patrick Vinton. The Evolution of the Polynesian Chiefdoms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xii + 314 pp. including glossary, bibliography, and index. $44.50 cloth.     

History as Sacrifice: The Polynesian Iconoclasm

ABSTRACT The Polynesian iconoclasm comprised a series of destructive episodes in which god‐images were rendered powerless and temples and associated structures were successively burned or torn down in Eastern Polynesia. Beginning in Tahiti and neighbouring Mo'orea in 1815, it spread rapidly to other Society Islands, the Austral Islands and the Southern Cook Islands. In this article I suggest that the willingness of Polynesian leaders to follow Tahitian precedence in destroying or unwrapping their god images can be partially explained by the fact that they saw themselves as participants in a large‐scale sacrifice, the common objective of which was the acquisition of greater mana and the consequent revitalisation of their societies. In making this argument I engage with anthropological theories that address relationships between sacrifice and historical transformation. I conclude by proposing that the Polynesian iconoclasm was a form of rituopraxis comprising regionally specific improvisations upon a general ritual schema.     

Mass Migration and the Polynesian Settlement of New Zealand

This paper reintroduces the concept of mass migration into debates concerning the timing and nature of New Zealand’s settlement by Polynesians. Upward revisions of New Zealand’s chronology show that the appearance of humans on the landscape occurred extremely rapidly, and that within decades settlements had been established across the full range of climatic zones. We show that the rapid appearance of a strong archaeological signature in the early 14th century AD is the result of a mass migration event, not the consequence of gradual demographic growth out of a currently unidentified earlier phase of settlement. Mass migration is not only consistent with the archaeological record but is supported by recent findings in molecular biology and genetics. It also opens the door to a new phase of engagement between archaeological method and indigenous Maori and Polynesian oral history and tradition.     

The Birth and Growth of a Polynesian Women's Exchange Network

Based on ethnographic interviews and historical research, this article describes the birth and growth of a commoner women's exchange network in the Kingdom of Tonga during the twentieth century. The network developed during the first two decades of the century along with other late colonial institutions in Tonga that have been called ‘the compromise culture’. The exchange institution started with the inter-island exchange of women's prestige wealth within Tonga; the network soon expanded to incorporate Fijian and Samoan women's groups, to include western commodities and cash and, in the 1980s and 1990s, to involve Tongan migrants who are resident overseas. The detailed history of the women's exchange network over eight decades recounts an important slice of commoner women's life stories and memories. At the same time, as an account of a compromise institution, the history of the exchange network offers a window on the process of change in the twentieth century. It demonstrates the deeply conservative nature of seemingly radical institutional changes in Tonga, the increasing difficulties over time in trying to isolate ‘western’; and ‘traditional’; forces, and the profound transformations of Tongan life now underway.     

Evolution of Polynesian bark cloth and factors influencing cultural change

The origin and dispersal of the first human inhabitants of the Polynesian Triangle have been studied from many perspectives and significant progress in our understanding of Polynesian prehistory has derived from an intermingling of linguistics, archaeology, and genetics. Contributions from the ethnographic record, however, have been limited by the dearth of comparative methods that are useful for reconstructing prehistory and identifying and analyzing cross-cultural trends. For more than fifty years, cladistic phylogenetic methods have been used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of biological systems from contemporary trait distributions. These rigorous methods are applied herein to reconstruct the prehistoric evolution and dispersal of Polynesian bark cloth, using ethnographic data recorded since European contact with Polynesian cultures. Contrary to expectation given the earlier settlement of Western Polynesia, the Eastern Polynesian bark cloth traditions retained many ancestral features. In contrast, a suite of innovations appear in the Western Polynesian bark cloth traditions and it is asserted herein that the distribution of these traits may be associated with the rise of the Tongan maritime Empire. Within Eastern Polynesia, the pattern of diversification of bark cloth traditions is consistent with the breakdown of interaction spheres late in the settlement era.     

The Scandinavian languages

This article suggests that the enterprise of Mark Bevir's book (The Logic of the History of Ideas, Cambridge, 1999), is the reverse of what his title implies. Bevir seeks not to delineate the peculiar logic of a specialised subfield of history called the ‘history of ideas’, but rather the logic which underlies historical pursuit considered in general as the ‘explanation of belief’. If this is so, then the relationship between belief, meaning, and speech act in intellectual texts, and the task and method of the intellectual historian, must be reinterpreted along lines closer to those of Quentin Skinner than Bevir would allow. Indeed, Bevir's criticism of Skinner, which hinges on his own account of malapropism, is shown here to fail. The article concludes with brief reflections on the purpose and nature of studying the ‘history of ideas’.     

Island dreaming: the contemplation of Polynesian paradise

Images of islands, especially in Polynesia, critically of Tahiti, emerged and evolved in the aftermath of island encounters with outsiders, many of whom were male. Visions of utopia dominated discourse, in different phases, as distance and smallness enhanced enchantment, yet remained centred of Tahiti, after subsequent encounters with diverse groups. Perceptions of dystopia and the ‘ignoble savage’, and the need for redemption from outside, never displaced alternative notions. Islands became incorporated into distant lands in different ways, eventually in islander diasporas, yet utopia persisted in new artistic and literary forms, supplemented by photographs, postcards and stamps, film (including travelogues), popularised anthropology and geography, and eventually tourism and television. In turn islanders replenished old images and reconstructed new ones in the shift from an imperial to a remarkably similar post-colonial politics of place and people. 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.     

从清政府的满语保护政策及效果看少数民族语言保护问题

清代是以满洲贵族为主建立起来的一个王朝,作为一个少数民族政权,为了防止在广大的汉族地区丧失民族特性,他们对其民族语言——满语,采取了语言保护政策:民族交往限制、强化满语国语地位(诸如:官员选拔、司法、公文、教育中的强制使用),但都没有改变满语消亡的历史命运。从这个历史事件中,笔者试图通过对民族语言工具性文化地位的考察,来重新考量国际上当前流行的民族语言保护问题,希望对当今的文化政策有所借鉴。     

Comparative History and Ethnography in William Ellis’s Polynesian Researches

ABSTRACT

This article develops recent scholarly efforts to take seriously the scientific work of evangelical missionaries in the South Pacific. Ellis’s Polynesian Researches gives us an insight into the broader issue of the way in which theological concepts could inform the framework of missionaries’ observations of the traditions, manners and functioning of human societies. Central to Ellis’s observations was the idea of idolatry. I argue that Ellis brought together a theological definition of idolatry – in which idolatry represented the sinful worship of created things rather than the creator God – with an Enlightenment idea that polytheistic idolatry was a universal stage in the historical development of civilization. Ellis’s Polynesian Researches gives us a point of entry into understanding some of the ways that European theological ideas were put to new uses in the South Pacific, against the backdrop of the increasingly global exchange of people, goods and ideas.     

The South Sulawesi group and neighbouring languages

The languages of the genetically based South Sulawesi (SSul.) group share many specific substantial and structural features with other languages of Southern and Central Sulawesi. Among the non‐SSul. languages of the area, it is the so‐called Highland Toraja languages that bear the strongest resemblance to the SSul. group. Within the last‐named group, the northern languages show more numerous Toraja (esp. Highland Toraja) characteristics than the southern ones. This pattern of isoglosses must be explained as due to areal contacts. In all likelihoo'd, during the greatest part of the history of the SSul. group its languages have been subject to deep influence of old local languages (which were probably similar to present‐day Highland Toraja idioms).